Michael Kelly Element CC4 Striped Ebony Bass Guitar

Michael Kelly Element CC 4 Striped Ebony Bass Guitar at Music Park in Perth

The Custom Collection Element 4 bass was designed for players who prefer a modernized take on a classic. The basic body lines might look familiar, but the MK designers took liberties to enhance comfort and playability. You can select from three different top woods, each accented with black hardware. What makes this bass special is far deeper than the striking appearance. We carefully selected each detail and spec to deliver a great bass for stage or studio.

The impact of a bridge on the performance of a bass guitar is something that many often underestimate. In fact, the bridge is key to many aspects of tone and we gave it the full respect that it deserved. You will see that we used a solid molded bridge with tight slots for each fully-adjustable saddle, a big enhancement on its own. We, however, took that further. Below that bridge is an aluminum tone block. We add that hidden block to add sustain and attack. Since it is aluminum, it does not add weight to the bass, but has a similar sonic impact to using a heavy bridge. We call this bridge-and-internal-block combination the MK Stealth Attack Bridge System.

The pickups, controls, and electronics are another area where we did extensive testing and enhancements to get a great result. The pickups were developed specifically for the MK Element bass line by Rockfield and they have an over-wound classic pickup sonic performance. We blend that with our newly-developed Element Active Circuit that has been carefully tweaked to provide a modern sonic profile.

Also key to our design was allowing excellent user customization potential using the onboard controls. Those controls include offering you a stacked tone pot with separate treble and bass controls. There is also a blend via a blend knob to sweep from one pickup to the other or varying degrees of each. Also included is a bypass switch allowing you to go from active to a very vintage passive tone with a quick click.

Finally, to add to the comfort of this bass we built it using Red Cedar. This wood from the mahogany family is a great tonewood that allowed us to deliver the powerful sound that we were committed to. However it is a lighter weight wood which allowed us to reduce the overall instrument weight. This was something that had been requested by players and the careful combination of the woods and other design aspects makes the Custom Collection Element bass especially comfortable to play.

There are many important aspects of the Custom Collection Element bass that you will want to see. 

We combine an upgraded die-cast bridge with a hidden aluminum tone block creating the Stealth Attack Bridge System. The combination delivers increased sonic performance including added sustain and attack.

An aluminum tone block is fitted snugly into a cavity in the bass body. The MK bridge is fastened to the tone block and body creating a fully integrated system.

Music Park in Perth Western Australia carry a range of Michael Kelly guitars and basses