Mini Thunderbird bass

[Chris P.]

If you have the book: Just make a pic with your phone or digital cam. I do that all the time;)

[mc2NY]

Hey...is there a pic of my old white w/matching headstock Fender Bass VI that I sold to him in that book? It was a Jan '63 one if I recall with the 3 switch plate. Think I sold it around 1984. There was one featured in Guitar Player the same month and I had it with me in NYC on 48th Street, wondering what it was worth,  the same day Entwistle came around looking for gear.

He still had that one when he passed away...got auctioned off by Sothby's for LOTS more than I sold it for

I have a picture of it somewhere in a shot of my gear at the time. I also had a rare cherry burst 1959 EBO that I think is in the same shot. Got it from the House of Guitars in Rochester NY. I've never seen another in cherry burst. Cool bass and checked all to hell in the lacquer.

[Basvarken]

Welcome Mc!
Got any more details? There are quite a few Entwistle fans here who drool over such stories...

Oh but:

Pics or it didn't happen! 

[Bionic-Joe]

Welcome, Jon!!!!

[gearHed289]

Hey...is there a pic of my old white w/matching headstock Fender Bass VI that I sold to him in that book? It was a Jan '63 one if I recall with the 3 switch plate.

No, but there's a white '63 with non-matching headstock and 4 switches. He refers to it as "two of two", the other being a sunburst with 3 switches.

[mc2NY]

No, that was his other white one. The one he got from me was definitely a matching headstock. It had be refinished for me by Top Shelf Music in Buffalo NY a couple years after I got it in a music store. I think I bought it in some small town near Ithaca, NY. Another bass player who I knew in Rochester, NY who also played one had told me he knew it was hanging in the store and I drove the next day to but it (four hours in a blinding snow storm, each way.) I think I only paid around $350 for it!!

Anyway...it WAS all-original. It was REALLY yellowed out but otherwise nice. I used it on my first album on a couple of tracks and on some live gigs. Then I decided to have the guy refinish it because I knew he did restoration work for some of the major manufacturers and lots of name players. Came out perfect and he even had an original Fender Bass VI decal, so he also redid the headstock. It DID have the matching headstock originally. I know I have an old photo of the bass before I had it redone.

It's one of those axes on my "I wish I hadn't sold" list but I guess we all have a list like that.

The real irony is that, at the time I sold it, I didn't realize that Entwistle owned a certain bass that was/is on my "Holy Grail" list. When I ran into him years later at a NAMM Show in California, I asked him about that other bass (a Hamer Standard [Explorer] 12-string.) He said he'd sold it off around 1990 but would have happily traded me for the Fender VI. I have a large collection of 8- and 12-string basses....so I could hear the devil laughing in my ear

Growing up and learning to play, the early Who and Entwistle was a major influence on me, so it was really cool to have one of my basses in Entwistle's collection...and for him to have liked it enough to have kept it until the end. I actually had contacted Sotheby's when they listed the bass for the auction to correct it, as they had it as "all original," and told them it was refinned where/when. Again, it was such a great refin that even their experts couldn't tell.

I'll post pics when I find them.

[Bionic-Joe]

I was I had not sold My Tom Petersson Candy Apple Red Hamer FB-VIII 8 string Thunderbird bass to you. That's why I made the FB-XII

[mc2NY]

I was I had not sold My Tom Petersson Candy Apple Red Hamer FB-VIII 8 string Thunderbird bass to you. That's why I made the FB-XII

Hey Joe....Why do all the guys from other countries speak better English than you before you've had your morning coffee? hahaha.

I guess I'll have to leave it to you in my Will....or bring it along when we got to Las Vegas to shoot things out in the desert this fall!!

[godofthunder]

Hey...is there a pic of my old white w/matching headstock Fender Bass VI that I sold to him in that book? It was a Jan '63 one if I recall with the 3 switch plate. Think I sold it around 1984. There was one featured in Guitar Player the same month and I had it with me in NYC on 48th Street, wondering what it was worth,  the same day Entwistle came around looking for gear.

He still had that one when he passed away...got auctioned off by Sothby's for LOTS more than I sold it for

I have a picture of it somewhere in a shot of my gear at the time. I also had a rare cherry burst 1959 EBO that I think is in the same shot. Got it from the House of Guitars in Rochester NY. I've never seen another in cherry burst. Cool bass and checked all to hell in the lacquer.

The House of Guitars ! I worked there on and off for years, still have a biz relationship with the boys.

[Bionic-Joe]

JON!!!! I'll trade you my FB12 for it?

[mc2NY]

The House of Guitars ! I worked there on and off for years, still have a biz relationship with the boys.

Yeah...Bruce, Armand and Blaine know me. I went to collegec in the are and was a radio DJ for years at WCMF and WSAY when they were great stations. Gigged at most places in the area too before moving back to NYC area.

I'd run into the HOG guys at NAMM shows every year, where I was the TV reporter for NAMM TV.

The HOG may be the last of the great music stores.

I also still have a hollowbody Vox teardrop I got from them...traded them Echoplex SN#0003 that I got out of the repair department under WCMF!! I have a matching Vox teardrop bass I played for years that Andy from The Chesterfield Kings kept asking me to sell him

[godofthunder]

LOL I know Andy well also. The Kings and the HOG had a falling out, aside from writing books Andy's got his own little store in Fairport NY with lots of cool stuff. WSAY that was one great station !

[mc2NY]

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

[gearHed289]

Awesome stories! Mark Miller blew me away when I saw Talas open for Yngwie Malmsteen at the Aragon in Chicago.

And Percy Jones' bleeding fingers.... Nice!

[mc2NY]

That was back in my prog-rock days. We had a band that was in the realm of King Crimson/Gentle Giant/Weather Report for around two years or so.

Besides Mark (drums) and me (bass/synths/keybs,) the guitarist was a guy Mark had played with since high school named Don Griffin, plus a guy named William Nowik (electric violin, guitar/flute.) What is strange is how we formed the band. I was a radio DJ and had run across an album by Nowik that he had released the year before...and I'd alwasy wanted to work with an electric violinist...so, I ran an ad on the radio asking for him to call me. He did...but Mark & Don heard my phone exchange and called too because the phone number was from the same town. They lived about a mile away.

That was a fun band, very experimental and it really challenged me musically. I weasled my way into my college fine arts building, where I had access to the recording studio and synth lab. We were an hour from Buffalo and Moog had donated the largest modular system to the school (outside of maybe Keith Emerson) and that room overlooked the orchestra room. One night we got full run of the place and jammed/recorded from around 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. the following morning. Four crazed players with an entire music building. Nowik has been doing some "roots type" of music as of late and I've seen footage of him going around Afghanistan playing in the streets. He was always like the reincarnation of Brian Jones. I remember Bill and I doing a live multimedia show for a college, musically backing up a mime with tape loops talking to giant light bulbs, video screens and such, as we changed back and forth to instruments...pretty strange for the time.

We expanded the band with a sax player/percussionist friend of Nowik's and a full-time keyboardist with synths/B3 and the ONLY Mellotron in the northeastern USA at the time. That was so cool. I dont think we did any real quality recordings with the expanded band before we all moved on, after our loft got broken into and a lot of gear stolen....that sort of event tends to put a damper on things..