Ashbory Bass

My Ashbory basses will probably be making an appearance at the next few o5b gigs.

Ashbory bassess are tiny fretless instruments made by Fender with a scale length of 18″ (compared to the standard 34″ scale of a Fender precision bass). The remarkable thing about them, apart from the diminutive size, is the chunky silicone rubber strings, which with the transducer built into the bridge gives the bass a rich double-bass like tone.

Although the Ashbory is a fretless instrument there are printed fretlines on the fingerboard. At first I was concerned that the intonation was very inaccurate as I initially found it impossible to play my Ashbory in tune, however I have since realised that the string should be fretted not directly over the fretline like a conventional lined fretless bass, but over the marker dots between the lines, like an unlined fretless bass.

I currently own two Ashborys, a black one and a blue one, the black one was used on The Runner on the obviously 5 believers CD.

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Largesound.com is a great web site devoted to Ashbory basses. The isn’t a lot of activity on the forum, but there is a lot of useful information on the site.  The basses, strings, spare parts and accessories can be ordered from Largesound.  When my blue Ashbory arrived (from an ebay seller) with a damaged E string tuner, Brock & Kelly at Largesound sorted me out a replacement tuner for just a few quid which was delivered very quickly from the US.