The Last Bass Outpost

Uwe...What other basses had Gibson/Epi made in a medium 32-inch scale?


Also...regarding Paul McCartney having one of those Hamers...yes, I heard Hamer  made a lefty for him but that he complained that the boomerang inlays "made him dizzy" or something like that.

Yeah, I'm not much of a sports fan much either...but since I also live in New Orleans part of the time, I was rooting for the Saints all year and stunned that they made it to the Super Bowl after 43 years.

So, I made sure to be down there in New Orleans to watch that game from a local bar. It sure paid off!! TOTAL INSANITY!! I walked doen into the French Quarter after the game and all the way there it was wall-to-wall people joyously screaming out of their minds. You could not fit a sheet of paper between people on Bourbon Street, it was so crowded.

Super Bowl also happened to fall dead in the middle of Mardi Gras as well this year, so really out it over the top. Plus, they had the 4-year mayor election the day before Super Bowl and elected the first white mayor in about 40 years...probably because most of them since then ended up in jail   That's not saying much in New Orleans though because the last white mayor's first name was "Moon" and he is the father of the guy who just got elected (a the new mayor's sister is the State Senator!) It's the only city in the USA more corrupt that Chicago, where our President and most of his pals are from. Democracy is great

But back to sports....the Tuesday after Super Bowl the city had a "win or lose" parade planned. All of the big Mardi Gras "crews" that normally compete with each other to have the best parades and floats...each put up thei best float and loaned them for The Saints parade (first time that ever happened.)  So, you have this enormous parade with all The Saints players, management, staff, etc. riding on the best floats and throwing out beads, footballs and about anything else they could!!  They even had the big trophy on the float with Drew Brees hoisting it in the air as he threw beads with his other one.

They expected like 300,000 people and ONE MILLION showed up for the day!! No violence, just great fun. It could not have been more perfect...people from all walks of life drinking , laughing and partying together in the streets New Orleans style with music everywhere.

Oh...BTW...at the bar where I watched the game, it was VERY emotional. Just as the game started and they sang the National Anthem on TV, the entire crowd in teh bas slowly began to sing until everyone was singing it loud together. I felt like I was in a movie scene becaue my part of the 'hood is a real mixed crowd...white, black, Cajun, straight, gay, rich and pretty damn broke...but the whole place errupted in song. Truly a once in a lifetime thing. I attribute it to how hard everyone in New Orleans had gotten beaten down by Hurricane Katrina and has tried to come back since. The Saints making it to Super Bowl was sort of our vindication in some strange way. NONE of us really expected them to win it...just getting there was more than we could have imagined.

Having had to evacuate the night before Katrina hit and then go back to rebuild my house there and live through all that devastation...the whole Saints thing this year was great.

New Orleans and the Gulf was just starting to get back to being liveable after 5 years....and now we get drowned in friggin' BP oil!!!! What a crime. It smells like a huge gas station in town and my friends are starting to say they itch after bathing or taking showers, so something is up that  no one is talking about.

Uwe has none of these, but Jon has three, the old hoarder. To his credit, he offered to trade me one, but only against my 1986 TB II bequeathed to me from George. No way I can give that up, it's the only staunch Republican Bird I have. I should perhaps refin it in tea party tint?  

I do have two reg G-3s, one of them the last run in the eighties when they switched to ebony boards and finned them CAR.

Uwe.....At least I was good enough to offer you the mint ones (one a G-3 and the other a B-450 truss model BTW) and not my roadkill one above I wonder who gigged this thing so long and hard to have it look like this?

It IS good to know that there are a few Gibby prototype basses NOT in your house yet. Next time I gig in Germany I'll have to haul one along for you to see. UWE: You're cordially invited, even without that three pup TBird as a gift!

Besides, the only reason I wanted a second '86 TBird II, is because TBird1958 keeps asking me for my other one

Jon, Back in the day I used to go see Talas at the Penny Arcade...................I was just in awe of Billy. Yep Bahama Mama I remember them....................guitar player named Rudy Valientino if I remember right. Our band Johnny Smoke has a Foreigner/ Lou Gram connection. Donny Mancuso (Black Sheep) was in the first lineup of Johnny Smoke, he and the bass player left after the first cd and I replaced then both in 1999  lol. Our Drummer Joe Szembrot laid some tracks for Lou's last disc. Just this past week end Phil Naro came up and did a few songs with us.

My guitarist Dick Gramm(atico) I think was on the first Black Sheep album and then Donny replaced him on the second, if I recall. I think they were on Capital Records. I only saw them once live out in some cornfiled or a music festival. They sounded exactly like FREE and Lou Gramm was just a killer singer. I saw a website for the Lou Gramm Band and it looks like both Dick and Donny are touring as Lou's dual guitarists as of late.

BTW....don't know if you'd remember my radio name Jon "The Midnight Mayor" but I was the midnight to 6 a.m. DJ at WCMF during those years. That station was one of the top 10 in the US back then, paying everything you could imagine. I think it had a huge influence on local musicians and is part of why the area was a music mecca. Also, Rochester happened to be the city that most of the record lables used to break/test new artists out in -- both on the radio and in concert, so they'd spot any problems before they played in New York City, Philidelphia, Buffalo, etc.  So it was often one of the first or very first places a band played. Plus it had several major colleges venues, several large concert halls and LOTS of live clubs, so it could take in most any size artist. Plus it was withn driving distance from NYC/Phili record industry. Very unique situation in the music industry back then. It sort of filled the void of what MTV did once "video music" started for breaking acts. Rochester was probably the better vehicle for breaking acts because, if you sucked live you died....and no one kept playing your video to sell records and make a bad artist rich abd fanous

***OH...I just realized that I hijacked the original "mini TBird" thread. Very sorry.
Here is a pic of something kind of related....mini Les Paul and mini Flying V guitars (20.5 inch scales if I recall.) These were made back around 1982-83 by Phil Kubicki, most known for his headless basses and all the custom/prototype builds he did at Fender in the 60s-70s, like George Harrison's rosewood Tele in Let It Be.

