For Khruangbin’s Laura Lee Ochoa, owning a Fender bass guitar had always felt aspirational. “When I started playing bass, I wanted a Fender, because that’s the cool brand,” she says in the new issue of Guitar World.
“It was the brand I always sort of idolized as somebody who wanted to be in a band but was never in a band.” However, when it came to buying her first bass, Ochoa opted for something a bit more budget-friendly, and it's an instrument that she still uses to this very day.
“Mark [Speer, Khruangbin’s guitarist] helped me get my first bass, which was a knockoff Fender, which is what I’ve been playing for the history of Khruangbin,” she explains. “It’s something that looked and felt like a Fender but was something I could afford at that point.”
Fast forward to 2025, and Ochoa and Speer have collaborated with Fender on their own signature bass and guitar (respectively), which are essentially near replicas of the road-worn models the two have used for years.
“What’s so wild is that now I have a signature model, essentially based off of a knockoff Fender!” she notes. Indeed, much like her original model, Ochoa's signature Jazz bass is equipped with DiMarzio Ultra Jazz pickups that capture her distinct tone, vintage-style concentric volume/tone knobs, a custom “U”-shape neck with a rosewood fretboard, and 21 jumbo frets.
“The electronics that came on that knockoff bass, they just kind of died,” Speer explains as she discusses these modifications. “The pots just got worn out, so we decided to get that because, honestly, the stacked concentric knobs looked really cool.
“It’s actually a throwback. I think Fender built them like this for maybe a couple years, and that was it. But they look really cool, and they seem really functional, because now you have more options as to how you want to shape the tone of those pickups.”
In more recent Khruangbin news, Ochoa also revealed that the signature bass comes fully equipped with a little hack she’s picked up along the way to ensure a buzz-free bass tone.
For more from Khruangbin, plus new interviews with Kiki Wong and Billy Corgan, pick up issue 595 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.
