Bass Southwest Is Now Stocking KSD Basses

Recreating the magic from the 60's and 70's, the KSD Proto-J series were designed in conjunction with Ken Smith. Drawing on his many years of experience as a studio professional in New York City and as a world class Luthier, Ken Smith designed and refined the Proto-J series to meet the demands of professional and amatuer bassists around the world. Incorporated in the KSDs are many of the features found on the Smith Handmade Basses that are familiar and recognizable to many bassists.

After NAMM sales are on at BSW! Epifani UL 902C and PS 1000 amps, Epifani UL series 4x10 inch and 2x12 inch speaker cabinets are instock and ready to ship.

Bass Southwest is so excited to be a new dealer of the world famous Ken Smith Basses. Ken is with out a doubt the most experienced and one of the top bass builders in the world today.

About Ken Smith Basses
- Making the Worlds Greatest Basses for over 20 Years
- All Woods are selected by Ken Smith for every Bass
- In-house Exotic Wood Lumberyard with over 20 species of Aged Exotic Tonewoods
- Final set-up of every Bass is still done by Ken Smith
- From beginning to end, Ken is supervising the production of your Bass every step of the way

Did you know that Ken Smith is a Modern Bass Pioneer? He has pioneered, developed or introduced many of the features used on today's Basses, that are now industry standards.

1978 - Inlaid Straploks
1979 - Printed Circuit Board Electronics
1980 - Graphite Inlaid Neck
1980 - Detented Balance Control
1980 - Detented EQ Controls
1981 - Wide Neck 6 String Bass
1981 - Low 'B' Design .128 & .130
1983 - Wide Neck 5 String Bass
1983 - Taper Core Bass Strings
1983 - Compact Quick Release Bridge
1986 - Replacement Bass/Treble Circuit
1978 to the present - All wood selection & final set-up for every Bass is still done by the founder of the company, Ken Smith.

Bass Southwest Is Happy To Be A New Dealer Of Custom Basses By Michael Tuttle.

Best Feel - Best Tone - Best Frets
That's what you'll get with Michael Tuttle guitars and basses! All material is hand selected and only the best is used in every instrument. The wood is hand selected for each instruments optimum tone. All finishes are old school nitro-cellulose lacquer from the base coat up. All the guitars and basses come with his renown Bestfrets technique. As a guitar player for the last 30 years, the transition from a professional musician to guitar builder has been a valuable asset to his company. He built his first guitar in the early 80's and in 1993 started building guitars for a well known builder. After 10 years of honing the art of guitar building it was time to start out on his own. Michael Tuttle Guitars began in 2003 and his unique craftsmanship and quality are unparallel. Once you've played a Tuttle you'll know!

Bass SouthWest is now offering the new Mike Pope external pre-amp. The mpp-1 is an ultra-high performance single channel bass preamplifier with extremely low noise and distortion. Input impedance is 1,000,000 ohms unbalanced and the main output is driven by a top-of-the-line Burr-Brown balanced line driver with a distortion specification of less than 0.00005%. While you may never have to drive a 600ohm load to 17Vrms across 500 feet of cable, now you can. The circuit boards are multi-layer designs with isolated ground, power, and shield planes. Most parts are surface mount, affording a small footprint and very short traces which means very little parasitic capacitance or inductance. This keeps the circuit operating in a highly linear manner except when you don't want it to (like when you turn an EQ control). Signal path capacitors are highest grade, film caps. The power supply capacitors are tantalums and aluminum electrolytics. The power supply is bipolar, double regulated for superior stability and over-voltage protected.

An in-demand educator, Pope provides instruction worldwide through clinics and his own jazz camp. He has appeared as a special guest artist at events such as Steve Bailey's Bass At The Beach, Victor Wooten's Bass/Nature Camp, Bass Day, and Euro Bass Day alongside bass titans Matthew Garrison and Dominique Di Piazza. Pope is also a former faculty member of the Bass Collective. In addition to his tremendous talent as a bassist, Pope has contributed to the design and fabrication of various electronic devices for bass. Amongst his inventions, Pope has devised a proprietary preamp circuit that is used in Fodera basses, a compressor sold by Fodera, and he also builds customized preamps, as requested, for individuals.

Bass Southwest is happy to be an official dealer of Ristola Instruments. Ristola Instruments are handcrafted by Brian Ristola in his shop in New Hampshire. He began building in the late 90's in Chris Stambaugh's custom shop. A few years ago, he moved into his own shop and began working on his own models. Each instrument is created with precision and care to meet high standards in the areas of sonic quality, play-ability, craftsmanship and aesthetic beauty.