CLB Auction Stingray 5 H-H Translucent Black

[Strangeglow]

I reported this to ebay as soon as I saw it. I agree that there should be a special place in hell of people who pull this crap.

A quick way to check if it's a legit message or not is to log into your ebay account. If it's a real message, there'll be a copy in your inbox there.

jw

 

[Psycho Ward]

Southern exorcism time, take the jerk out and beat the devil out of him!

This has happened before, I got one after Dave bought that CLB Bongo a while back.

 

[Hellboy]

Hi all. This is my first post on the forum so I guess that it´s a proper thing to do to introduce myself. My name is Jan Hellman and I live in Stockholm, Sweden. I run a recording studio over here and I work as a freelance musician. I am also the person who won the eBay auction that this thread is all about. The transclusent black 20th anniversary 5-string Stingray signed by Mr. Tony Levin. She is a beauty indeed and we´ve had lots of fun these last 6 months. Fantastic instrument in every way.

I´ve had some Stingrays thru the years. I had one of the first ones a long time ago. It was dated march -76. In silver. Not seen many silver Stingrays around. I liked it alot but it got stolen unfortunately. Don´t leave instruments in cars, folks! I´ve also had a 5-string from late 80´s. The guy that had her before me had beaten her up pretty bad so I had to restore her. She had a maple neck and I stained the whole thing red. Even the fretboard. And I tuned her like the bass strings on a Chapman Stick (yes, I play Stick too). Ascending 5th´s with the thickest string closest to the ground. Good fun. I sold her when I found a 20th anniversary 4-string in a music store I was working in at that time. This was in -96 and that bass is the best bass I´ve ever owned. Very light weight and sounds absolutely fantastic. Will never part from her. I also have a fretless 4-string Stingray from -05 and I found a 30th anniversary 4-string a couple of months ago in Germany. So all in all I own 4 MusicMan basses, all Stingrays, as it is now and all of them except the frettless are anniversary models. That is more a coincident as this is nothing I have planned. But I do love the anniversary models.

I could not be more happy with the 5-string signed by Tony. It sounds great, it looks great and it feels great to play. I´ve always considered MusicMan basses being the most versitile and best sounding instruments on the market. LOTS of personality too! Just love them. It felt like christmas when the bass arrived at my door about 5 months ago. As you all know, pictures doesn´t really do most instruments justice so when I opened up the case and saw the bass "live" the first time, I was blown away. It´s indeed a first class instrument in every way and it looks soo much better in reality than on the pictures I and everyone else saw on eBay.

Don´t know if you guys remember but the auction, except from the instrument itself, also included strings, t-shirts, authographed CD´s and two concert tickets to the upcoming Peter Gabriel tour in Europe this last summer. I got a e-mail from Tony about a week after the bass had arrived and he thankt me for bidding on the bass and he also invited me to a PG concert of my choice and he also said that he perhaps could get me and my girlfriend backstage as well. Now this is abit embarrasing to admit. I´m 41 years old and I´ve worked with some rather well known people in my life so I don´t easily get star struck but when I got that e-mail from Tony, I turned into a 9-year old. I got nervous and I started to behave (more) strange. My girlfriend thought that I was more nuts than usual. She almost called for the guys in the white coats. I had never expected a personal e-mail from Tony. I talked to my girlfriend and since I had matters to attend in England, we decided to take a two week vacation in England during the summer. I wrote Tony and said that the concert at the Womad festival would suit our schedule fine if that was ok with him. And it was also the 25th anniversary of the Womad festival so that was good fun too since Gabriel was one of the people that originated Womad. So we took the boat from Denmark to Harwich in july and drove to the city of Bath, that is located rather close to the Womad festival. Bath is a beautiful city and it turned out that Tony stayed in Bath too so me, my girlfriend, Tony and Ged Lynch, Gabriels drummer, went out to dinner the night after we had arrived. Good fun. They could not have been nicer. Great folks, indeed. Ged is into dog sledge racing so we talked about dogs a great deal. And both me, my girlfriend and Tony rides Harleys. Much to talk about. One thing that really kracked me up was when Tony said that he has read pretty much everything by swedish author Henning Mankell. Don´t know if you guys are familiar with his work but he is a great writer indeed. Many of his books takes place in a rather small town in the southern parts of Sweden where Henning was born. The town is called Ystad and it was indeed good fun to hear Tony mention streets and places in Ystad as he had been there many times himself and knew the town by heart. But I guess that he had learned it all from Hennings books since Ystad is not the type of place musicians would visit. Ged and I are tea drinkers so we talked about tea for quite abit. He mentioned a tea blend that Peter Gabriel had found in a tea shop in Paris that was fantastic and I told him about this amazing tea shop that is located near where I live here in Stockholm and they make their own blends too. Tony and Ged adviced us to get Wellingtons for the festival the next day since it would be rather muddy out on the field where the festival was being held. Good advice indeed. I´ve never seen so much mud in my life. At least 20 - 30 centimeters of mud all over the place. The concert was fantastic! Best sounding concert ever and Tony´s bass sound is indeed world class. Not very surpricing perhaps. We had back stage passes so we got to see Peter Gabriel walking around, holding his son in hand. Fantastic evening in general and I was told that it was one of very few concerts they did that summer where it didn´t rain. We met Tony again the next day and had tea and coffe at his hotel and we also took some pictures. Derek had asked me to bring my bass to England so that he could get pictures of both mine and Tony´s basses. Tony said that he would do a session at Real World studios, Gabriels playground, the next day so he invited us to come out and visit him and to see the studio. That was good fun. That place is holy ground and I´ve seen pictures and read about it many times. Beautiful place located in Box outside Bath, out on the countryside. Surrounded by creeks and meadows. We got a guided tour of the studio and the surroundings and they actually had the same sound console in many of the studios, there are several, that I have in my studio. A SSL AWS900+. Again, not very surpricing perhaps since Gabriel owns Solid State Logic. We thanked Tony for some fantastic days, said bye and left the studio and I and my girfriend went down south to Cornwall.