This pair happen to both be signed on the back by Phil and dated the same month/year. A lucky coincidence because they are kind of rare, I got them separately about 2,000 miles apart and a year apart...and Phil didn't sign many. The V was called an "Arrow" and the LP was called "Express." Notice the nexk-thru like a TBird...but I don;t believe he ever made mini bases.

So, it does seem possible that four "little people" (I'm told "midget" is no longer politically correct?) can start a band

Didn't that clip inspire Gibson to come out with this Kirst prototype model, designed to  MISS his head as it fell?

BTW...this really WAS a Gibby prototype. Proof that they DO smoke pot at planning sessions at Gibson.

Since you're a Rochester guy...some more info on Top Shelf Music in Buffalo that refinned that Fender Bass IV for me:

I also bought a pair of Hagstrom 8-string basses from them years ago. Maybe you remember the white reggae band Bahama Mamma for way back when reggae was just breaking in the US? I produced the live recordings of their album...we did  remote truck recording at the Haunt in Ithaca for it. I was in the truck wondering how the bass player got the sound he was getting and went in between sets to see he had a Hagstrom 8 and he told me he'd just traded his red one in for his sunburst on at Top Shelf. So I went the next day to buy it. They also had a sunburst one that I thought was ugly, so I asked them to refin it into a really cool trans-black burst for me. They do amazing work...it came out stunning and I played it for years.

I called Top Shelf back when Sothebys was auctioning off Entwistle's stuff, to tell them that the Bass Vi they'd refinned for me was the one in the auction, in case Sothebys contacted them to verify the refinish.
I also mentioned that I still had the two Hagstroms. They laughed and said that Billy Sheehan came in a bit after I had them do that...saw a photo of my blackburst and loved it...and had them make him an identical Hagstom 8 to match mine!!

The joke is that Billy and my guitarist on my first album (Lou Gramm of Foreigner's brother, Dick/Richard Gramm/Grammatico) were roomates in Buffalo when I formed my band back then.  Plus the drummer in my previous band who I'd just parted with (Mark Miller) ended up in Talas with Billy to replace his drummer. Dick and I both had custom guitars/basses made by a builder in that area who had just begun making things. Ours were among his first half dozen instruments...Ryan Brodesser Guitars. The day I'd picked up my finished bass from Ryan, I stopped at a birthday party for the vocalist (Holly Woods) of the Canadian rock band Toronto. Billy happened to also be there and checked out my new basss and I pointed out some ideas that I'd come up with for the bass ( a few which showed up on his Yamaha Attitude years later BTW.)  The Rochester-Buffalo-Toronto club circuit was one of the best back then...lots of talent and comraderie.

BTW....Spyro Gyra got its original record deal by winning the unsigned band contest the radio station I was a DJ at. The same station used to do weekly live band broadcasts both from area clubs/collages and from our "downstairs studio"...which was basically an empty two car garage under the radio station that we threw some insulation and burlap up on the walls in. But it was historic....we could only fit maybe 30-50 people in for a show but had Robert Fripp, the original Journey, Gentle Giant and many more over the years. Even the Grateful Dead via live remote from a college. I also remember Brand X live from a local club because I was on-air that night and the show ended abruptly when Percy Jones' fingers were bleeding too bad on the third encore to play anymore.  I'd gotten hired as a DJ while still in my teens. The youngest kid they ever hired and it was just amazing. I went to hundreds of free concerts over the year and was usually backstage or interviewing tha artists. Being an actual musican as well made it even greater. Wish I knew where the hundreds of 10-inch tape masters ended up. A real wealth of unreleased live  material.

I've been really fortunate to have pretty much made it through my entire adult life and only worked music related jobs...musician, engineer\producer, DJ, journalist/editor, music TV reporter...and still be playing. It was just dumb luck because I never even applied for the original radio gig that started it all. My college roommate had an internship at that radio station and had taken them a demo of the morning college radio show I did, without my even knowing. Months later he called me for a ride back from the radio station when his car broke down...and the music director came out and said they'd hired me, could I start the next day. Total dumb luck....especially when I later saw a HUGE box of demo tapes from people from around the US who actually had applied to that station for DJ jobs.

If that hadn't happened, I probaby would now be an old, fat biology teacher with a haircut, regretting how life turned out. (But, then again...I'd have more room in my house without all this music gear

Hi there! Thanks, very interesting! Great! Nice pics!! And I'm glad someone nice has got the bass!

Was the mini-humbucker standard?

I don't believe Brood took any pictures. Just painting and action painting. This pic is only around on the net for some years. It appeared in a book of a famous Dutch photographer, which came out last year or the year before. I have to think which one. Could be Kees Tabak. I'll find it out.

That EB3 bridge mini humbucker WAS standard, as were the double Jazz PUPs. That was the normal pickup config one the earliest Hamer Standard (Explorer) Basses (after the first one SN#001 for done for Martin Turner that had an actual pair of Gibson TBird PUPs used.) I love the original BIG Hamer headstock on the earliset ones. Paul Hamer told me that they had the '60s Gibson TBirds in mind when they designed that.  Great bass.

Thanks for the photo info!