Uwe! Gibson 20/20

[Saf]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Gibson-20-20-4-String-Bass-Guitar-with-Soft-Bag-UNIQUE_W0QQitemZ280393112576QQcmdZViewItemQQptZGuitar?hash=item4148bb5c00&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

WTF is this? I don't like it very much but what a wierd looker

[uwe]

Gute Güte! A red one. First one I've ever seen (outside of that initial ad), all the others (like mine) came out in a bronzish silver.

Steinberger, an excellent inventor/designer, but not as astute a businessman, was in financial dire straits when Gibson bought his company in 1987. To commemorate the transaction, he was to build a bass for Gibson in his trademark look.

It's a maple bass (body might be heavy ash, I can never make up my mind about that) with a vintage baseball-fat neck, belying its eighties looks, but giving the bass considerable beef. Among paddle bass enthusiasts (yes, they exist) it is also rated as the best-balanced and gut-sitting paddle in the world - that elongated upper cutaway giving it that machine gun look is there for an ergonomic reason: You don't have to dislocate your shoulder socket to reach the low F.

The electronics sound similar to what you find in an RD Artist (including the few seconds "warming up" period where the sound swells to full force). It was a state of the art "We built this city" bass sound then, all highs and lows with little in between. Level 42ish, but powerful.

The bass featured some new things for the time like a height adjustable nut (similar to what Warwicks have) and counter-clockwise tuners, the tuners are not E A D G in a trad way, but A E D G (the E being the farthest out upper tuner). A reg 2 + 2 is (viewed from the front):

E    A
G    D

The 20/20 however is  ... different ...

A   E
D   G

Ned thought that made more sense.  I told you he was a better designer than a businessman! But he used Sperzel tuners (and a Schaller roller bridge).

A few hundred were built. At the time Gibson had a dearth for a new bass model (the Victory had turned into a loser, the Explorer bass was a hasty and loveless affair) and they tried different things such as the IV/V, the Q-80/90 and the 20/20. All of them flopped, but in a way they were a first step to resurrecting the bass division for the late eighties/early nineties with the reissue of the TBird and the launching of the long scale LPs and affiliated models (EB-650/750).

Actually, I made all this up ... The truth is: The little guy sitting on top of the black RD brought the 20/20 from his galaxy to me.



We communicate in a shrieking binary code ... and he gives me instructions in my mind all the time ...



and one day he will order me - I AM CHOSEN BY HIM!!! - to take out my 20/20 anti-matter laser stun gun and show you all, earthlings!

[Dave W]

 

That's as good an explanation as any.

You'll need to have this, of course. It may be the only one in that odd red finish aside from the one in an old ad.

This one probably won't fetch much. The color doesn't help. If it were mine, first thing I'd do is refin.

[uwe]

I do like the red, but then I'm also a man with convictions. And it's about time someone other than me in this forum bought one, I feel isolated.

Whenever I take mine to a rehearsal it first draws smiles ("we didn't think you'd play something like that") and then - after being heard - compliments. Could see it do good work in a progish outfit where you want a bass to sound like this, ric-htig gut:



Did you like the music, Dave?  

[Dave W]

Made it to the 30 second mark. 

Sorry, I spent my stimulus check on the Melody Maker. No more new basses (or guitars) for awhile.

[uwe]

Oh, you didn't like the stereo mix drum roll then! 

[OldManC]

0101100101101111011101010010000001000100010011110010000001001110010011110101010000100000011
0001101101111011011000110110001100101011000110111010000100000011001100110111101110010001000
000110011001101001011011100111001100100001

[Dave W]

Oh, you didn't like the stereo mix drum roll then! 

It was the creepy dungeon organ music.

[uwe]

Creepy? I always thought that Starcastle sounded like the Doobie Brothers raped by Yes. Their Yes influences were overt to slavish, but they played everything so utterly smooth and American in feel plus those lavish CSN&Y harmonies, thick as maple syrup, over the whole thing. And I don't mean that as a criticism, I find Yes comparatively grating after a while, but Starcastle puts me in a good mood. Good bass player too.

[uwe]

0101100101101111011101010010000001000100010011110010000001001110010011110101010000100000011
0001101101111011011000110110001100101011000110111010000100000011001100110111101110010001000
000110011001101001011011100111001100100001

Yes, Alien Master, you have called me?

[Dave W]

Creepy? I always thought that Starcastle sounded like the Doobie Brothers raped by Yes. Their Yes influences were overt to slavish, but they played everything so utterly smooth and American in feel plus those lavish CSN&Y harmonies, thick as maple syrup, over the whole thing. And I don't mean that as a criticism, I find Yes comparatively grating after a while, but Starcastle puts me in a good mood. Good bass player too.

I never got as far as the CSN&Y harmonies, that would have put me over the edge. As it is, I'm now cleansing my brain of those 30 seconds. Listening to some old time honky tonk right now, to be followed by some punk rock.

[chromium]

0101100101101111011101010010000001000100010011110010000001001110010011110101010000100000011
0001101101111011011000110110001100101011000110111010000100000011001100110111101110010001000
000110011001101001011011100111001100100001

http://www.roubaixinteractive.com/PlayGround/Binary_Conversion/Binary_to_Text.asp

[OldManC]

http://www.roubaixinteractive.com/PlayGround/Binary_Conversion/Binary_to_Text.asp

That's the page I used to translate it into binary! 

[chromium]

Whomever buys that bass needs to get down with their bad new waver self!







(chromium secretly resisting urge to indulge guilty pleasures and sneak in a snipe bid)

[uwe]

That's the page I used to translate it into binary! 

010011100110111101110111001000000100100100100000011001110110010101110100001000000110100101110100001011000010000001101100011011110110110000100001