I'm a little (no a lot!) in awe of that collection. How did it all start then?
I've been playing 30 years or thereabouts and have never really gotten out of single digits (but bear in mind I stuck with a terrifyingly awful 1979 F*nd*r Precision for about fifteen of those years). I could quite happily use my white TB until they screw the lid down, but it's nice to have alternatives. Right now I'm up to four TBs and a Hamer FBIV (there's others, but they're inconsequential in the scheme of thing). I'd fear for my testicles if I came home with another one, although I see a VS IV coming in at some stage.
P
Nobody needs as many basses as I have. I could happily get along with, say, ten of them. But even as a kid I have always had that
slightly anally-retentive (squeeeeeeze ...) side in me, I guess middle children like me want something that makes them stand out.
My Gibson collecting started in the late nineties with an Epi TBird which I liked for the money, but it didn't have a case, no gig bags around for it either. A small shop had an original TBird case, but would only sell it to me with the (real) TBird inside, so I grudgingly obliged for a good price and had two TBirds all of the sudden (never mind how the Epi due to its bolt-on bulge would not fit the Gibson case!
). I am eventually enamoured by the warmth of the sound (I was pretty much a Kramer/Kubicki/Ricster before that) and the neck-thru maho sustain of the real thing (my first really good bass was a neck-thru maho Hoyer Eagle many decades ago, the TBird made me reconnect to the musical side of a neck-thru instrument). Not much later I buy an SG-Z cause I like the look (but the sound is not much to write home about).
Around that time there is an article on Gibson basses in a German guitar and bass mag and it starts: "Every bassist owns at least one (or has owned a Fender bass), but how many bassists have a Gibson bass (they actually play)?" The author then went into a (not perfect, but reasonably comprehensive) history of Gibson basses and
I was intrigued by the sheer variety incessant failure breeds.
That is when I got hooked and, in the early noughties, started ordering an (overpriced) Victory, a G-3 and an RD Standard. I eventually stumbled across The Dudepit and of course no one would help me there either!
The rest, as they say, is history.
The fact that Gibson is a commercial no-hoper as regards basses appeals to my inbred anti-opportunism. Here is the man who bought his first Judas Priest album after the band had been constantly derided in the then punk-drunk New Musical Express around 1977: I only bought JP's Sin after Sin because of a horrific NME review ("songs slow down for no reason at all except to give the guitars room for aimless interplay") and because Judas Priest (incidentally, a term loaned from a Bob Dylan song) was such a nicely obnoxious band name! I found it sounded a lot more vicious than, say, The Sex Pistols (silly name, silly band, look where they are now and where Priest still is) which were at that time adored by the NME.
The anti-opportunism is of course spawned by the fact that I'm never good at what the majority of people wish to do, so rather than competing with the certainty of failure (I'm not competetive at all, competiton turns me off and stifles me, I always abhorred any type of team sports or being compared to others), I do my own stuff which has everyone shaking heads, BUT AT LEAST THEY LEAVE ME BE! (I wish the collective no ill, on the contrary, I'm happy when they are fine, even try to contribute to their well-being, BUT PLEASE NEVER EVER MAKE ME A PART OF THEM!!!)
So I'm a socially friendly-tolerant autist (Edith always says!) with slight constipation issues. And probably the largest Gibson bass and "Deep Purple and offshoots" collections in the world, which prevent the middle child from merging into the background and not being seen at all anymore. I also collect Be Bop Deluxe, Sparks and Blood, Sweat & Tears because no one else does and buy U2 and Kings of Leon CDs with disgust because they are - yuck! - popular. (Of course a representative CD collection like mine must have such specimen too ...
)
Enough psychological revelations for today! You might end up thinking I'm weird.
