|
May
19th, 2005:
Chapter 6: It is done
It is now quite a year ago
that I met Jens Ritter and his beautiful basses at the Musikmesse 2004.
I fell in love immediately, not in Jens but in his great instruments,
and so Jens and I decided not even 3 weeks later to develop an
instrument meeting my requirements which he would build.
Now, one year later, it
is done: after a long time of waiting, hoping and worrying, In April
2005, Jens himself visited me at home in Munich and brought my new baby
directly to me. It was like Christmas when I opened the case:
Noble dressed in silk finish black, the bass
laid in black velvet. After a short time of gazing, I certainly had to
take the bass for a quick check. And it felt good right from the first
moment:
Certainly the master
wanted to say good bye to the bass he invested countless hours of
careful handcraft in - and which caused him a lot of impatient phone
calls by me ...:
And so we sealed the
completion of my first Ritter bass with a strong handshake:
And here it is:
Basically there are only
slight modifications, but they make playing to me much easier. First of
all, the neck is a little bit thinner than usually at Ritter basses,
which makes plying fast licks easier and feels more comfortable to me.
Furthermore I asked Jens
to place the output jack on the backside of the bass, so you can't see
the cable, especially when playing with a wireless system. Plus the
cable does not affect adjusting the control panels.:
Another detail are the
the side LEDs showing the positions of the frets. Especially when you're
playing on dark stages, the LEDs show where you are on the fret board:
A little vanity is ok
when you get your dream instrument, or? I asked Jens to assemble an
inlay with ma name on the 12th fret. And if that wasn't enough, the
inlay glows blue when you switch on the side LEDs. I'm sure I reduced
the risk of theft for this bass effectively...:
 
Jens wrote me a
dedication on the back side of the headstock:
And that is the serial
number of my new baby:
If you are interested in
further details of 0419, like woods, electronics or hardware, you can
check out the
certificate of this bass, which you can download as a PDF file.
And so the story of "Bass in progress"
is complete now. Actually I documented the building process for myself
to kill the waiting time. Surprisingly I got some reactions from
different people that liked that little story and shared my excitement.
I was very happy about those feedbacks, and I want to greet everybody
that liked that little story. Maybe there will be another Ritter bass
one day so I can write another building story. But for now there are
many notes that want to be played and recorded with 0419. So please
check out the audio page from
time to time and listen to the audio samples I will provide.
All the best wishes!
Martin Motnik
Back to the overview |
