Khruangbin’s low-end chill merchant gets a signature instrument that plays like a Jazz Bass best-of.
Laura Lee Ochoa (you may know her by her alter ego, Leezy) is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated band Khruangbin, which is Thai for “airplane.” Khruangbin’s music is fresh and inspired, blurring genres including American soul, Iranian pop, surf, psychedelic, and dub, and creating infectious tunes within that stylistic range. The bass is a prominent part of the trio’s sound and groove. Laura Lee’s go-to 4-string for a number of years was an inexpensive SX-branded Jazz Bass copy. She admitted to playing the bass out of financial necessity. But like their namesake, Khruangbin and Laura Lee have been soaring in recent years. The same could be said of her new Fender signature Jazz Bass.
Prepare for Takeoff
When I laid eyes on the Laura Lee Jazz Bass, I was a bit wonderstruck. What’s special about it? At first glance, oh, just … everything. There is vintage drip, it feels comfortably familiar, and the instrument ticks a lot of boxes that many players would put on a perfect-Jazz Bass wish list. There’s a few surprises, too. If the bass had a “like” button, I would still be pressing it repeatedly.
Much like Laura Lee’s band, exploration within a framework sums up the Limited Edition Laura Lee Jazz bass beautifully. The recipe is so simple, really: start with a legendary, proven design and sweeten with a few unique-yet-familiar components. There is nothing on this bass you would label as new or revolutionary. Instead, it works like a time portal to different, probably more chill, and definitely hipper eras with modern refinements to smooth the ride—a little like a vintage sports car with a newer engine.
Vintage Vibes If You P(Leezy)
The Laura Lee Jazz Bass’ offset body is alder and finished in gloss polyester vintage white that looks like olympic white yellowed to a buttery aged hue. The neck is maple (skunk striped, for those scoring at home) with a rosewood fretboard and a synthetic bone nut. The neck’s gloss urethane finish is smooth and silky, and the custom “U” shape feels super comfortable, giving the sense that the bass is holding your hand and guiding you along rather than the other way around. The instrument is well built, and the Ensenada factory did a fantastic job on the rock-solid neck joint. There really isn’t a single flaw.
“The Jazz Bass/flatwound playing experience is like finding an available downtown parking spot for free—leaving me asking, “Why can’t every day be like this?”
Let’s talk about ashtrays for a moment. The chrome pickup covers got their nickname for their resemblance to cigarette-butt snuffers. Some players absolutely hate them, citing limitations to playing style and hand position. Aesthetically, I love them. Few features bring the vintage vibe like ashtrays. Laura Lee, however, enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the ashtrays, which shapes her tone significantly. Instead of looking at ashtrays as restricting, Leezy says the limited hand positions are inspiring, forcing her to think less about her picking hand and more on the melodic potential of her fretting hand. Playing between the covers delivers many cool tone variations, from pointed and percussive aft of the middle cover to Leezy’s signature “peanut butter” tone when you pick on the neck side of the cover.
The Laura Lee Jazz Bass comes with flatwound strings, and all I can say about that is “damn right.” Why should the Precision Basses and hollowbodies have all the fun? Flats on a Jazz bass are nothing new. But for me, the Jazz Bass/flatwound playing experience is like finding an available downtown parking spot for free—leaving me asking, “Why can’t every day be like this?” Flats bring a warm and welcome twist to the Jazz Bass formula.
Amped and Airborne
When I plugged the Laura Lee into an Ampeg Micro stack. The first thing I noticed and appreciated was what I didn’t hear: hum. The quiet performance is thanks to the DiMarzio Ultra Jazz noiseless pickups (and, by the way, if you really want to take off those ashtrays, the pickups feature cool aged-white covers to match the finish). The concentric stacked volume/tone knobs are an added bonus.
It takes minimal effort to get great sounds from the Laura Lee Jazz Bass. With both pickups on full volume and the tone set to 50 percent on the neck and 100 percent on the bridge, I found my sweet spot. This sound was thick-yet-defined and pulsing with vibe. With the ashtrays dictating my hand position, that tone setup could be smooth and subtle on the neck side and more direct on the bridge side. If you don’t like the constraints of the ashtrays, though, you simply remove two screws to take them off, and playing right over the neck pickup yields lots of rich sounds.
