Mardi Gras Bass...sort of

[mc2NY]

Well...since it was just Mardi Gras, I figured I'd post these. You don't see too many bass pics in Mardi Gras theme settings.
These were shot just after Hurricane Katrina, when the National Guard finally let me back in to put the rood back on my house there. This was in one of the warehouses where they store the Mardi Gras floats. The roof had been torn off by the hurricane and about 10 feet of flood water washed all the floats to one side in a pile. Very surreal...all sorts of strange things strewn about and dead quiet...hot and humid as hell. There was also a set of 10 ft tall '60s Beatle heads I would have loved for my front lawn but figured they would be too hard to explain to the police

How often does one get to ride a giant crawfish while playing your bass?

[luve2fli]

Nice Cruise!

[mc2NY]

Thanks. It's candy green/matching headstock with 2TEK. I actually have a matched pair because I like it so much (hard to find color.)  I keep one in NY and one in New Orleans. Sold all my Fender Jass Basses after I got these.

[Dave W]

I liked the ones I played that had the 2tek. The regular version was nice enough, nothing really to set it apart from a Fender though. And I do remember the magazine ads they did with the Cruise covering the woman who appeared to be naked.

[gweimer]

I've had 2 Cruise basses with a 2Tek.  My first one, a black one, was one of the best basses I ever owned.  My ex threatened to leave me one day if I didn't sell it immediately.  In hindsight, the bass was better than she was.

My second Cruise was a sunburst, but it was lacking something.  It was really good, but even the Barts I put in it didn't quite match my first one.

[mc2NY]

I played one in a store that wasn't as good as my others but it had the non-2TEK bridge (Gotoh, I think?) All mine are the 2TEK ones...and matching headstocks, which is just my preferance. Even all my Fender Jazz Basses had matching headstocks.
Also...all mine are passive. Even my Cruise 5-string was a passive one (nice neck and B but a bit heavy.) I'm not a big fan of active electronics. I originally bought one because it was the first bass to ever get a perfect 5 Star review in Bass Player Magazine.

I also have a black fretless one with ebony fingerboard. Sounds good but IMO the fingerboard edges needed to be rolled more to feel right to me. Haven't done that yet.

I also have a blue-green flipflop one that belonged to the late Howie Epstein of Tom Petty's band. It's sort of like the custom color Hamer shot on a few Eclipse guitars but not exactly. Written as "green" on the factory warranty card, although it always photographs more blue....in person more a dark Sherwood Green with dark blue flip flop clear. My fave of my Cruise Basses.

And also a blue sparkle one that was one of Jeff Ament's leftover custom ones he had Hamer make with larger headstocks and no pickguard.

I even still have a couple of super early '80s Cruisebasses, which are totally different animals.....mahogony setnecks into mahogony bodies. They are really closer to '60s Gibson/Epi basses to me than Fenders, except for the body shape. I've had a dozen or so of these and the two I have are the best of those and both basically prototypes...among the first dozen or so they made with "4 digit" serial numbers, before Hamer rolled the model into production and the regular serial numbers. One is even a factory respray (Midnight Blue over original Trans Cherry, so the aged color is a bit off from true Midnight Blue but sort of cool..to fill an order back then....SN# is the one right nect to Sting's Trans Cherry one.) The two have neck carves much closer to 60s TBirds than the later production Cruisebasses of the 80s, plus slightly longer/different headstocks. And the two I have are close in SN# but vary from each other in several ways....pickup placement, truss covers, pickguard/no pickguard, belly carve/no carve. But the necks and sounds are close and great....definite keepers.  I looked for 15 years to find an early pre-production one and never saw one...and then both of these popped up within the same week. So strange. I got the cherry one but a friend snagged the blue one and I traded him out before it left the U.S..

I thought it odd that Hamer called the 90s bass Cruise Basses (two words,) when they are more Fender-ish with the bolt-on Jazz profile maple necks and ash bodies...since they are nothing like the earlier Gibson-ish Cruisbasses (one word) of the 80s. Both cool basses but way different builds. But between the two, they certainly cover a wide range of sounds for most situations.

[Dave W]

Yeah, it was odd to call the newer 90s version a Cruise Bass, I figured it was a decision made by Kaman's marketing department. I've only ever seen a couple of the 80s Cruisebasses in person, both had neck problems.