The Bass Whisperer

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Bass Whisperer Tone Test:

The Lakland 44-07 Bass with Chi-Sonic pickups

This bass is one of my personal instruments. It came to me through some beta-testing I did for Lakland as they were developing the Chi-Sonic pickups. This particular model has the ultra-deluxe package: Two Chi-Sonic Humbuckers with coil tap, three band eq, passive bypass, and passive tone control.

It's built exceptionally well - like any US Lakland 44 model: alder body, maple neck, 22-fret rosewood fingerboard, 1.5" width at the nut, Lakland bridge, LH-3 preamp, seafoam green with matching headstock. Naturally, the pickups are what make this instrument stand out. Chi-Sonics have neodymium magnets, which give it a very full range, hi-fi quality, with high output, and a naturally sweet top end. This instrument has so many tones, it can become tempting to tweak too much... but it's not the fault of the bass!

The control panel has Master Volume (push/pull for active/passive mode), Pan, Bass, Mid, Treble, Passive Tone (the mini-knob in between Vol & Pan), and Coil Tap (mini-toggle). This particular model has been modified by luthier extraordinaire Ed Reynolds, the man that mentored the folks at Lakland on setup, fretwork and luthiery in general. The passive tone pot operates like a standard low-pass filter from 0-5, then past the detent (6-10) the pot is taken out of the circuit entirely. This really brightens up the general tone. I find the Chi's have plenty of high end, but I like having the option of taking the passive tone control out of the circuit in active mode.

I've played this bass for quite a while and have gone back and forth between flatwounds and roundwounds. I took it with me on a clinic tour with rounds because I knew the kids would want some of that crazy slap stuff.



But I always wanted to go back to flats. This bass has a warmth and depth that really cries for flatwounds. So I recently put on a set of Ernie Ball Group IV flats, their lightest gauged set (40-60-70-95) and found they sounded excellent on this bass. They have more clarity than your typical old school thumpers, and the gauge kept the tension nice and supple. They almost remind me of a brighter version of Thomastik flats. The 44-07 has such a cool full range sound that it actually slaps quite well with flats.

Sound Samples

Here are some samples I recorded with the 44-07, all in active mode. They were recorded into ProTools direct using a passive Radial Engineering ProDI with Analysis Plus Bass Oval cable. No additional eq was used, and only minimal compression. The drums are Toontrack's EZ Drummer.

Slap on the neck pickup in single coil mode.

Slap on the neck pickup in HB mode.

Slap on both pickups in single coil mode.

Slap on both pickups in HB mode.

Slap on the bridge pickup in single coil mode.

Slap on the bridge pickup in HB mode.

Fingerstyle on the neck pickup in single coil mode.

Fingerstyle on the neck pickup in HB mode.

Fingerstyle on both pickups in single coil mode.

Fingerstyle on both pickups in HB mode.

Fingerstyle on the bridge pickup in single coil mode.

Fingerstyle on the bridge pickup in HB mode.

Pickstyle on the neck pickup in single coil mode.

Pickstyle on the neck pickup in HB mode.

Pickstyle on both pickups in single coil mode.

Pickstyle on both pickups in HB mode.

Pickstyle on the bridge pickup in single coil mode.

Pickstyle on the bridge pickup in HB mode.