Many of the Laura Lee’s other tone varieties are equally compelling. I really liked the murkiness of the neck pickup solo’d with tone at zero. Bump the tone up to 25 percent and the neck pickup output becomes studio-worthy. Adding the bridge pickup beautifully brightens the picture. I may not be a big fan of the bridge-pickup-only approach on this instrument, but plenty of players will find a place for its punch in their universe.
The Verdict
If you asked me to build a vintage Jazz Bass from scratch before I played the Laura Lee, I might have gone a different route, then played this bass and been mad at my choices. From the oversized ’70s logo to the jumbo frets to the oh-so-comfortable neck, I think this bass is amazing. Yes, it’s a collection of parts from across decades, but they work in harmony. This bass took me to a place I didn’t know I needed. It’s an instrument that instantly inspires, and that is the mark of something special.
Fat envelope and wah sounds are made even wilder with the help of an expansive octave effect that can be used in tandem or independently from the filter.
For those that haven’t delved too deeply into the subject or the sounds, envelope filters can seem a little loaded, stylistically speaking. Used well, they add bounce, joy, or even menace to a guitar or bass. Used wrong, they sound horribly corny. Used unconventionally, though, they can radically reshape guitar tones in surprising ways. Leveraging how they reshape tone with picking dynamics, for instance, is a great way to bust out of a box. They also pair well with distortion, fuzz, delays, modulation, and more (though if you aren’t willing to dig for gold in these combinations the results can confound at first).
Tsakalis Phonkify X FINAL VIDEO
The Tsakalis Phonkify X, an evolution of the original Tsakalis Phonkify, is, in part, a great envelope filter for the way it smooths the path to the outer edges of the effect’s potential. It’s got great range, which is enhanced by effective mix, gain, frequency, and Q controls. Using those controls together in the right combinations also makes the Phonkify X sound fat where other envelope filters can sound narrow, thin, and not terribly nuanced. (An internal voltage doubler that increases headroom is another contributing factor.) And with an octave section that can span corpulent and piercing regions of the sound spectrum—and be used independently or with the filter—the Phonkify X is a trove of powerful, odd, and uncommon guitar sounds, and a true provocateur for those in a rut.
Clarity, Body, and Brawn
One of the Phonkify X’s great strengths is the extra mass and air in its range and how easy it is to find it. As far as envelope filters—which can be counterintuitive to many players the first time out—go, the Phonkify X is very forgiving and responsive. The same qualities make it a great pair for radical or merely fattened fuzz and drive tones. Sixties-type germanium fuzzes coax fiery Hendrix- and Ron Ashton-isms that you can also utilize in traditional sweeping wah fashion if you add an expression pedal to the mix. It also sounds amazing upstream from a dark smoky overdrive that can blunt the sharpest filter edges while adding ballast and attitude.The octave effect is great on its own, too, not least because you move between deep octave-down settings and reedy high tones.
The Verdict
The latter can be a bit cloying and full of digital artifacts in some applications, but when the low octave content is used to temper that tendency, or dial it out entirely, you can summon very organic, complex, and rich tones that can be made rumbling and earth shaking with distortion or drive, or reshape the pedal’s filtered tones if you add it back in the mix. (An additional switch also enables you to situate the octave before or after the filter.). Together, these two effects that blend so seamlessly are a formidable combo.
In some ways, it’s hard to know whether to categorize the Martin D Jr E StreetLegend as a backpack or travel guitar. After all, Martin still maintains the LX Little Martin line, which is marketed in very specific terms as a travel instrument. And the D Jr E’s size, which isn’t a whole lot smaller than my Martin 00-15, stretches the boundaries of that classification. But Martin definitely leans into the go-anywhere appeal of the D Jr E and its brethren in the new revamped Junior Series. If the soft case fits, wear it. Assuming it lives, at least partly, in that category, it is among the best sounding travel guitars I’ve ever played. Thanks to the all-solid spruce and sapele body construction, it possesses a warm, woody, and organic voice that is likely made richer by the new, longer 24.9" scale.
