The Last Bass Outpost

You know, if you're going to do it, go all the way...

Is that the former Edgar Winter bass player? I once read that he had a bass integrated in his glam boiler suit, but never saw a pic.

The 20/20 is what it is. A period piece of today quaint, but then highly fashionable, yet nevertheless timelessly well-thought out design. Don't knock the poor thing.

They were blossoming and transforming from an excellent beat band to artists. It's a step the Rolling Stones, for instance, never made.

That is a good name - and from the right period. I thought the Beatles peaked with SPLHCB and MMT. My elder brother had the MMT EP and I must have played Your mother should know and Fool on the Hill to death. When I think of The Beatles I think of that phase.

Yes, it has that snap. The Fireburst, incidentally, is the only Gibson bass to feature Germany's national colors in the right consecutive order: schwarz-rot-gold (nein, nein, not that other flag!!!). A fffery Germänic bass, jawohl!

I wouldn't have minded them in long scale, but horses for courses!

Technical limits often help forge a style. If you're good at anything, you tend to do everything and why shouldn't you? If you have limits you work at and deepen what you are best at.

The best bands tend to be those who have a virtuoso (or two) musician AND somoeone creative (or two) in them. Too many virtuosos think they are also gifted songwriters when they are not, but most excellent songwriters are selfdeprecating about their instrumental craft, even those who are quite good like Paul McCartney.

It's true! The art of composing hookline riffs died with Nirvana. Or maybe it's as Billy Corgan said: "All goof riffs have already been written. Whenever you think you have come up with something great, you then find it on Made in Japan or something ...".

To be fair, Enter Sandman was a signature riff, but then Metallica were hardly indie.

That is the most accurate and descriptive take on the respective strengths of the Elitist and the SG-RI that I have had the pleasure to devour. Love the wasp/bumblebee comparison - so apt! Excommunication proceedings herewith adjourned!

The Epi was a slow seller at the time, of course it was high-priced, but so  is the Casady Sig and that sells consistently well. The SG-RI, otoh, has become a staple product with Gibson so I think the approach of "modernizing it even more" was commercially sound. People play an SG-shaped bass for the look, legacy and the short scale, not for the varitone or a real mudbucker sound.