Jason Ralston’s history in the music industry has spanned over 30 years. Originally from San Diego, California, he started by playing in bands, then moved on to do studio work and doing live production. He discovered the Nordstrand brand on TalkBass.com.
In January of 2013, he became involved with Zane guitars and was hired to be their sales rep, one of the artist reps and head the R&D department over the bass department. In August of 2016, he was hired by Killer B guitars in the same positions of sales rep, artist rep and is involved in R&D of not only their basses but guitars too. The very first thing he did when hired was talk to the owner, Kevin Butts, about using Nordstrand pickups in their guitars and basses. Kevin took his advice and Nordstrand is now the primary pickups used in all Killer B basses being built from this point on.
Why Nordstrand? “Honestly, I love the tones they produce, the versatility of pickups available, they are American made so in the wiring for the pickups I know that tin is not mixed in with the copper wiring giving the pickups an inferior tone or quality, and I have not once, ever heard a bad thing from anyone concerning Nordstrand pickups. I was hoping to one day have a Nordstrand custom bass made with the Nordstrand pickups in it but just found out a few days ago that Carey is no longer taking bass orders. I am super bummed by this but understand his reasons.” (editors note: Carey will still be building when the mood and inspiration strikes. He is taking a break from building to order.)
“I have three P-style basses being built right now. 2 from Killer B and one from the previous company that I worked for, Zane Guitars. All of them will have the NP4A pickups in them. I signed Ronny Cates of the band CPR, who also used to be the bass player of Petra, to an endorsement deal with us and he now has his own signature series Killer B bass. It will have 2 Nordstrand Big Blades in it. He went with those off of my recommendation. I am also having one of his basses built for me as well and it will be identical to his and have the 2 Big Blades in it too. Then, the bass that is in production right now and that I should have in 2 weeks will have 2 Nordstrand Dual Coils in it. I have basses that will have the Nordstrand BigMan pickups in them that are scheduled to be built sometime later on and will be replacing my Music Man basses so within the next few months, I will actually have a few basses, all with different Nordstrand Pickups in them.”
Jason Ralston now resides in Sterling, Colorado. You can find Jason at www.killerbguitars.com
