Jonas Hellborg: Vanishing Act

Once he began releasing solo albums, and especially upon working with McLaughlin—his “guru”—and continuing in that collaborative spirit with the late Shawn Lane, Jonas began receiving the kind of accolades deserving of musicians with unique voices. But after more than a dozen bass solo albums and numerous high-flying collaborations, Jonas never became a “bass hero,” nor did he ever want to be. Instead, his legendary focus turned to a serious study of how bass sound is constructed, how it works, and what he could do to bring his dream of a fully realized bass signal path into reality. Years of study and work have culminated in a complete line of custom products. This is way beyond a signature instrument—we’re talking complete amplifier circuitry, down to the last capacitor, with practically every detail created and approved by Hellborg himself. The man is nothing if not intense in his drive to be completely original.
 But it’s not about him. None of this is. In his view, “Hellborg” is only a vehicle, the latest link in a chain of collective consciousness about bass guitar, about music, and even about humanity. His study of Eastern music goes hand in hand with Eastern philosophy: Everything is connected and as one, all of life. So to hold Jonas Hellborg up as a “bass hero,” or someone fundamentally different from us or above us, somehow misses or muddies that key point in where he’s coming from. Yet as students of bass and music, we grasp for the distinctions that make the understanding of someone as deep as Jonas Hellborg possible. And there’s the paradox: He’s one of us, yet he stands apart and has something unique to offer.

As you have gravitated more toward Indian music, what has changed about your playing style and your tone compared to when you first arrived on the jazz scene?
Indian music has been with me since the beginning. Being a little hippie boy, I was fascinated with the sounds of [sitar virtuoso] Ravi Shankar and [master tabla player] Alla Rakha. Then with Mahavishnu, as well as McLaughlin’s Shakti group, that connection was reinforced. Through the years I picked up more and more of the Indian stuff, so my playing style has always been a bit “Indian.” If you listen to my early slap stuff it owes more to tabla than to Larry Graham. Most of these early influences were North Indian, or Hindustani, rather than South Indian, or Carnatic. Then [in the mid ’90s] I met and started working with percussionist V. Selvaganesh. He is from the greatest Carnatic percussion family, and he opened the world of South Indian music for me. I am not exclusively influenced by South Indian music, but it has a slight dominance in my expression.

There are two aspects of all Indian music that are very important for a Western musician to study: the rhythmical discipline, and the concept of melody and ornamentation. These are much more developed than anything we have in the West. But playing Western classical music is as influential in shaping my tone—even more, maybe. The concept of tone creation is immense in the Western classical world: how to shape a single note to create a beautiful world of its own.

What is most fulfilling to you about the mixture of South Indian and modern jazz fusion on your recent releases?
I do not recognize the boundaries between musics—the plural of music. There is actually only music, singular. Limitation as created by recognizing borders is not for me. Instead you have sources of infinite possibilities, and once a possibility becomes part of one musical expression, I no longer know—or at least do not dwell on—where one specific musical expression originated. Now it’s mine, or at least is reflected in the musical mirror that I am. It stirs my emotion and, I hope, the emotions of whoever might be listening.

Your 2005 album Kali’s Son contains more “bass feature” moments than its predecessor, Icon [Bardo, 2002]. What’s behind that, if anything?
I approach music as a totality and position myself where it best serves the music as I see it. If I make you hear the guitar by the way I frame it with my bass playing, that’s as much me playing the music as it is when my playing is “featured”—by soloing, or whatever else. I step into music and experience, and at that moment I lose my sense of me; I am the totality of whatever the music wants to be.

In the track “Escape” from Icon, it sounds like you’re trading solo breaks with the tabla player. Some of the rhythms are extremely complex and fast. How did you develop your technique to the point where you could keep up with the frenetic pace of some Indian melodies and tempos?
I believe that if you can hear it, you can play it—just as when you understand the fine points of a language, you can express yourself with it. If I “hear” it in my mind, speed is not an issue; my body will obey.

What advice do you have for players who want to emulate what you do musically?
Don’t! Be yourself. That is the only thing you could, with a lot of work, ever hope to be. Even for me, it’s hard to be me. Why would anyone else try?

You have a distinctive bass sound—but you also have many different sounds at your disposal. How do you choose what sounds to use for different kinds of music?
If my girlfriend’s ear is next to my lips, I will whisper. If my friend is on the other side of the river, I will shout.

Has your view of bass tone evolved over the years?
Yes and no. My tone has always had its idealized “target” somewhere between classical guitar and cello, but in a bass register. There is a sound that is me, in my vision in my head. The representation of that in the “real” world has developed with the improvements that I have been able to achieve in my cooperation with instrument builders, sound engineers, electronics engineers, and string makers over my musical life. Also, there is no one bass tone. Everything relates to who is playing, where, with whom, with what, why, for whom.

How does tone impact your musicality overall?
There is no distinction. Music starts with one Sound. Before you play two notes, you have to play one. That one note has to sound. The tone of it is all. That is music. If you cannot produce one great-sounding note—whatever the individual definition of “great-sounding” is—it all stops there and then.

What is most important to you in choosing an instrument?
A great instrument is the one that disappears totally from your awareness—the one that links the sound in you to the sound in the air, the instrument that is so integrated that it becomes part of you. Most of the time these instruments are hard to play. You have to work on that integration. But they have to have the capacity to deliver.

My current bass [Warwick Signature model] addresses a lot of the issues I have been working on. In short, the body shape of an acoustic [hollowbody] bass creates, for me at least, a much more relaxed natural body position and spares me from back problems. The pickup we have developed is passive and full-range, all the way up to 20kHz. This gives it a much more beautiful tone, and it also has a wider dynamic range than normal bass pickups. I also want one pickup that can handle all the sounds I want to play. When you mix two pickups, you have phase interference between the two that muddies up the sound. Also, when you place it like I do, really close to the bridge, you have a speed of attack in the sound that I like very much. There is a clarity in fast runs.

