Portland Bass Stuff
My trip to Portland was a great time (mostly because I got to visit with my sister), and I got the chance to visit some music stores out there as well. Some thoughts about the the availability of gear out there
- Huge amount of homebrew pedals – as opposed to the manufacturers I usually see in the stores and online, there’s a huge amount of boutique manufacturers out there making effects. Racks upon racks upon racks of pedals, actually. I didn’t get the chance to test many of them (and most of them were for guitars, to be fair), but it was great to see the available options. It makes me think that an Etsy-like location for pedals could do well.
- Lots of music stores, still – both of the musical instrument and of the recorded variety. Sure, most of both varieties dealt with used wares, but they all seemed to be doing okay. There’s something to be said for the support of a community for local businesses, and I wish I could more of this kind of thing outside of the borders of Portland.
- Not too many basses, from what I could observe – but such is life. I’m probably still jaded from the Chicago Bass Club and the boutique goodness found there. I saw mostly older Fenders and budget models, and I would have loved to have seen some homebrew instruments to match the number of pedals and effects represented in the stores.
- Great to see old bass spreading the knowledge – my sister got one of my older basses as a gift quite a few years ago, and though it never really took for her, it turns out the old Fender JP-90 is still seeing work in a local band or two out there, and it inspired one of her friends to keep learning and playing when she otherwise might have given up. That’s the best return-on-investment I can think of for an old instrument, really. Even though it still has some wiring problems – I always pulled the the input jack out of wack and had to have my old student radio station engineer re-solder it.