Stephen Bruner isn’t just a bass player – he’s a whole way of approaching life, built on a philosophy somehow espoused in the TV cartoon whose name he has adopted.
Having spent his teens and 20s playing bass with Snoop Dogg, Erykah Badu, and Suicidal Tendencies, Thundercat's breakout moment came via an appearance on Flying Lotus’ 2010 masterpiece, Cosmogramma.
He followed up with four solo albums: 2011’s Golden Age of Apocalypse, 2013’s Apocalypse, 2017’s Drunk and It Is What It Is, released in 2018.
“On the first two albums, there were lots of instrumentals, and I was trying to convey ideas that way,” Thundercat told Bass Player. “Now songwriting has taken a front seat.”
A pivotal role on Kamasi Washington’s The Epic, as well as the Grammy he took home for a collaboration with Kendrick Lamar, plus a support slot with the Red Hot Chili Peppers has brought Thundercat a whole new level of attention.
“Everything got crazy. I needed some sort of buffer, so I even changed my number. I looked at it like self-preservation: just trying to stay focused.”
Needless to say, his bass tone is gigantic, with a search for the perfect set-up culminating in a highly-customised Ibanez 6-string/8-string double-neck bass guitar, built in 2015.
“It’s got this Pink Floyd-ish tone that’s really open – it rings out because there’s the 6-string on top and an 8-string on the bottom. I wanted to go for that vintage P-Bass sound, but there’s hardly any lacquer on the wood, and it’s like this open ‘baaaaang!’ It’s pretty funky; it has its own life.”
Both necks are five-piece maple/bubinga with maple fingerboards, and the body consists of a spalted maple top, ash middle, and mahogany back wings.
The preamp is an Ibanez EQ; the controls include a 3-way toggle (for the neck selector switch) and two 3-way toggles (for Aguilar 6P-60 P-Bass pickups on the 6 and Seymour Duncan NYC humbuckers on the 8). It's strung with a mix of La Bella RX and SN nickel strings.
“Weirdly enough, I wind up playing it at really big shows, like when I did the Hollywood Bowl with Michael McDonald. It’s so specific. The first time I played it was in London, and it was intimidating – it sounded so open that I was trying to bring it back. But I figured out over the course of the show that it’s just something you have to embrace for what it is. I love it to death.”
Created by Ibanez’s L.A. Custom Shop in 2012, Thundercat’s main axe is a highly customized Ibanez Artcore 6-string. It’s a neck-through with a maple top and back, five-piece maple/jatoba neck, rosewood fingerboard, Graph Tech Ghost Modular MIDI pickup system with a Quickswitch, and custom EMG-HZ pickups.
The controls include master volume, tone, piezo volume, volume for the MIDI system, a 3-way Les Paul-style switch, and a dark/mids switch. “I remember the custom shop saying to me ‘What in the world are you asking?’
“At first, to be honest with you, I didn’t know what it meant to have a fully hollowbody bass of this calibre, with the amount of tension and stress that it would require. I thought the wood might not allow it, or that I could run into a lot of issues with intonation, because of how heavy the strings are and the way the weather changes and stuff like that.
“Experimenting with what it can be is part of the excitement of what it is, with the acoustic part and the piezo saddle and all that stuff. It can do so many different tones that I enjoy very much. It can be like a big gigantic P-Bass. It sticks with me and it’s a joy to play.”
As for amps, he goes for a solid option. “The Aguilar DB 750 with two 4x10s – that’s the one. Aguilar’s stuff is known for being really powerful, and that’s what I need onstage.
“People are telling me to turn down, and I’m like, ‘No! I’m trying to burn down the stage. That’s the whole point!’”