Stretching Travel Boundaries
Even apart from backpack-guitar-or-not classification questions, it must be a little tricky marketing the D Jr E StreetLegend. With its distressed finish, the StreetLegend version costs just less than 900 bucks, which, in inflationary times, might be a threshold that budget-conscious, small-guitar customers might be hard-pressed to cross. But if you broaden your expectations of what the D Jr E StreetLegend can be, the price looks less formidable, because it can definitely be a front-line, everyday instrument.
If you’ve spent any considerable time with Martins, the D Jr will feel familiar, and though its shrunken dreadnought body profile can be oddly disorienting, the longer, 24.9" scale (the previous Junior series guitars featured a 24" scale) is the same as full-sized Martin mainstays like the 000 and 00. At 1 3/4", the nut width matches the wider spec for the Martin OM, which lends the D Jr E fretboard a spacious, accommodating feel. I’d wager that more than a few players would identify the D Jr E as an instrument from Martin’s full-sized lines. Body aside, it just doesn’t feel small.
Like many guitars built in Martin’s Mexico factory, the D Jr E StreetLegend’s build quality is excellent. And though it doesn’t benefit from the nano-level attention to detail of an upmarket Nazareth-built guitar, you won’t see a trace of the hastily sanded bracing or sloppy fret dressing that mark many accessibly priced instruments. The rounded and beveled fretboard edges, which also highlight the very nice fretwork, give the D Jr E a comfortable, broken-in, and inviting feel. Our review guitar’s action was on the high side (though well within the bounds of acceptable), and though Martin didn’t include a hex wrench for adjusting the neck relief, there is room for adjustment there, as well as a break angle at the bridge that will permit shaving a few millimeters off if you want to adjust the action from that end of the string’s length.
“You won’t see a trace of the hastily sanded bracing or sloppy fret dressing that marks many accessibly priced instruments.”
It’s important to know that the D Jr E StreetLegend is not the only junior dreadnought in the line. And if you want to save 200 bucks you can opt for the natural finish D Jr E. That’s a good thing in more ways than one, because the distressed finish on the StreetLegend version is bound to be polarizing. Though the “wear” is patterned after instruments in Martin’s own museum, and identical to the pattern on the $2,500 D-18 StreetLegend, the effect is created on the D Jr E by dyeing the top and the almost uniform flatness in the distressed zone makes the faux finish damage less than convincing.
Boisterously Voiced
The D Jr E, like many small-body flattops, is strong in the midrange, which can generate brashness under really hard strumming, and if you use that technique exclusively, the bass can be a bit too boxy to offset the bright presence of the mids. If you suspect you have a heavy hand, it will pay to check how the guitar responds to your approach. A lighter touch definitely brings out the best in the D Jr E, and though there’s not much dynamic range in terms of headroom, it sounds awake and responsive to picking nuance.
The Martin E1 electronics and built-in tuner go a long way toward enhancing the utility of the D Jr E. The presence of any reasonably effective pickup and preamp would make the D Jr E very appealing to a gigging guitarist on the move. But the E-1 system is remarkably natural sounding for an affordable acoustic pickup and it can do a lot to round off sharp edges in the guitar’s treble spectrum when amplified and playing loud.
The Verdict
Though the effectiveness and appeal of the distressed StreetLegend finish will be a very personal matter, there is no denying the D Jr E’s strengths—most notably a great neck, solid woods, and responsiveness to a light touch. The extra 200 bucks you’ll pay for the StreetLegend finish makes the D Jr E seem more expensive than it should be, so it’s important to point out again that the more traditional natural finish model, at $699, will be much kinder to thy wallet and is priced more in line with comparable guitars in the liminal market space between travel, backpack, and merely small guitars. Given that, you should consider the value and design scores here on a sliding scale. But any small flattop that features all-solid-wood body construction, an OM’s wider nut width, a full scale, and fits in an overhead bin merits attention. Martin has, indeed, carved out a very interesting niche here.
A Canada-built, tastefully styled mini jumbo serves up comfort, a unique and expansive tone profile, and addictive playability.
