(Mark buys a) Gibson Explorer reissue (for Uwe)

[uwe]

Ok, now I get it, I wasn't aware that they were originally an animated band:



With proper singing this wouldn't be so bad at all. I can take larger than life over the top metal epics in small doses.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

They ARE just the animated band. All the music is done by the show's creator. He hired some big gun musicians to help on albums and tour, but the whole thing is very Spinal Tap.

[OldManC]

Bass solo!

[uwe]

Yup, I got that. The animated band came first and then there was a demand. Ignoring the vocals which are a matter of taste (I never liked Venom for that reason too), it's well-made and more musical than a lot of that death metal stuff. But there must be 10 seconds in every male adolescent's life where you are attracted by this stuff. WOAAARRRGH!!!

[Psycho Bass Guy]

The individual musicians are parodies of famous players/stereotypes: the singer is an amalgamation of Pete Steele and Glenn Danzig, the lead guitarist is Yngwie, the rhythm guitarist is Malcom Young, the drummer is Lars Ulrich and the dude from Tool, and Murderface is Jason Newstead. I absolutely despise the first episode, but the show became VERY funny after that. FWIW, I have liked and continue to like the aggro growling vocals for years, though I do get quite the kick out of watching the new pre-fab "metal" bands put together by the labels that have some skinny kid with a $200 haircut trying to sound like Phil Anselmo; IOW if you're going to have a gutteral vocal, you HAVE to have the life experience to back that up. I also like chugging eighth notes too, though.

[uwe]

They have their place!

[gearHed289]

I do get quite the kick out of watching the new pre-fab "metal" bands put together by the labels that have some skinny kid with a $200 haircut trying to sound like Phil Anselmo; IOW if you're going to have a gutteral vocal, you HAVE to have the life experience to back that up.

A7X..... 

[Psycho Bass Guy]

A7X..... 

The sad thing is that they're one of the better ones. "Modern Rock radio" makes me want to puke. I'll be the first to admit I'm a huge snob about it though, and many "classic metal" bands as defined by popular consensus don't make the cut for me. Hell, I'm not even a metal bassplayer: you can hear me and I do things other than ghost chord roots... I play pedal tones.

[uwe]

I am not entirely sure if Gibson's decision to advocate this instrument among its basses as an "Explorer Baritone" and use the pic of a six string guitar to boot

http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Bass.aspx



will see it make huge inroads in the bass market ...  

And then the link doesn't even work or maybe some guy in the higher Nashville echelons realized "guys, this bass looks awfully like a guitar, maybe we should recheck ...".

http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Explorer/Gibson-USA/Explorer-Baritone.aspx

Consumers looking for a real baritone guitar, otoh, might find the scale length disconcerting:

Solid Mahogany body with hi-gloss Silverburst finish
Comfortable, "Explorer" bass neck profile
34" scale length
Rosewood fingerboard with acrylic dot inlays
Pair of "Thunderbird Bass" humbucking pickups with ceramic magnets
In-line Mini Grover™ tuners with 14:1 tuning ratio

[Dave W]

Par for the course at Gibson's marketing department. 

[uwe]

Look and behold, a maple neck ...

http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Bass/Gibson-USA/Explorer-Bass.aspx

[TBird1958]

 Still just getting backorder emails about this bass as of 11/1 Uwe 

[clankenstein]

Preciosa fingerboard ?  pray what means this gibsonites?

[godofthunder]

Not sure really ! My 2011 Cherry Thunderbird has the same fingerboard. The dealer tells me it's "baked" maple. What that process entails I do not know.

[uwe]

Preciosa is a rugged tropical wood with high density and used, eg, for tiles. It's what Gibson is using now after the rosewood and ebony raids until they run out of the preciosa stock they have. I'm not worried though, Gibson will come up with something. Whether a bass has a maple, rosewood, ebony or pao ferro board has never been decisive for me. Maple sounds snappy, but looks a bit cheap and naked except on certain models, rosewood and pao ferro sound better (or should I say characteristic?) than ebony which neither takes away or adds much sonically and a dark (though it's mostly dye anyway) ebony board is a looker, but in the end ...

What surprises me more is the maple neck, Gibson hasn't done maho body/maple neck basses since the 80ies (Explorer, Q-80/90). I wonder why they did it, three possible reasons only (i) they wanted to stay true to the eighties models which also had maple necks (unlikely), (ii) they wanted the sonic characteristics of maple neck (unlikely) (iii) it is the tribute to the headstock shape of the Explorer which is really clamoring for a break if it were made out of short-fibre wood such as maho. My guess is on (iii). I know from my Custom Shop Korina Explorer that Gibson had doubts about headstock stability and decided on an unusual "3 regular tuners + 1 banjo tuner for the G string" combination. The Epi Explorers with their softer wood necks avoided the issue by downsizing the headstocks to greater stability and slanting the downwards (they were grafted on too). The eighties Gibson Explorers had huge headstocks (10.5" as opposed to the puny 8.5" of the Epi), but were made of maple. This new generation doesn't feature a headstock quite as large but certainly larger than the Epi's.

New:



Old (Halloween Ltd Blood-Run!!!):



Epi: