Sharon Renold

The story begins with a direct message. RKM reached out to Sharon on Instagram and made her a simple offer: we'll build you a bass, no strings attached. She accepted, shared her general vision, and proposed it be fretless — that was her real need. From there, she trusted RKM completely with the electronics, construction method, and materials. Her only three requests: five strings, make it visually striking (preferably golden), and keep it lightweight for long performances. We built everything else around those three conditions. The result is a Parota body for warmth and low weight, neck-through construction for sustain, Macassar Ebony fretless fingerboard without lines — because Sharon plays by feel, not by visual reference — and a 24K gold leaf finish, relicced and burned. Not painted gold. Actual gold leaf, deliberately aged and scorched. Delivered at NAMM 2024, the same show where the collaboration with Janek Gwizdala also began. That day, two RKM collaborations were born at once.

After two exceptional Custom Shop instruments, the third piece in Sharon's collaboration with RKM is something different — a DS4-MMP from the DS Series. The first two were one-of-a-kind builds. This one is a production model: available by order, built to the same standard, and reproducible. Bolt-on construction, four strings, 34" scale, 22 frets over a 12" radius. Mahogany body in the P silhouette finished in Emerald Green, Hard Rock Maple neck reinforced with carbon fiber, Chechen fingerboard and an unbleached bone nut. The pickup pairing is what defines it — an EMG P split-coil alongside an EMG MMCS humbucker, running into the EMG BTS preamp with volume, blend, low and high. The split-coil carries the weight and the midrange push; the humbucker adds the bite and the top end. Blended, the bass covers considerably more ground than either pickup alone. Badass bridge, OGT Mini tuners, 19mm string spacing, and a MONO Sleeve 2.0 included.