Don Z, in the London Bass Centre, with Mark King's Moon Jazz Bass
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In 1998, Level 42's
singer/bassist Mark King moved house, selling a number of basses from his
sizable collection to the Bass Centre in London. By the time I visited
the Bass Centre in January 1999, only two were left: a £5000 Alembic
Series I 
, and a Moon Jazz Bass with
Alembic pickups 
from which Mark had removed the frets, creating
an "instant fretless." I recalled reading an article in Bass Player
magazine, many years before, in which Mark described how he had de-fretted
a Moon Jazz for the recording of his first fretless bass line (in the song
"Seven Years" from the GUARANTEED album
). The Bass Centre's guitar tech Chris Ward
had done a splendid job of re-fretting the Moon, but I resisted the strong
urge to buy it. However, upon returning to the UK in March for Mark's
end-of-tour home-turf show on the Isle of
Wight, I felt an irresistable
pull toward east-end London, in the specific direction of the Bass Centre.
Ultimately, I did purchase the Moon with no
regrets.
Mark recently wrote a brief note answering some of my questions about the bass, in the sleeve of his self-released CD-R TRASH (see below).
GUITARIST (UK) September 1991
"On another track I played a fretless, which I've never played before but felt that the song I'd been working on needed a different approach, and I could 'hear' a fretless bass on it. So I did the old thing of just hooking some frets out of the bass, shoving in the wood filler, and voila... fretless bass. Not a particularly good one, but it wouldn't make any difference to me, because it's so different."
BASS PLAYER (US) March
1992
So he 'did a Jaco,' heaving the frets out of a Jazz Bass - actually, a Japanese copy by Moon that he'd had lying around for some years. "They came out surprisingly easily," he says. "It makes you wonder what you're paying for, doesn't it? I structured the bass line around what the fretless could do. When it came to actually doing the track, I tried it on a fretted bass and it wasn't the same thing at all. Only the fretless had the right sound - although it wasn't so much the sound as the difference inherent in the instrument."
Mark King's
demos
CD-R
TRASH
(#29/200)
Click for a look at
Mark's personal inscription ----> 
"Don,
I did use the 'moon' Jazz for 7years. The Alembic electronics were already fitted, and the 'marks' on the controls were mine! I was given the bass in 85/86 by the guy who made it in Japan. He was at the airport when we landed and just gave it to me! I pulled out the frets a couple of years later.
See ya! Mark King"
THE PIER: KING OF THE ISLE
The Moon even appeared on British TV in '96. That's it hanging on the wall (red pointer) in Mark's home studio on the Isle of Wight.
Moon
bass on video!
Click the pic above to see and hear Mark's
Moon bass on RealVideo. If you don't have a G2 player, get one free by
clicking here ----->
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See another of Mark King's famous basses...
Click the pic to visit
Morgan Roussel's JayDee Basses Around the World
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