SpaceRock Bassists play...

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On tis 16 jun 1998 08.09 +0000 "Horse Whisperer"
<beautiful_foot at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Who was it that said they loved their Rickie more than their Les Paul?
> FOOL!
> You wouldn't say that if you had a Les Paul Junior.

     Nah, I stand by it.  My LP Std is a damn fine guitar, and I do
indeed love it dearly (even when it's misbehaving--tuning peg blew up
the other day; damn) but there are a lot of damn fine LP's.  My Rick
bass is actually a _superlative_ Rick over and above damn fine Ricks.
I'd have a much harder time replacing it!  Especially at the amazingly
low price I got it for (USD 520, inc. p&p!).  The custom shop guy I
had work on one of the pick-ups is a long time Rick fan, and first
told me he'd love to buy it and then to never sell it to anyone ;)

     (That pickup was the neck pickup--started life as a Telecaster
"Quarter-Pounder" pickup and was rebuilt into a bass PU.  Very smooth.
But the bridge PU is an old Rick-specific one from Bartolini, I think.
Or possibly someone else.  Anyway, it's rewired with a cut-out switch
on the capacitor that Rick put in the stock models there.  Drop it
out and the damn thing *roars*.  Even on my cruddy amp :)  On the
Ampeg stack it was frightening ...

     That said, I see a lot of bands these days with Gibson guitars
and Rick basses--and that's the way I like it :)

     Someday when I'm rich I'll slap some pickups with a little more
definition in them into the LP.  Then she'll start to smoke.  It'll
be worth start practicing again just to justify it :)  But I can
still do a passable Brock imitation :)
     [I'm wary of signature pickups, and signature gear in general,
but I've heard good things about the new Iommi pickups.  Anyone
actually tried/heard the beggars?]

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/