Sadowsky Will Lee Signature Bass Guitar

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The story behind the Sadowsky Will Lee Signature Bass Guitar

Back in the 70’s and 80’s, New York City was a Mecca for the music recording studio business, as well as for music merchandising and live performance venues. It was a cultural candy store. Because the studios were situated in such a concentrated area, most within a few blocks of each other, it was possible to do 3 to 7 sessions a day, if you were part of the scene.

Naturally, that meant a couple of things: you needed to have your instrument in great condition, and beyond that, it made you want to do even better work. Because of putting all those hours in, you really got to know your instrument. It was with you every hour of every day. You knew it and its powers and limitations, and it knew you! 

To keep it in great shape, pro maintenance was required. I first heard about Roger Sadowsky from NYC studio guitarist/producer Craig Snyder. Roger was the guy to go to for neck alignment, fret jobs, replacement parts and electronics- and he was FAST. 

Electric bass was still a fairly new instrument and Roger was branching out from working as an acoustic guitar craftsman to a guy who would listen to us electric bassists and help us figure out what we needed (he’s the best listener and interpreter of “bass speak” you can imagine).

With all of his combined skills, Roger could listen carefully to what you were attempting to express as to what you needed or wanted your instrument to do, ask a few questions, and then take action that resulted in big smiles!

After a while, he started to install an active, battery-powered preamp that made all of us competitive players very happy. Suddenly, your instrument was on steroids. The Sadowsky preamp boosted the high end to new heights, the bottom end to new lows, and the volume to new levels. Now we very much had the edge, as our frequency range had been expanded and we could really shine within a track. After all, we were competing with, not only other players, but synthesizers were taking over the bass world!

Then, at some point, Roger started building his own instruments and Sadowsky Guitars was born. In his usual hands-on style, he and his small staff began turning out some gorgeous, irresistible bass instruments, complete with built-in preamp.

The WL Signature Bass is conceived 

Through the years I had dabbled in a few close relationships with other bass companies, some of them attempting to do a signature model, but I kept comparing their products  to Roger’s work, “What would Roger do?” The “WWRD” phrase was still echoing in my head the very day Roger reached out to me to say “I’ve never done a signature bass but I want to do a Will Lee model. Interested? Do you want to talk about it?” Well, I knew if I talked, Roger would listen so naturally, I jumped at this opportunity! 

We got busy. Me with my usual “Can the measurement at the nut be like Jaco’s bass?” And Roger jumping right into the conversation with, “OK, so it’s a 1.45” measurement”. 

My biggest desire, based on all my experience with trying to force outboard EQ’s and even amps to give me more midrange boost was to see if we could develop a special preamp for this proposed model that would do the job and turn the WL Signature bass into the “Everything Bass”! Roger agreed to it and got right to work developing various versions of midrange-boosting preamps that would sound natural to me while various midrange frequencies were boosted. I would say things like “It doesn’t sound like me”, so he’d keep going back and experimenting further. I was a big fan of pushing 500hz and once we nailed it to my satisfaction, Roger was smart enough to take it one step further and add in other midrange options so that this bass would have universal appeal to all serious players. As a result a super sophisticated system was born that’s made me and so many other players happy ever since!

Back to the story

My last question for the Signature model was “Can it have a 24 fret neck (two octaves)?” Not that I would be the player using that feature most, but this instrument needed to be one that was versatile in a way that all players would want to play one.

We settled for a 22-fret neck for balance reasons and in order to accommodate the neck pickup’s needing to be in a standard location and keep things balanced.

Over the years, I’d tried many other signature basses and they were either designed by outstanding players and were too specifically personalized to their style (and hands) or they were normal production models with a famous name attached to the product. This is neither of those. It’s a very versatile, meat-and-potatoes instrument, made to cover a wide range of styles. “Like all Sadowsky’s, the WL Signature basses are not only versatile, but roadworthy, reliable, and beautiful. The bodies come in a variety of woods & beautiful finishes and the necks are always perfect!”

Roger’s comments to the story:

I tried for years to give Will more punch via wood choices and pickups, all to no avail.  I then asked him to use a parametric EQ and tell me what boosted frequencies gave him what he wanted to hear.  Will replied with 500hz.  Not to get too technical, but the Sadowsky preamp is a transistor-based circuit and you cannot boost mids without affecting the treble and bass response.  So I had some sample 3 band op-amp circuits made and with every one Will tried, he replied “It does not sound like my bass”.  So the answer was to piggyback a separate mid boost circuit on top of my transistor treble/bass circuit and the Will Lee Preamp was born.