I sound tough on this, I know. I'm generally not a Gene Simmons basher, quite on the contrary, the man is a fine bass player, I prefer his voice to Paul Stanley's affected falsetto and Gene would make a great dinner guest to top it off. I also own a Punisher and it's a fine bass, I can understand where he was coming from with it. I even bought the outrageously priced 45th Anniversary Destroyer boxed set, adding it to the umpteen versions of Destroyer that I already own,
I mean every household needs a Bluray Dolby Atmos remix of God of Thunder and the acoustic version of Beth!But what ole Chaim has done here (has he done
anything other than given his name and played a prototype on stage?), confounds me.
- It's way too expensive to be an entry level bass for a kid that wants to have something Gene Simmons has.
- Gene has been playing an active bass on stage for the last 30 years at least (the Punisher and all his modern type Axes too), who is going to believe that he will now switch to a passive one in the middle of a set? If this TB had EMGs or whatever stuck into it, some people would cry heresy, but it would at least make sense from his preferences/point of view. A Bat(tery)Bird would at least be something new from Gibson.
- Gene always mouths off how a bass needs to be stable if he raises both arms in the air, I'd like to see him do that with this apparently unchanged-in-shape-and-center-of-gravity TBird.
- Same thing with high register access, Gene always says how that is important to him for his slides, the Punisher is 24 fret and has probably the best high register access I've seen on any double octave bass, but the Genebird is as high register play-thwarting as any Rev Bird (
unless our favorite Rochester woodsman has gotten out the chainsaw again, but let's not dwell on that here ...).
So what the hotter-than-hell was his input? Even the Hipshot bridge has been featured on TBirds before, albeit for only a year. In comparison, the two different Nikki Sixxnature Birds where creative individual takes.
Hopefully, the also announced Flying V will be something more to write home about. This is for shoutin'-out-loud a disappointment, ain't worth a deuce.