New Fat-Bottomed Arrival (making the dirty dozen full!)

[Highlander]

Envy is a terrible fin, or something like that...  

[sniper]

Honestly, you should collect for finishes too..................

i'll bet your the type of guy that would do "interesting" things with a cattle prod...

[Freuds_Cat]

They are not very good about their history at all.

Thankfully we have approachable characters like Walter Carter.

[Dave W]

Three Fenders (MIM J 60ies RI, Sting, 80ies P 60ies RI Fretless) and two EBMMs (HH Bongo and Piezo Stingray) as well as 40-50 other brand specimen, with my six Ibanez Iceman basses and my five Rics (4001, 4003, 4003S/5, 4003S/8 and 4005) probably the closest to "collecting" anything other than Gibson.

And your Gene Simmons Punisher. Not only collectable but a bargain compared to what he asks now for signed ones.

[uwe]

That's not really collecting to me, I was just interested in that bass just as I was interested in a Wal or a Höfner 500/1. The Punisher, to all intents and purposes, could be a Gibson bass though, Gene's inspiration for it is palpable.

[SKATE RAT]

Damn. i shoulda gone to law school.

[Chris P.]

The new April issue of Guitar and Bass Magazine (UK) has a Ripper II review. Haven't read it yet, but I'll come back to it!

[tore00]

Wow! I am getting in love with these fat bottom gir.. basses! I have only a modest collection of Gibson basses (3 out of 19) plus one Bachbird, but I am trying to put together a Grabber. Up to now I have a neck, a sliding plate and a pickguard (travelling from US) and looking for other parts!

[Basshappi]

I'm working on getting a "Gibson" collection together but most of mine will be Faux-Gibsons as they made very few lefties. I've only seen a few Gibson EB series basses that were lefty. I'll just have to make them myself or have some custom built or pick up the occasional "third party" imitations like the BaCH or Japanese copies. I don't have any problem with that.

[Hornisse]

Looking at Uwe's "extra" fat bottomed girl, I noticed that there were differences in even the earliest Ripper bodies.  The one I saw at Austin Vintage Guitars years ago looked extra "fat" and this is because the lack of front contour on the body at the lower section.  You can see in the photo's comparing the 2 basses.

[uwe]

Yes, they were obviously experimenting with the shape.

And history repeated itself:

Left to right: original Gibson "big body" Ripper, Epi Prototype and Epi Series Ripper:



In detail:

Gibson original


Epi bevelled away for the prototype:


But then thought better of it and released the series model more in the initial Gibson shape, in fact the Epi body is even a little larger!

[uwe]

I had my 73 Ripper, the 81 model, the 2009 Ripper II and the Epi Ltd Ed GRipp3r with me at last night's rehearsal.

Some observations:

- The 81 model sounds deepest, probably due to the heavy and massive maple used on the body, it has less midrange than the others, but a real threatening ooomph, a really dense tone, you could play heavy metal with it.

- The 73 maple board alder big body one has the most wooden tone, midrange is prominent, but the tone doesn't have the 81 model's "weight".

- The Epi has no doubt the most cut and bite of all four, and not in a nasty, cheap way either. That Fenderish split coil - why am I even writing this?  - does sound excellent and authoritative. But what the bolt-on giveth in attack, snap and presence in the nether regions, it, alas!, doth taketh away once you are beyond the 12th fret, no comparioson to the sustain of the set neck Gibbies then. Not really relevant for someone who tends to stay low, but always a bit disheartening for me, I'm a high register sustain addict, hence my love for neck-thru TBirds.

- Surprisingly, the 2009 Ripper II is the blurriest of them all (I could finally play it loud at yesterday's rehearsal cause the drummer was there and we had beefed up the pa for the vocs by adding another two active cabs) and even lacks a little attack in comparison to the older Rippers. It does have the most sustain though - sustain to an extent that some of you might find it perhaps a bit much. Those high register notes really elbow their way through. I haven't mentioned so far that both pups are quite a bit closer to the neck on the Ripper II than on the Ripper Is of various eras. I also have to correct my statement that the two varitone positions that offer one coil from the bridge pup combined with one coil from the neck pup don't really sound that different. Over a large rig, the difference is stark and that slightly scooped sound makes sense as it broadens the tone without cluttering things.

Uwe

[Barklessdog]

I have seen a couple bands lately with new Grabbers, the guy on American Idol band'd ex winner bassist had one. The singer had a killer upside down Firebird that had the knobs switched over but that was it. I could not watch much of it.

[uwe]

Didn't they want to bring the Grabber out as a series model?

[gearHed289]

I just saw MUSE, and Chris Wolstenholme played a Grabber on a couple of tunes.