GEAR
YAMAHA BBPH Peter Hook
YAMAHA www.yamaha.com
Our Ed gets an exclusive first look at Hooky’s new, strictly limited-edition Yamaha BB
£1129
Few bass players have evolved their tone quite as radically, or as successfully, as Peter Hook, whose early music with Joy Division and later recordings with New Order featured him at front and centre. The upper register is where he’s made his mark, with all those classic lines from ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and beyond making up a significant legacy in our world, most of which were delivered on Yamaha BB models. This new signature BBPH has been a long time coming, and now it’s finally here, we’re the first reviewers to put it through its paces. Let’s plug in, stamp on a battered old chorus pedal, adopt Hooky’s trademark wide-legged stance, and give it a go...
Build Quality
Pick the BB up and all sorts of interesting contradictions are immediately obvious. The BB shape is old enough by now to look traditional, even classic, but Yamaha and Hook have evidently put their heads together with the aim of supercharging the design for the demands of the modern day. Flip it over and you’ll find a six-bolt neck join with the final two bolts angled in for extra strength; at the end of the body you’ll see a funky little chamfered face where the strings exit the body. These touches add a very modern sheen to this resolutely trad bass design, which ties in with the superpowered preamp that we’ll come to in a minute.