Flea Rocks

we all know that Flea rock, so here are more about him and his bass


FLEA MODEL 32 BASS
June 7, 2010 | Reviewer: Reza Nasseri
Distributor: www.thumpmusic.com.au

One of my favourite bass players is a lad by the name Michael Balzary, son of Aussie fisherman Mick Balzary. This enormous talent originated from the great city Melbourne, Australia, moving to New York at the age of five, growing up to become one of the greatest musicians of our generation. He is known to most as Flea, funky monk, environmental activist, actor, and bassist with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Recently Flea released his own line of 'Flea' basses, which he states were made for people to fall in love with and affordable enough for families to buy. So these are entry-level basses designed with cool, youthful looks, great action and killer tone in mind. The features are very stripped back, being a single pickup bass with one tone, one volume and 20 frets instead of the usual 22 or 24. It’s this simplistic design which lends itself so well to students or even musicians that aren’t necessarily technically minded and don’t want to deal with a whole bunch of knobs and switches that just get in the way.

At present there are two models of Flea bass in production; the Junior (a 3/4 size bass) and the Model 32 which is a full-sized 34” scale bass. Both come in four colour schemes from the hot pink and fluoro green, ‘Punk Bass’ to classic black and white ‘Wild One’, lending itself to shoe-gazers and rockstars alike. These basses look great, essentially imitating Flea's Stingray/P-Bass mongrel with a solitary black EMG looking pickup, funky headstock graphics, with a choice of finishes that are both radical and unrestrained much like Flea’s own personality.

The quality of materials utilised is surprisingly good, with a weighty solid alder body, silky-smooth maple neck, and sweet sounding rosewood fingerboard, which is a classic combination that works time and time again. The string-through-body increases sustain and resonance, while the fully adjustable steel bridge will last a lifetime and enable a fine tuning of action, while the four jumbo machine heads all work with great precision and ensure stable tuning.

Straight out of the box this bass played great, as action, intonation, tuning and electronics were all in perfect working order. Also bear in mind how pivotal this factor is when considering that someone picking up and playing the bass for the very first time needs to get hooked in order to continue learning their instrument. Picking up an ugly bass that sounds terrible with dead notes buzzing and fretting out is not going to get anyone devoting a large chunk of their lives to learning an instrument. Fortunately, the standard of excellence has improved dramatically as companies have streamlined manufacturing techniques and learned from mistakes of the past.

So now it was simply a matter of plugging in and getting an idea of its tone. I started busting out all the Chili Peppers basslines I knew how to play, and quickly found this bass loves having the bejesus slapped out of it. Sounds were bright and punchy thanks to the factory fresh GHS strings and the aggressive custom alnico humbucker which accentedthe attack in my thumb slaps with the tone knob on full.

Moving onto fingerstyle and rolling back the tone resulted in wonderfully dark reggae and I was able to get a nice growl out of the humbucker when really digging into the strings. I find that this bass is versatile enough to accommodate all playing styles, and certainly has a unique voice of its own, which is always a good thing. It possesses more high and low mid content than other basses in the same price range, which guarantees you’ll stick out more in a mix when jamming with a guitarist or keyboard player.

Navigating the neck was easy with the smooth, satin-finish, and the quality setup makes playing easy and enjoyable. Having a single pickup may limit tonal options straight from the bass, but with the versatility of today’s amps, even certain practice amps can model a huge array of tones.

The bass also comes with a cool gig bag, a lead, basic setup tools and great little instructional DVD made by Flea himself that goes for over 50 minutes covering essential topics like; how to actually re-string a bass, tuning, playing fingers, using a pick, and I even learned how to pop and slap more like Flea just by watching him explain his technique.

I think the Model 32 Flea bass makes for a great instrument, regardless of whether you are a beginner or not. You can’t compare it to a beloved vintage P-Bass, Musicman or Spector if you’re a seasoned pro, but it would certainly make a great backup bass and a first bass for beginners, which is its intention.