Posted by Oteil Burbridge on January 3, 2013 Joe Perman Custom Fretless six String Bass

This bass was Joe’s first bass under his own name. He is the Luthier responsible for every Modulus bass that I’ve owned, and I’ve had a bunch of them. My very first signature bass was the Modulus OB-1. As in, Kenobi… As you can see in the picture, this instrument is exceptionally beautiful. Its another “glass case” bass. It sounds equally as gorgeous. It also has about the longest sustain of any bass I’ve ever played. I originally got turned onto graphite because I heard Tony Levin with Peter Gabriel. He is one of the few bassist that had a distinctly different sound from Jaco when he played fretless. I never played fretless because I didn’t want to sound like yet another Jaco clone. Levin showed me I was wrong. Now that I have this bass I have some serious homework to do. Fretless instruments are much harder to keep in tune and require lots of practice. Special thanks to Joe Perman for so many years of support and so many beautiful basses. This bass is so pretty I named it “Pretty Boy Floyd”.