Many bassists work with manufacturers to create signature instruments, but very few work to create signature amplifiers. What inspired you to do so with an amplifier?
Because nobody so far has done a bass amp with the quality I think is required. Most bass players who have recorded in world-class recording studios know that if you plug into a Neve desk and listen back through the big monitors, the bass sounds wonderful. Or if you use a great mic preamp followed by a Pultec EQ, or … lots of wonderful pieces of great gear in recording studios produce wonderful bass sounds. But the high-end sound you get in the studio has not been available live. It has to do with what’s in the preamp, and the way the power amp is constructed, and the speakers. Try playing your favorite CD through a regular bass amp and you’ll hear how shitty it sounds. I believe a bass amp has to be audiophile quality. That’s what we did.

How involved were you with the engineering details?
I was involved 100 percent—down to the type of capacitors, brands of ICs, switches, and circuits. Everything. I designed it.

What do you look for in an amplifier’s preamp vs. a bass guitar’s onboard preamp?
“Onboard electronics” is not possible, because you have to run them on batteries, which means you cannot get the voltage and battery time required to run anything that sounds halfway decent. Primarily, a preamp needs enough headroom to deal with the extreme dynamics that a bass guitar can produce, between heavy energy-producing low notes and super-intense slap transients. Also, you need a very clean signal path of audiophile quality. If it has an EQ section, it has to be of the same quality you find in high-end recording consoles, or you will immediately limit your tonal expression to what the EQ can handle—meaning that whatever you play will sound like that amp and not like you.

How do you approach EQ, both in an amplifier and onboard a bass guitar?
Ideally you leave it flat. EQ is for fixing problems, and ideally you sound great, your strings sound great, your pickup is great, your preamp is great, your power amp is great, your speaker is great. No need for EQ! If you need to adjust something, it has to be of great quality, which so far has not ever happened on a regular bass amp.

What do you look for a speaker cabinet to do for you, ideally?
Deliver the sound without interfering. Loudly, if need be.

Tell us about your custom cabinets.
They were done by Paul Cork, an engineer at Celestion. We tried a number of solutions to come up with four cabinets that, in combination, can work in a bunch of different environments. I’ve always found that the best result is in huge studio monitors designed for flat response using coaxial speakers for phase accuracy. So what we call the Hellborg Big Cab [a custom 2x15] is basically that. Anybody who has played with a guitarist flooding you with distorted guitar from multiple 4x12 cabs knows that a 4x10 can’t compete. There is presence in a 12” driver that is just so much more pleasant. The Hellborg Hi Cab [a custom 2x12], loaded with special speakers with so-called “whizzer cones,” in combination with the Big Cab, is really the bass player’s antidote for guitar players with huge stacks.

What is your overall philosophy of bass tone?
I think I covered it already—there is no one “bass.” There are as many “basses” as there are humans playing that instrument. And the tone is the expression of that individual’s existence. Jaco’s tone is Jaco, Stanley’s is Stanley, and so on. Mine is me, and it’s there from the beginning, fighting for its existence. But you have to fight for it.

When a kid walks up to a piano and hits a key, the sensation is first of hearing a sound coming from the thing, the piano. With more playing you become the one producing the sound, and the piano gradually disappears. But that original fascination with the one note is where your identity in sound exists, so playing and dealing with that one note is where you find your voice, your tone. But it is in you; it comes out in your body learning to adapt to the mechanical device—strings on a slab of wood—that you are trying to dominate. You cannot do it with effects, pickups, amps, and all. All that stuff just has to be of adequate quality so as not to get in your way. So, tone, over sound, equals you.

What advice do you have for players trying to create their own distinctive bass sound and employ it in their own music?
Listen.

What do you think the future of bass sound and tone will be?
A few million different ones.

What does the future hold for you?
 I have no crystal ball. I don’t even know what I am doing tomorrow. Most of the time I don’t plan when and where to travel, don’t want to book gigs months in advance, can never set a deadline for a recording. I enjoy letting life unfold as it wants to. That isn’t a very practical approach, and it’s highly frustrating for a lot of associates. But it is very rewarding.

Of His Own Making - Jonas Hellborg’s Complete Gear Setup

Befitting of someone who has given as much thought to music and musical equipment as has Jonas Hellborg, practically everything he currently uses has been custom-designed in collaboration with Warwick. “All my basses are reincarnations born from the same vision I had for a very long time,” says Jonas. “Every step is an improvement.” That vision was of the single-passive-pickup, hollowbody archtop instrument now reflected in his Warwick signature bass. But before he had his current custom axe, Jonas worked with a variety of bass guitar companies (Aria, Wal, Wechter, and Status, to name four of eight!) to embody his vision as best he could. Even his strings, a custom line of DR Signatures, are ten years in the making; they’ll soon be available to the masses. Clearly, for Hellborg, this is a life-long project.

Then, of course, there are his custom Warwick amplifiers and speaker cabinets. For live reinforcement, he uses the Warwick Hellborg Preamp into two 500-watt Warwick Hellborg mono power amps. One power amp goes to a “Hellborg Big Cab,” a 2x15 full-range (40Hz-20kHz) direct radiating bandpass cabinet, while the other goes to a “Hellborg Hi Cab,” a 2x12 bass reflex cabinet. For recording, he simply uses the Hellborg Preamp’s transformer-balanced DI output.

As for effects, he just got a special-made Cry Baby wah pedal from Dunlop, and sometimes he reaches for a DigiTech JamMan, but nothing more on a regular basis. One can only imagine what Hellborg could come up with if he started doing signature bass effect pedals . . . .