Bicycle - Old Black Man (Played on a fretless guitar and fretless bass.)

Song: Old Black Man
Band: Bicycle
This video was shot in a hallway above the recording studio. These are the actual instruments used in the studio recording.

Brought to the studio for this recording, the American made Stratocaster was constructed from 5 separate types of wood (Ash, Maple [Rock Maple and Ambrosia Maple], Walnut, Rosewood and Chestnut). A custom-made bone nut and Fender’s best hardware was used, along with highly sensitive Lace Sensor Chrome Dome pickups for added sustain and harmonics to compensate for the omission of the frets. Only one of these specially requested guitars have ever been made. It’s strung with flat-wound strings (47 - 10 gauge, tuned low to high C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#).

The bass 5-string fretless bass with active pickups is an unbranded Chinese instrument found on eBay. For the recording of ‘Old Black Man’ it was strung with flat-wound strings (110 - 50 gauge tuned low to high C#, F#, B, E, A). This particular tuning to match the guitar caused the heavy strings to have a very high tension gave the bass more attack and thump. A decision was made to continue recording other songs with this tuning on this bass but the strings were removed and replaced with lighter ones (110 -32 gauge).

The drum kit used is part of a Ludwig kit with Sabian hi-hat cymbals.