Tag: bassplayersuniverse

on by Danny Knapp

I get asked quite often about my customized bass guitars.

I get asked quite often about my customized bass guitars. Several of basses have custom pickguards made by Alper Eskimez of @alperiouspickguard. His work is absolutely amazing. These pickguards are made out of wood and metal, so they actually improve tone and sustain a little bit. Every pickguard Alper makes is built-to-order and one-of-a-kind. In the photo on the left, you can see the detail of the wood grain in the pickguard on one of my @ernieballmusicman basses (this one is named “Elvis”).

on by Danny Knapp

Yay!

Yay! The first batch of my new custom bass picks from @steveclaytoninc were delivered. Now I just need some more gigs so that I can throw them at people 🤘😎

on by Danny Knapp

Quick little project: I added some glow-in-the-dark paint to the fret markers on my basses.

Quick little project: I added some glow-in-the-dark paint to the fret markers on my basses.

On a dimly lit stage, it’s often very difficult to quickly check your hand position on the neck of the bass guitar, especially when you are singing backing vocals and you can only look out of the corner of your eye.

In the past I’ve used little glowing-dot stickers, but they wear off rather quickly. This time I used some Glow-On paint. It’s designed to be used on gun sights, but it works great on guitars too. It only takes a few minutes in bright light to charge it for a gig — a flashlight (or cell phone light) works great as well.

on by Danny Knapp

I don’t play with a guitar pick very often.

I don’t play with a guitar pick very often. However, sometimes you really need that really aggressive attack that you can only achieve by using a pick. I just ordered a new, updated design for my custom bass picks from @steveclaytoninc . Thanks again to @hearmedraw for designing a great logo for me!

on by Danny Knapp

This bass is named “Elvis” because of its classic tone and flashy gold-star theme.

This bass is named “Elvis” because of its classic tone and flashy gold-star theme. It’s an Ernie Ball Musicman Stingray 5HH with a custom-made @alperiouspickguard. It’s different than most of my other fretted basses in that I keep it loaded with Dunlop Flatwounds so that I can get that fundimental thump that you can only get when using flatwound strings. Stingray basses lend themselves to flatwounds very well — thunderous tone and the string tension is just right. I use this bass for playing Latin, funk, disco, as well as lot of current stuff and original music. I love that Flatwounds have come back into the spotlight in pop and alternative music recently.

on by Danny Knapp

I just updated my @kemperamps_official to the latest firmware.

I just updated my @kemperamps_official to the latest firmware. There’s some fantastic new features and it’s rock solid and stable as always! I still use a few external pedals for certain specialty functions: bass synths from futureimpactpedal and c4synth, as well as advanced filter and distortion effects from @sourceaudio. My external effects are all midi-capable, which empowers me to use the Kemper to control all of their settings. I can change all of my effects (internal & external) with the tap of a button on my pedalboard. In one of my bands, we use @Ableton Live for audio, lighting, and video cues. Ableton even sends patch changes to my bass rig so that I can just concentrate on performing — no more doing the pedal dance. The Kemper Profiler has really been a game-changer for me.