Matriarch
The Matriarch bass. based on the Matriarch guitar, which has been in my model range since 2015, largely following the same lines as the guitar except slightly enlarged to facilitate the longer (32”) scale and ensure perfect balance. Although it has been scaled up in size slightly for the bass, I was keen to keep it as small and close to the guitar as possible which makes it nice and compact, light weight and very comfortable.
Features Overview
32” medium scale
24 fret
3pc Maple/Wenge neck
Carbon fibre reinforcement
Wenge fretboard
Luminlay side dots
Body matching headstock veneers
Spalted Maple top
Spalted Alder body
Fishman Fluence pickups
Fishman 2 band preamp
Kahler 2440 bridge
Schaller da Vinci tuners
Dunlop straplocks
The neck for instance is a 3 piece hornbeam (and walnut veneers) with Titanium stiffening rods and a man-made Ebony (Blackwood Tek) fingerboard which features glow in the dark Luminlay lines and side dots. The neck is attached to the body by a set neck construction using traditional hot hide glue.
This bass has only three main woods (less is often more) of Maple, Wenge and Alder and there is a bit of a Spalted theme to the instrument - the top is quarter sawn Spalted Maple and the back Spalted Alder grown over here in the UK.
The neck is a 3 piece of Maple and Wenge, reinforced with carbon fibre. The fretboard is also Wenge and has beautiful feathery like figure featuring Luminlay side dots. The neck features body matching veneers on both sides of the headstock along with a spalted Alder heel block.
The pickups are a Fishman Fluence set and preamp which have some very modern tones and some surprisingly more warm and vintage sounds also available. I’m a big fan of the Fluence stuff…they can do it all!
For hardware we have a chunky Kahler 2440 bridge with a string spacing of 17mm as requested by the customer and Schaller da Vinci machine heads at the other end.