[ravaging]

well, shortly after christmas last year, i finally was able to come up with enough money for a new bass. i ended up buying a Kinal MK-21 6 string bass. Mike Kinal lives in Vancouver, BC, and hand makes each and every one of his beautiful basses. i picked this one up at Bass NW some time last fall and knew it was the right bass for me, so i saved up and finally got it. i could not be happier with this bass.

it has 6 strings (tuned B E A D G C) and 21 frets. the electronics on this baby are perfect for me. master volume (push/pull for active/passive), treble, mid with 3 band selector switch, bass, a pickup blend, an all controls bypass switch, and a pickup coil tap (parallell, series, and bridge coil). i thought my G&L had a lot of possibities with it's electronics, but this bass is in a league of it's own. roll the pickup blend back to the bridge and boost the highs and mids with the mid selector in the middle, and you can get one of the greatest slap/pop sounds i've ever heard out of a bass. boost the lows and low-mids and use just a little bit more of the bridge than the neck pickup and play any rock you want with a perfect growl. use mostly the neck pickup and boost the lows and mid-mids, and jazz is no problem

in general, this is a very bright bass. it's extremely clear, even the B string sounds great (although my SVT3 doesn't like B strings on any bass). my favorite part about this bass is it's clarity and punch while tapping. i've been doing a lot of two hand tapping lately, and it could not sound any better. it's also super easy to play, the strings are very low and there's no fretbuzz at all. chords sound great using the high C string.

unfortunately, i have not had a camera for months now, and have not been able to take any pictures of it. however, a friend of mine snapped some pictures of my band at our last show and posted them on facebook, and you can see it pretty well in a few of them, so here they are (the pictures are large so i'm just posting the links):

http://photos-478.ll...194174_9369.jpg
http://photos-478.ll...194168_7678.jpg

those are the only two that show the bass well.

all in all, i've never been happier with any purchase i've ever made. been playin this bass for almost 6 months now, and i feel like my playing has excelled way more than it normally would simply because i cannot put this bass down.

This post has been edited by ravaging: 10 May 2008 - 02:10 PM

[junior01]

Wow, that is a real looker. And it is always nice to hear that a bass can look good and sound great too. Is it inappropriate to ask how much you have paid for this jewel?

[ravaging]

i paid around $2700 USD for it after taxes. took about 6 months working during school, saving as much as i could. having my birthday and christmas in december helped out a lot, i bought it a few days after christmas.

[junior01]

Treat it well!!! Any recordings of it so we can hear what it sound like?

[ravaging]

unfortunately not at the moment, the only mic i have at the moment is an sm58 and i have no way to connect it to my computer. i might be buying a pro-tools interface here some time in the next few months, so i'll definitely put something up when i have a way to record it.