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Interview
by Simon Berril January 20 / 1999
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No
one beleives me when i say i´ve got these well- known people coming
down here,” he said. Bass guitar players tend not to be household
names themselves, but when they start listing their credits everyone takes
notice. customers of Mike´s company, Iceni music, include John Giblin,
who has played with Simple minds, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins
among many others; Luis Jardim, who has worked with David bowie, Mick
Jagger, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, George Michael and Grace Jones;
Spy Austin, whoose credits include Boy George and the style council, and
Portuguese female player bass player Midus, who is currently in Tanita
Tikaram´s band. It´s not a bad list when you realise the company
has only been going about five years- and these are people who are prepared
to pay to use Iceni´s instruments. Unlike some of it´s competitors,
the company has a ”no giveaways” policy. ”we aim for the
real heavyweights and they will dip their hands in their pockets. It helps
them retain their position in the industry if they have a new and unique
sound”. Said Mike. He is a man whose background has prepared him
perfectly for the business of making bass guitars. Always interested in
music, he became aware at an early stage that guitars could be made to
sound different if they were made of different substances. An apprenticeship
at volvo and subsequent jobs in the motor industry, including a stint
at a company in Camebridge which worked with top formula one racing teams
added to his knowledge of the properties of different materials. His hobbies,
meanwhile, included electrical engineering and woodwork, and, when his
dream began to take shape, he enrolled himself on some business courses
to ensure he could cope with the financial and strategic side of things.
He knew he could build guitars because he had been doing it for a hobby
for some time, but about five years ago the bass business became serious.
Basses were chosen because they provided greater musical opportunities.
”there´s more you can do with a bass tonally,” said Mike.
”You can make instruments where you can go into a wider range which
gives modern bassists the opportunity to express them selves musically
even more. ”You can´t progress further with an electric guitar
-and Fender and Gibson have really got the lead guitar market tied up.”
Bass guitars are astonishingly varied. They can have four, five, six or
even 12 strings, can be made with or without frets depending on the player´s
preference and can be manufactured from a bewildering variety of materials.
The neck, for example, can be made of traditional wood or of carbon fibre.
The body of the bass, meanwhile, is usually built out of a selection of
different woods, some of them quite exotic and most of them stunningly
beautiful. Every material has what is known as an ADSR, explains Mike.
This represents its attack, delay, sustain and release value. Mahogany,
for example, has a slow release but long sustain providing a warm bassound
ideal for music like reggae. Ash and maple, on the other hand, give a
sharp attack but little sustain. Put the two types of wood together and
you have a bass with wide capabilities. Then there is the electronic enhancement
of the sound. Mike builds boxes of tricks into his basses that van dramatically
increase the instruments potential with extra resonances and effects.
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It all makes for an instrument with a distinctive sound which has been recognised by players and by the technical music press. Mike´s first bass, the Viceroy, won a favourable first review when it appeared on the scene three years ago. By good luckit appeared in the same magazine issue as an interview with John Giblin, who read about it and thought it sounded like the instrument he was looking for. ”He put us on to other people and it snowballed from there,” said Mike. ”He allowed us to use his name.” But already he realised that the instrument wasn´t perfect. ”It was about 90% there and the pricing was too high for someone to take a risk on,” he said. ”Now so many famous people are using our stuff we can dictate what we charge for them.” In response, Mike developed the Zoot bass, which has become an industry- wide hit. If you want one, it will cost you between £1400 and £3000- more if you have special requirements. But then each one is hand built, taking 106 hours to manufacture- and they look like works of art. ”It´s a functional item but it looks gorgeous, ” admits mike, emphasising that the really important thing id´s the sound. And of course the bottom line for Iceni is that, after going without holidays and a new car to set up the company with £1800 of his own money -banks are not keen to lend to new music industry ventures- Mike´s accountant now estimates the business is worth £250.000 and rising. ”We have never made a loss, not even in the first year of trading,” he said. Most of the instruments- as much as 90% go abroad. Iceni has distributors in Germany, the US, Sweden and singapore. The german connection has been particularly successful, bringing a reciprocal deal with amplifier manufacturer Tech to promote and distribute each others products. Tech is a major player in the industry -the third largest seller of amplifiers in the US -but was prepared to deal through a small company like Iceni in the UK purely because it liked the sound of its bass guitars through its own amps. The relationship has become so close that, on the advice of Iceni´s sales and marketing man Jay Cresswell, Tech has designed an amp and speaker combination specially for the UK. Launched last year it has already started to sell well. Now Iceni is moving into a new area. ”We are trying to become more commercial,” said Mike. ”You get to the stage where all the big players know about you and will either deal with you or not.” What is needed is a new, mass-market bass that ordinary non- proffesional players can afford. And Iceni have come up with it in the shape of the Zoot Standard four. To cut the price around the £800 mark they have had to go for elements of massproduction. The wooden parts of the instrument are to be made in a Derbyshire factory in which the company has a joint interest. Assembly, however, will be carried out in Essex and, if all goes well, a factory could be set up in Witham, creating several jobs and turning out about 40 basses a month. Already Mike employs two part-timers on the manufacturing side, with one of them set to go full-time soon. He is continuing to make the handbuilt basses and is developing a new model- the Iceni Boudica- and he firmly believes the standard four will not compromise Iceni´s reputation. ”There are lot of features on that instrument you would not expect in that price band,”said Mike. ”Virtually everything on that bass is to our own design, including the electronics, which are specially made for us in Korea. ”There is no reason why we should not do very well. We want to command 30% of the UK market and i think we´re going to achieve it. The competition have not got anything fresh or new out there.” |
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