2000 (?) Fender Standard Precision Bass

• Body: Alder
• Neck: Maple/Rosewood
• Hardware: Guitar Fetish oversized top mount chrome bridge, stock tuners, red tortoise scratch plate
• Pickups: GFS Pro Series Hot P-Bass

My friend Kip Martin was a bluegrass musician who played upright bass with Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys, amongst many others. When I first moved to Nashville, he very generously offered me his spare bedroom until I could suss out my living situation. When he passed away, his sisters gave this to me.

Kip had completely field stripped it down to the body/neck — the only thing left on the instrument was the stock tuners — so I had it put back together with new hardware from Guitar Fetish, which you’ll see mentioned frequently. I don’t have an artist relationship with them, but they are an excellent resource for solid, dependable and affordable aftermarket parts.

My guitar tech sprayed and reliced the headstock to match the body. The bridge is heavy weight cast body, and four cast saddles with inset adjustable steel string bearing points, highly recommended and awesome for tone, sustain and intonation. Also pleased by the $30 GFS p/ups, which use overwound sandcast AlNiCo V rod magnets, heavy Formvar wire, paraffin potted, and pump out a solid 16k of signal.

Excellent recording bass, albeit a trifle heavy for stage work. Loaded with Flat-wound D’Addario Chrome medium long scale bass strings, .50-.105. I’ve recorded and toured with this extensively over the last four years, and I like to think somewhere Kip is quite pleased about that.