Ibanez EWB20SMFE: Spalt That Maple, Baby!
Fearlessly handling rotting fungi, Owen O'Malley demos the Ibanez EWB20SMFE. It's a fretless, acoustic-electric Exotic Wood Bass made out of spalted maple, and in addition to walking around on the fretless fingerboard, Owen talks about miking acoustic bass.
Here's one to ponder: can you still call it a fretboard if the bass has no frets? And another: If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody around to hear it, but some luthiers discover the fallen tree and make a bass out of it, doesn't that prove that a fallen tree CAN be heard?
I hope you have three minds, because I think I just blew two of them.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ON AN IBANEZ EWB20SMFE ACOUSTIC-ELECTRIC FRETLESS BASS]
OWEN O'MALLEY: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Owen O'Malley, and we're looking at the Ibanez EWBSMFE? Wait, hang on. It is the EWB20SMFE. It's -- Basically, they're fretless acoustic-electric bass. This particular bass is finished in a pretty cool spalted maple, spalted maple top, back, and sides.
Spalted maple is basically maple that has been marked by fungal rot. Spalted sounds a lot nicer than fungal rot. Anyway, it's a pretty cool sounding bass. It does have a little Ibanez SST Fishman preamp. It's got a three-band EQ, a shape control, volume, phase switch, and also a tuner built into it. And on the output here, there's a 1/4" out and also a balanced XLR out. What we're listening to right now is the 1/4". In a second, we'll mic this guy up and actually listen to its acoustic tone.
But as you can see, it is fretless. It's got a rosewood freboard there. There are fret markers, which helps a lot because intonation is the killer on fretless basses. But it’s got a pretty decent direct tone that we'll listen to right now.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ON AN IBANEZ EWB20SMFE ACOUSTIC-ELECTRIC FRETLESS BASS]
Let's mic this guy up so you can get a sense of what his actual acoustic tone is like. Acoustic bass guitar is definitely one of the more challenging acoustic instruments to mic. I have found that a good tube vocal mic, a large diaphragm tube mic works pretty well. We don't have a tube mic on the premises so I've hooked up this AKG C 414 XL II, which is an excellent mic, and I'm pointing it basically a little bit above the soundhole, so like it will be at the end of the fretboard, or the fingerboard I should say in this case, and it's about 6 inches from the instrument so let's give a listen.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ON AN IBANEZ EWB20SMFE ACOUSTIC-ELECTRIC FRETLESS BASS]
Now, you could hear fret noise is kind of a -- or rather fingering noise is kind of an issue with acoustic basses. This bass comes pre-strung with D'Addario EXP strings, they're phosphor bronze, and they're really great-sounding strings but they do produce quite a bit of noise. You got to be really careful to avoid producing fretting noise with these strings, especially as you're sliding from one position to the next. But still, you know, a pretty decent sounding instrument especially for the price. It's about $600.
Yeah, there you go. That is the Ibanez EWB20SMFE in spalted maple. I'm Owen O'Malley, and you've been watching Gearwire.Com. See you later.
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