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if you know what I mean. Whereas, my other instruments are like Fender Jazz Bass, Fender P
Bass, when you’ve got one of them, you don't need any more. You don't need any more variations
unless you want a different colour, I guess, really. But the Danelectro is a stand-alone special
instrument and yeah, so I'd say I've got five. And to be honest with you, Ian, I was living in a
cupboard in London for nearly ten years, and I crammed as much stuff in there as I could,
including an electronic drum kit somehow, and luckily that limited any of my temptations to buy
any more.

BiTS: Tell me about this, obviously it's got a name. Vince calls it the Frankenstein bass. I don't
know whether you call it the Frankenstein bass but tell me all about it.

SL: Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I call it the Frankenbass, Frankenstein bass, Terminator bass because
it’s indestructible. Basically, this time two years ago I was looking to move back to Plymouth and
I'd always wanted to play double bass and I was sat there on Facebook marketplace and suddenly
this freaky thing from out of space appeared, the Frankenbass and a guy was selling it about an
hour out of London for £175. And what was funny
is, Vince and I've known each other a very long time
The Frankenbass
and he's always been a hero to me, really, and so
when I saw it, I sent him a picture and said, here,
Vince, what do you think of this because we'd
recently been talking about me picking up a double
bass? This was before I moved back home and he
was like, wow, I don't know what that thing is, but,
you know, screw it, for £175, get it? It's going to be
like a training wheel.

BiTS: I take it that it's got a wooden fingerboard
and the rest of it is metal or something like that, is
it?

SL: Yeah. So basically, what it is, is this guy who was
selling it, he's the second owner, but he was telling
me the story of it is that it used to be a real double
bass, but it fell out the back of a lorry, apparently, or
the van, or whatever, and so the only thing that was
salvageable was the neck, which is a beautiful neck.
I think it's an old classical neck. It's stunning. Lovely
instrument. And the original owner, his dad, I
believe, was a welder and he went, well, we can do something with that. So he welded this
climbing frame and attached the neck to it and the crazy thing is, considering it something that
hasn't got a body, it's the bassiest thing you've ever heard. It's mental.

BiTS: And you can only play it, of course, through an amplifier, I guess.

SL: Yeah, yeah. I mean you can, obviously you can practise acoustic with it, but you don't get the
kind of, the bass-y feeling from it. So it's better to plug it in much to my family's annoyance when
I’m there bashing away at it.

BiTS: Now I gather that you're going or planning to go to the USA later on this year, is that right?

SL: Yeah. So Vince and I are going back to California again for a month this time. We went for
three weeks last time, and we feel like we struggled to fit it all in because we were going from