09.25.09
Back in the studio….
..recording Vita again…Viva La Vita!!!
Tempus Fugit..
It’s hard to believe that September is almost over. I’ve been searching though my memory to try to tie up some “loose ends” as far as the “late early period” of gear. There was definitely some construction involved,as we made some guitar cabinets out of actual cabinets and we somehow wound up with an almost full fledged P.A. system. Things didn’t really pick up steam until a few years later when we found ourselves stateside. It was time for me to have my own bass..so I picked up a Gibson Thunderbird.
I’m guessing that my brother influenced me with this purchase..it is a totallllly boss design and sounds great..similar in tone to the “trebly” character of the Rickenbacker bass. The huge drawback is that it is weighted so that the neck is heavier than the body,thus making it necessary to hold it up with the hand that is fingering the frets..and that can really cramp your rock moves.
This bass was rocked out through an Ampeg SVT Head with an SVT “8 x 12″ speaker cabinet….complete overkill for 98% of the gigs that we were playing. The head alone weighed around 100 lbs…and of course we had it in a road case. This beast put out massive volume (360 watts RMS for you tech heads) and never failed.
We had become friends with a great band called “Captain Tunes and his Note Guns” that was playing one of the clubs in St. Thomas. Ralph Damann was the bass player and he had hand made his bass…he was a fantastic luthier as well as an amazing bassist. I talked Ralph in to building me a bass..it was a work of art. Unfortunately, I never got totally comfortable with the tone and,much to my regret,traded it in……after my brother excitedly brought a 1965 Fender Precision Bass to band practice that I fell in love with. I still have this bass…and I’ll have a photo and a little background on it next.
