Stu Hamm
His signature Urge II bass upgraded this year, the bass master stops by Fender HQ for a “deep” Q&A …

Hamm with one of his original signature Fender Urge II models.

Fender News was delighted on Oct. 12 when none other than Stu Hamm stopped by to chat for a bit. A timely visit to be sure, since this October is the month when his newly upgraded signature model, the Fender Artist Series Stu Hamm Urge II, debuts in all its sparkly red glory (and a couple other new colors, too—Ocean Turquoise and Black).

It bears remembering that Hamm was the first bassist to have a Fender signature model; a collaboration that eventually resulted in the highly distinctive Urge II bass, unique among all Fender basses, with an active EQ and panning control setup that lets you sweep among the bass’s Precision Bass® middle pickup and Jazz Bass® neck and bridge pickups, which gives you, like, a bazillion different tonal combinations.

You guys know Hamm, of course, as a dazzlingly virtuoso player who combines ferocious groove with dizzying chops. His stints with fleet-fingered guitar ninjas Steve Vai and Joe Satriani are the stuff of bass legend, and his Bx3 tour with fellow bass monsters Billy Sheehan and Jeff Berlin is set for a second go-round in 2008.

With his road-worn, original prototype sparkly red Urge II bass in hand, Hamm spoke with Fender News with his characteristic great humor and sharp wit about the new upgraded Urge II model, his history as the first Fender signature bass artist, his plans for 2008 and what brilliant musicians the Marx Brothers were …


FN: There’s a new upgraded Stu Hamm Urge II Bass guitar.
SH: (smiling) There is.


FN: And you were the first bassist to have a Fender signature model.
SH: I was the first, sir. Long story short, the first Urge was a 32”-scale bass. We had the active electronics, and we also made a student model down in Ensenada that was passive and only had two pickups on it. We worked real hard to make it sound great, of course, for a short-scale bass, but some people said, “A short-scale bass? That doesn’t sound manly; I can’t play that.” Plus, I looked really big wearing a small bass.

About ’91 or ’92 we decided to go full-scale. And this was the first one that Todd Krause built for me. I actually picked out the wood, and it’s my favorite bass. This is the one. It’s falling apart—the truss rod is coming out of the back of the neck. Todd keeps telling me he’ll build me a new neck and update the electronics, but this is the kind of thing where I just can’t touch anything on it. I’m gonna play it ’til it breaks. And then, in my will I have a Viking funeral, which means they’re gonna put me in a boat with this bass and the ashes of my cat, and then light it on fire and push me out into San Francisco Bay.


FN: Sounds dignified, as does the new bass. What are the upgrades?
SH: We wanted to do a couple things that we’ve always been talking about. I think people know me from playing with Steve and Joe and my solo career and Bx3, and they’ve always seen the red sparkle bass, so that’s one of the colors now, and we put Hipshots on all of ’em and nice tweaked-out new electronics.

Hamm onstage in Santiago, Chile. Photo courtesy Stu Hamm

FN: You and Fender go back quite a ways.
SH: I was playing Kubicki Factor basses, and they got picked up by Fender, and then through that I met John Page and those guys from the Custom Shop. And what I decided to do was design a bass that would have the innovations that a lot of the modern companies were coming up with, but still have bass. The problem with that bass was that I liked it, but it just didn’t really sound like a bass. It was good for my solo stuff, but in doing sessions or even playing some of the heavier stuff with Joe, it didn’t really have a bottom. So that’s when, on one of my Kubickis, I put a P-Bass® (pickup) in the middle of it.

And then we said, “Why don’t we go for a thing that has a vintage look?” I remember seeing a guy years ago who had an old forest green or dark green Jazz. And matching headstocks—we’ll want to do that. Vintage look, and modern things like a little thinner neck, a full two-octave scale, and active electronics so you can really get a variety of sounds. But starting with a really good J- and P-Bass sound.


FN: So Fender’s first signature bass model wasn’t just about a different color and some hotter pickups; it really had a lot of input and ideas from you.
SH: We spent a lot of time on it. I’ve got a whole series of really neat prototypes. One thing I found out is that in designing an instrument, you can’t really tell how it’s going to sound until you build it. You know, I always thought that ebony fingerboards looked really cool, and I wanted one and we built one, and with this particular setup, it just made it sound clacky. The different materials that the body and bridge are made out of all affect the tone. So it was a real learning process for me that I think really helped when we went to do the Urge II, the full-scale model. We conquered a lot of those demons so we didn’t have to go through quite such a rigorous prototype-building process to get an axe that sounds good.