So as things turned out, I did not only get a fantastic instrument when I won the auction, I got memories of a lifetime too. Ged sent me tea in the mail recently. That same tea Peter had found in Paris. It was indeed very nice and the name of the tea is "Marco Polo" and it´s made by a tea shop in Paris called Mariage Fréres. And one odd thing happend the other day. I and a friend had a beer and a chat last week and he had another friend with him that I´ve never met before. It turned out that his friend was Henning Mankells publisher and I started to laugh and told him about Tony and that Henning was one of Tony´s favorite authors. He, the publisher, called me up today and told me that he had a meeting with Henning yesterday evening and he had told him about Tony. Don´t really know how this happend but I have now much to my surprice a book written by Henning Mankell, dedicated to Tony by Henning, laying on my table. And I don´t know what to do with it.

The thing that got me interested in this auction, other than the instrument, was that it was such a good cause. A friend of mine´s daughter died because of kidney disease and research money is much needed indeed. Ernie Ball is such a great company and I would like to take the oportunity to thank Derek for how he handled everything around the auction and everyone else at Ernie Ball for making such great instruments. Fantastic indeed. Great thanks. I´ll try to attach some pics from this summer but some forums doesn´t work very well with Mac computers so I´ll see how this goes. Thank you all and take great care now. And sorry for this rather lengthy post.

Sincerely//Jan Hellman - Sweden

 

[scottbass71]

Jan welcome to the forum and thank you for the story it was fantastic
only thing is you out bidded me on that bass but the money went to a good cause so I am not worried.

Stick around its fun here

Scott

 

[Big Poppa]

Jan
it doesnt shock me that Tony was so gracious..he is a true gentleman and I am very very proud to have him in the family.
On a personal level on behalf of my family and the Casey Lee Ball Foundation I want to make sure that you know that we appreciate your support.

 

[KennethB]

That's some first post! Great stuff!!
Thanks for sharing, Jan....and welcome!

 

[Colin]

welcome Jan

 

[Rod Trussbroken]

Good reading Jan. Welcome to the Forum.

 

[DTG]

amazing amazing story.......

very rock and roll .....harley's and tea

just kidding,it is a great story

 

[Jim_F]

Jan, welcome to the forum.

Great story, thanks for taking the time to share.

And I agree - Henning Mankel is a great writer.

 

[Kirby]

Jan,

What a great post and great story! Thank you for taking the time to share the story and enjoy that beautiful bass! It has a history like no other now and for a great cause!

 

[bovinehost]

That was a rather impressive first post!

Thanks for the story and welcome to the forum. Stick around and have some fun with us if you can.

Tony is indeed quite a guy, and I understand your reaction. I used to do a lot of concert photography in the 70s and 80s and have met my fair share of 'famous' people, but being around Tony makes me feel like a little girl.

(I'm almost but not quite over it now.)

I'd love to see more photos!

Jack

 

[jaylegroove]

That's indeed a great+++ story. Welcome Jan, hope we'll read again from you soon.

 

[oli@bass]

What a great story! Thank you very much for writing it down!

 

[Quarter]

Great story, thanks for the post

 

[bassmonkey]

Welcome Jan.

Fantastic first post!

 

[timmy5strings]

That's an incredible story and you can't really put a price on that experience. Awesome stuff

 

[Jimmyb]

Great post Jan, thanks for sharing it.

Stick around and have fun!

 

[Derek]

Hi Jan,

Very glad you posted as I wanted you to meet the guys on here and maybe stay awhile.

Thanks again for your post and kind words! It was a pleasure working with you on this auction and getting to know you over a few e-mails.

From the get go Tony was very supportive of this auction! One phone call and he was completely happy to help, looking back he went way beyond the call of duty. Hats off to Tony! A true Gentleman!

Posting some more tidbits that you sent to us! Great studio and nice collection of MM's

Just wanted to show off, hope you do not mind!

Thanks

DB

 

[Derek]

Tips from the Master?