John Myung interview

Gitarre & Bass: John, first of all, good to see you again. Maybe you can introduce your main bass to the readers of my magazine.

John Myung: Well, this is just a custom Bongo that Music Man makes me. It basically takes the original six-string body and it has a five-string neck on it, and I just reconfigured the back, the neck, to have more of a “D” shape to it, so that’s a bit more flat, which is what I prefer. And basically superimpose six strings over this spacing with the custom bridge. This particular model doesn’t have the EQ and the treble settings; basically all I have is pickup selector options for different pickup wiring configurations and volume, because I choose to get the EQ through the gear that I send the signal into.

G&B: Alright. The pickups?

JM: This particular one is the HS configuration humbucker and single pickup, and the other configuration is just double hum. I tend to go back and forth between which sounds best. A lot of it depends on the room and the construction of the stage determines the nature of, I guess, the upper-mids, the way they sit over the way the room sounds. In certain stages I prefer this configuration – the HS – but for most rooms, I prefer the double-hum.

G&B: Are there differences between the different basses that you have on stage?

JM: The only difference is just the pick up configurations, and obviously the inherent differences that are just natural between every instrument, knowing each instrument is its own sort of creation. It’s not easy to replicate it perfectly, so there’s a bit of a variance. And I have certain ones marked out as the really good ones and the ones that don’t sound. That’s the variable.