owners
Reacter B5
960804
body timber: mahogany
body overlay: flamed maple
neck: mahogany and maple
fingerboard: Indian rosewood
owner: Christoph Navratil
owner’s story
This bass took almost 25 years to get to me. It was built in 1996 for Chris’s stocklist. I met Chris for the first time in the summer of 1997 during my first of countless holiday trips to Ireland. Chris was building his “new” workshop then and I got the chance of playing the bass in his old workshop. Thanks to my girlfriend Karin there is also a photo showing Chris and me in his workshop.
A few weeks after Chris’s passing in 2018, when I started gathering information for the website, I found a somehow faded-to-pink fivestring in Spain. I started negotiating but I couldn’t get a deal at first. During the first hard Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020, I saw that the bass was still available and in the meantime I found out that it’s that bass from the workshop back in 97. Anyway, the guy from Spain and I got a deal this time. Funny enough in the summer of 2020 a ticket to Vienna was less than shipping the bass, so I met with a very nice Spanish couple in the shadow of St. Stephens Cathedral for a coffee, pint of beer and a bass…
This one came quite basic with Citronic circuitry, two Kent Armstrong humbucker and Chris’ 5-way rotary switch. I changed the switch to a six-position toggle switch, moved the plug to the side and volume to the back. Holes filled with Yew from a branch of the Yew tree in my parent’s garden.
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