Born out of a chance meeting at a bass show in London, Stonefield founder recalls the weird encounter fondly to Bassplayer.com, “My workshop assistant Rhys Williams and I were only just beginning to unpack our shipping boxes… and out of nowhere Freekbass walks up to us, introduces himself and asks if he can have a play on one of our basses.”
“I’m looking at Rhys, he’s looking at me and I just remember thinking, “where the heck did he come from?” He played the instrument acoustically, sitting on a cardboard shipping box, in a basically empty exhibit hall. A couple of minutes later Rhys got a second bass tuned and scooted over, laying in a bit of a groove; Freekbass went with it.”
Freekbass recalls the almost supernatural feeling he had when playing the Stonefield Bass, saying that, “I saw and played a ton of basses that weekend… but just like when Superman hears the calling of the crystal for the Fortress of Solitude, this bass seemed to be calling to me.”
The outcome of this meeting is the Freekbass Signature Model, an axe built with the slapping bassist in mind. The bass is fitted with a ‘Funk Plate’ for double thumbing and other slapping techniques, and also doubles as a thumb rest when playing fingerstyle, and the volume button is significantly smaller than other knobs on the bass, as to avoid accidentally knocking it ‘when the funk slap heats up’.
The dark timber design with touches of red is inspired by a request from the apparent superhero fan, Freekbass, who said, ‘Build me the Batmobile’. That is exactly what the good folks over at Stonefield did, and this is a bass that I’m sure would impress Bruce Wayne himself.
For more information, visit the Stonefield website.
