Gute Güte! A red one. First one I've ever seen (outside of that initial ad), all the others (like mine) came out in a bronzish silver.
Steinberger, an excellent inventor/designer, but not as astute a businessman, was in financial dire straits when Gibson bought his company in 1987. To commemorate the transaction, he was to build a bass for Gibson in his trademark look.
It's a maple bass (body might be heavy ash, I can never make up my mind about that) with a vintage baseball-fat neck, belying its eighties looks, but giving the bass considerable beef. Among paddle bass enthusiasts (yes, they exist) it is also rated as the best-balanced and gut-sitting paddle in the world - that elongated upper cutaway giving it that machine gun look is there for an ergonomic reason: You don't have to dislocate your shoulder socket to reach the low F.
The electronics sound similar to what you find in an RD Artist (including the few seconds "warming up" period where the sound swells to full force). It was a state of the art "We built this city" bass sound
then, all highs and lows with little in between. Level 42ish, but powerful.
The bass featured some new things for the time like a height adjustable nut (similar to what Warwicks have) and counter-clockwise tuners, the tuners are not E A D G in a trad way, but A E D G (the E being the farthest out upper tuner). A reg 2 + 2 is (viewed from the front):
E A
G D
The 20/20 however is ... different ...
A E
D G
Ned thought that made more sense.
I told you he was a better designer than a businessman! But he used Sperzel tuners (and a Schaller roller bridge).
A few hundred were built. At the time Gibson had a dearth for a new bass model (the Victory had turned into a loser, the Explorer bass was a hasty and loveless affair) and they tried different things such as the IV/V, the Q-80/90 and the 20/20. All of them flopped, but in a way they were a first step to resurrecting the bass division for the late eighties/early nineties with the reissue of the TBird and the launching of the long scale LPs and affiliated models (EB-650/750).
Actually, I made all this up ... The truth is:
The little guy sitting on top of the black RD brought the 20/20 from his galaxy to me.
We communicate in a shrieking binary code ... and he gives me instructions in my mind all the time ...
and one day he will order me - I AM CHOSEN BY HIM!!! - to take out my
20/20 anti-matter laser stun gun and show you all, earthlings!