FN: Yours has a worn brass pickguard. What’s up with that?
SH: My first Fender bass was a white one; a Jazz®. A real CBS thing. I remember, the neck used to shift so bad in the pocket that I’d get a matchbook and put it in there (laughs). And I had a brass nut and a brass bridge put on it; little brass stars. I thought brass looked cool, so I said, “I know, why don’t I have one of those …” I used to keep it nice and shiny, or have my people keep it nice and shiny, but now I just don’t have time for all that nonsense (grins).


FN: It must’ve felt good to be the first bassist with a Fender signature model.
SH: It sure did. There’s a song on my first album called “Simple Dreams.” My thing wasn’t that I’d written a song called “I Wish I Was Ricky Minor and Was Musical Director of American Idol” or “I Wish I Had a Secondary Career In Real Estate”—the thing was always to have simple dreams.

I remember being at Berkeley and getting Guitar Player magazine and writing in “Stanley Clarke—Best Jazz Bass Player” and “John Entwistle—Best Rock Bass Player,” and someday I come to find out I’m the only guy who ever won both in the same year and did it two years in a row. So at the end of the day, that certainly is the kind of thing that makes me happy. But that was back in the day when I was playing with Steve and Joe and everyone was throwing around stupid money. And I looked around and, honestly, it just came down to a much better product.

For me, there are Fender basses and then all the other cute, fun stuff. But as far as a real instrument—a real piece of wood, honestly—that’s it. And for me that meant a lot, and I knew John Page and all those guys at the Custom Shop. I just had a good relationship with them, and it felt right; it’s certainly something I’m proud of. I have a whole bunch of really cool basses to play.


FN: You seem like you’re big on film music.
SH: I like film music. One of my favorite musical acts was the Marx Brothers.


FN: Really?
SH: Oh yeah—they were great musicians. They would do these little bits that were part virtuoso playing but also just really funny. And I’ve always been the kind of performer for who, if you get people laughing and on your side, it’s going to be a better experience. That doesn’t always work in the rock ‘n’ roll world, where I do clinics and a lot of people show up with their jazz jury faces on, you know. And you come up and you’re actually like a somewhat open, friendly, funny human being in there, and a lot of people just don’t want that.


FN: There are plenty of YouTube clips of you soloing in which you’re clearly enjoying yourself greatly.
SH: Well, yeah. It’s pretty difficult when I do my solo playing—it’s just myself, a bass, a cord and an amplifier. I use what I use because it’s got to sound good. And you know, I’m well known for all these different techniques, but the reason I’m using these techniques is to create the music; to tell a story. Every song I play is supposed to make you think or feel melancholy or sad or happy or something. Unfortunately, I think technique has ruined a lot of other musicians, because I hear a lot of bass players, and the story they’re trying to tell is. “Look at me—I can pop really fast in E.” That’s a really boring story.


FN: You’re known for adapting piano pieces to bass guitar; the “Peanuts” theme and Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” come to mind …
SH: I like hearing a person play his instrument. I think one guy and an instrument is awesome. I played piano, and I tried to work out a bunch of these piano pieces, and I just ran out of fingers. And then when I saw Jaco, it was like, “OK, maybe bass can be a solo instrument.” And I just figured out a way.


FN: How long did “Moonlight Sonata” take to work out?
SH: It took forever! The thing with that kind of technique—and I’ve had heated debates about this with other bass players—is that it really requires a certain amount of dirty work; just learning the physical coordination to play it, and then to become comfortable with it to where it sounds like music and not like an exercise.


FN: Do you ever feel like just pedaling on eighth notes?
SH: Absolutely. I get to do it all the time. If you think it’s boring to play a simple groove, then you’re not getting it. On Sunday, I’ve got a gig with the Greg Kihn Band—I get to play “Jeopardy”; “The Breakup Song”; and I get to sing backups! The solo thing is one part of my playing. The main thing is just holding down the bottom.


FN: What does 2008 look like for you?
SH: We’re going back out with Bx3, this little bass version of G3 I put together with Mr. Billy Sheehan and Mr. Jeff Berlin. Hopefully, we’ll be swinging down to the NAMM show. Then we’re going to try to tackle Europe for a good part of the summer, and I have a lot of touring and teaching, too. There are a lot of music academies around the world. I taught for a week last summer in Bath (England), at the International Guitar Foundation, and there’s a music academy in Bologna, Italy. I do three or four of those a year. I hope to get time to work on my next record; I’ve just been really busy doing clinics around the world. And when I’m at home in San Francisco, I’ve got a little jazz thing on the weekends at the beach, where I get to play my fretless and play some standards. I get to rock and I get to do my thing, so life is good.



Visit Stu Hamm online at www.stuarthamm.net.