"Hey, lets buy guitars, practice and start a band."

Now it comes to pass that Doug calls me and utters those famous (last) words.

"Hey, lets buy guitars, practice and start a band."

So I did. Being somewhat more liquid than when I was in college, I was able to get a bit better bass. A bit.

I bought a Steinberger. Not the solid composite instruments you would have been able to see on Geddy Lee or John Taylor, no, these were new, bought by Gibson - sold online - better! They were in fact made at the same factory - or so I'm told - as the all-wood Hohner steinberger licensed basses. All wood - EMG Select (yuck!) pickups, impossible to find replacement hardware - Musicyo Steinberger Spirit bass. The fretwork was passable, the neck - 'Ok' - the pickups were, well, EMG's - but the bottom line EMG's (I love EMG's btw). The hardware was, well, cheap. The bridge was ok, as long as the screws weren't stripped out - which happens a lot.

But I had a bass. I practiced, and bought more gear - and more basses. First thing I needed to get was a rig - I had to play through something, after all, this is the electric bass. So I did some searching, thought about what I wanted (it had to be warm) and what I could afford. Most importantly - it had to be available. I was able to find lots of bass gear - eBay, Talkbass, Bassgearonline - lots of different places. The only problem was I couldn't always play what I found online. So instead, I began to use online as a resource for finding information about the gear I was interested in. Harmony Central - and the user reviews - as well as TalkBass and the BGRA (Bass Gear Review Archive) became tools in my quest for gear.

Before I could join a band, or even really play much - I had to have at least a practice amp. I found Musiciansfriend.com and started looking. I had heard wonderful things about Trace Elliot - little did I know not much was available anymore. But I found a practice amp online for a little over $100 - wow - great price! So I bought one. The Trace practice combo was great - for playing at home and alone. But I needed something for gigging!


Since I was really into the combo thing - hey, only one piece of gear and a bass then I'm good to go - I started out looking for a nice, large combo. I found a Gallien-Krueger 210. Not bad - sounded good - got fairly loud - looked cool. I was in.

After using the combo for a while, I discovered something disheartening - some light kept flicking on and off in the back of the combo. What was that thing? After doing some more research - I found it was a protection circuit for the speakers. Well, that's not good. I started looking for an additional cab - since I was obviously driving this one too hard.

I was kind of used to the GK sound, so I looked into the GK speakers. I found a rockback (wow - cool new feature) RBH - the 'Hi-end' of the GK cabs - 410. Hmmm - that should do. And for a while at least, my gear habit was satiated. Of course - I haven't begun to describe my bass aquisitions yet....