Bass Porn For Today
VH-1 apparently has the market cornered when it comes to ready-made nostalgia, but allow me a bite at the proverbial apple with this particular bass guitar. This screams “EIGHTIES!!!” at me more than anything else, including legwarmers, Reagan, and John Hughes movies. You saw it in the hands of Duran Duran’s John Taylor (if you were paying attention to popular music), you saw it in the hands of Stu Hamm (if you weren’t paying attention to popular music and instead focused on bass guitar instructional videos . . . in your room . . . alone . . . ), and I finally ran across one years ago in an Indy guitar store. The action was terrible on it, which kinda soured me on the experience at that point. Unfortunately, I haven’t run across one in a bit, and it looks like their primary endorser is the bassist for Kenny G.
Not gonna get a lot of store space with that, I suppose.
Still, I liked the sound they got, and the foresight to slap on the extension that changed the E string to a low D was a good plan (brought to us regular tuning-machine-folks by Hipshot). I’d give it another shot. And I’d probably play the bass line to “Rio” on it.