Godin may be a Canadian company that skews modern in its design approach. But staring across the room at the new Godin Connaisseur MJ, glowing in soft spring sunlight, I kept thinking about two very classic American guitar companies. Martin and Rickenbacker are famous for very different things, and one of them rarely made acoustic instruments. But check out the Godin’s sunburst finish—it sure reminds me of Rickenbackerfireglo. The herringbone-patterned purling evokes that found on a D-28 as well as Rickenbacker’s checkerboard binding. The split-hexagon fretboard inlay? It conjures thoughts of aD-45, and Rickenbacker’s shark-fins. There are practical reasons that this Godin feels like an alternate-universe offspring from the two American companies—most notably the super-satisfying playability. Hermann Rorschach might have told me I’m more inclined to see and feel these likenesses in the Connaisseur MJ (I’m genuinely captivated by the beauty of Rickenbackers and Martins). But style is a big part of what sets the Connaisseur MJ apart, and you don’t need an inkblot test to know that the Godin Connaisseur MJ is a handsome, well-built, and fine-playing flattop. It’s a guitar that reveals its virtues quickly and easily.
Maple Leaf Rag
Consider another unorthodox melding of concepts: “mini” and “jumbo.” Obviously, they are a contradiction in terms. But as an acoustic guitar design guideline, the combination can yield pure gold. The jumbo in mini jumbo (MJ in Godin nomenclature) alludes to the body’s basic shape which, in its fluid curvaceousness, echoes Gibson’s SJ-200. But while the Connaisseur MJ isn’t a behemoth like the SJ-200, it’s not exactly mini either, and feels much more like a shapelier Martin OM. It’s a very comfortable profile that does much to alleviate the arm fatigue that can come from wrestling a dreadnought or genuinely jumbo jumbo.
At $2,499 the Canada-built Connaisseur MJ is Godin’s most expensive flattop by several hundred dollars. And at that price it has to tussle with giants like Martin, Gibson, and Taylor—all of whom sell very established and well-known models in a crowded market segment that most of us could call “getting expensive enough to hurt.” So, what distinguishes the Godin in a densely populated field? Well, it’s certainly pretty, and the melding of classic flattop design touchstones and contemporary styling moves achieves a unique, attractive result rather than an uncomfortable, incohesive mash up of influences.
Golden Glow
In the sonic sphere, theConnaisseur MJ exhibits many classic spruce-and-mahogany characteristics. The warm, concise fundamentals, sunset-hued, softly decaying overtones, and lack of brashness are all hallmarks of this tonewood combination. But the Godin definitely doesn’t live on the dusty, dry, and antique end of the mahogany-and-spruce spectrum. It’s alive and dynamic and responsive in ways you might even categorize as “modern,” and has ample headroom that leaves space for shifts in mood and intensity without shedding its essential voice. It’s easy to be struck by the Connaisseur MJ’s sparkle, especially when you use a light fingerstyle touch. But as I got to know the guitar, I grew to love the balance and resonance in the low end. I suspect that the mini jumbo body, and perhaps the 25.5" scale, have a lot to do with the Godin’s even, inviting voice and range. There is a beautiful combination of energy and air, even in the most softly plucked notes, and it’s easy to see how the extra expanse of spruce aft of the bridge might have a lot to do with how lively and rich the Godin sounds.
“The Godin definitely doesn’t live on the dusty, dry, antique end of the mahogany-and-spruce spectrum. It’s alive and dynamic and responsive in ways you might even categorize as ‘modern.’”
All the tone in the world doesn’t mean much if a guitar plays like a log. But the Connaisseur MJ shines in the playability realm. A few less-than-perfectly-dressed fret ends aside, the neck is addictively comfortable. If there’s a lot of Richard Thompson hammer-ons and pull-offs in your own playing vernacular, you’ll love the snappy touch responsiveness.
The Verdict
The biggest compliment I can offer the Connaisseur MJ is the considerable time I spent with it in a meditative musical state—thinking not about a review, just basking in its warm, sprightly resonance and inviting touch response. At $2,499, the Godin arguably offers more personality than a satin-finished instrument at the same price with a more famous name. It’s well built and feels like a guitar that’s in it for the long haul. And when it comes to tone and a pure playing experience, the Connaisseur MJ shines.
