After contemplating my dilemma for a while, I realised that this was my chance to purchase a bass that I had coveted for years, ever since I read about it in a German music magazine in 1987. It was called the “Ashbory” and looked like a sonic bass straight out of (the early) Dr Who… a bit like a dinosaur bone with strings. Compared to a normal bass it was tiny: slightly over half a meter long and weighing in at under a kilogram! It was fretless and equipped with special silicone strings and a piezoelectric transducer that was supposed to give it the sound of an upright bass. Unbelievable! And so finally I could justify spending a grand (in Deutschmark) for an instrument that nobody needs. The next day I was on the phone to every music shop in Cologne (the closest city with a professional music scene), trying to find out where I could get one of these Ashborys. It turned out they were as rare as hen’s teeth and nobody knew how to get their hands on one (remember: at that time the internet was only for boffins, not for buffoons). Well, I left my (landline) number with all of them and waited. Two weeks later I got a call from one of the smaller shops. They had managed to locate a second hand Ashbory in Switzerland (no further information available), and asked if I wanted it. I said yes, transfered eight hundred Deutschmark into their account, and another two weeks later I took possession of my new Ashbory. I was crestfallen: it looked like a bloody Steinberger and not at all like a dinosaur bone! It was also slightly longer, but at least it was under a kilogram, so I was officially allowed to play the thing. At that time we were rehearsing in the basement of my mums house. After the first evening with the Ashbory she complained that she had to push back all the crockery in the cupboards because of the noise: RESULT! I loved my Ashbory!!!
Nowadays it’s all much easier. You just ask Aunty Google and all the information is there at a touch of your finger. So now I know that the Ashbory bass was invented by two blokes from London, Alun Ashworth-Jones and Nigel Thornbory, and that the first series of dinosaur bone shaped Ashborys was produced by Guild in the USA. Apparently they flopped and for a few years nothing happened. Then Al and Nigel decided to give it another go and managed to make 80 Ashbory Mark II basses for the Bass Centre in London. The ugly Steinberger copy I bought from Switzerland through a small music shop in Cologne turned out to be one of these rare Mark IIs. Now I love it even more!
If you want to read more about the astonishing story of the Ashbory bass, here’s a link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030605141040/www.ashelec.demon.co.uk/ashbory/index.htm
