Me and my bass guitar: Alex 'V-Man' Venturella (Slipknot)

With his identity now confirmed, V-Man gives TG a world-first tour of his Status S2 Graphite headless bass!

Build

"It's A Status Graphite S2, made in Colchester, England. It has a graphite through-neck and an alder body with a walnut burl facing. It's not very metal, but I love it!"

Pickups

"I use the neck pickup only, and you have volume, blend, treble and bass. But this is the cool thing; it has a mid-boost and cut [switch], and then you just fine tune the frequency that you want. I have it on full, it's very punchy, sounds like a piano; very clear."

Fretboard

"One little feature I use when it gets really dark on stage and I can't see anything - it has little red LEDs on the sides. Then if I want to be fancy - it's a bit too much sometimes - I go full beam. I get a few dirty looks sometimes from people in the crowd!"

Tuning

"This is in drop B. This is a Series 2, but I have another one, a new shape called the Series-3, which has a sharper edge, and that's in drop A. I buy as many as possible, I just keep buying them. The rack's getting bigger and bigger, but if I was on a desert island it would be this guy! It just sounds amazing."

Neck

"I originally bought just the graphite necks from Rob at Status, and I'd put the graphite necks on Fender bodies. Then I saw his website and saw the rest of his basses, and he was like, 'I'll just send you one out'."