By lisa on Friday, August 15th, 2014 in Travel Guitars. No Comments
Getting pretty hot down here in South Florida, and rainin’ most every afternoon – makes it hard to get the nitro going…
This month we are featuring our latest custom creation, a Strobel Rambler Professional Travel Bass in Deep Purple Burst! We haven’t spent much time talking about our Custom Bass guitars in this forum so thought we would highlight one this month.
We built a Rambler Bass for Tanya from Tennessee. She chose “IAM” for her custom inlay, more about that later.
We model the Rambler Bass after the most iconic bass we could think of – a vintage Fender P Bass from the early 60’s.
The Rambler Bass is outfitted with all Schaller hardware, just like our Custom Rambler guitars. We use a Schaller D4 roller bridge. This bridge is really versatile, it has adjustments for string height and intonation plus the rollers move back and forth to get the strings exactly where you want them.
The pickups are Schaller PBA Precision Bass Humbuckers, and they sound GREAT!
Something about the absence of a headstock really makes for great sustain (all that string energy above the nut is lost in a normal bass, but routed back to the neck in a Rambler Bass).
The scale length is derived from a standard 34″ scale by placing the nut at the 3rd fret. The string spacing feels correct since it matches a standard bass, but the overall scale length is 28-1/2″. The Rambler Custom Bass is also available as a fret-less model.
So back to Tanya’s inlay. So what does “IAM” mean anyway? In Tanya’s words:
“I AM – it is the truth of all truths. And to which I tell the others – put that on your bass and slap it. It’s a testament to my existence, to existence itself; to life and the living for without it things would be less interesting. Without it, the beach sand would not be so white, the water so pure… and without it those chords and notes would not be so soul drippingly potent… I am… I am the notes, the music and I am the bass.”
So eloquently put Tanya, thank you for your beautiful passage, and the inspiration to all of us “pickers”…
