As you may or may not know, I really started my musical life as a bass player…. My very first bass & amp was funded by quadrapeds, as explained here: Startup Cows and as with most musicians I slowly traded my way up to better gear as my skills & awareness slowly improved. Along the way I had some total strokes of luck with bass gear eg a very long time ago in Christchurch I attended a liquidation sale for a music store (ironically) called BIG BANG – it was next to CJs music shop, they tried to poach their business and failed. I was a fairly broke student at the time but at the auction a beautiful Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar came up & no one bid! The start price was NZ$500 and still no bids. So I stuck my hand up & bought it. Back then a Rickenbacker bass would sell for like NZ$1500 so I knew there wasn’t much risk for me – if I didn’t like it I would sell it… And thats exactly what happened – I played it for maybe six months & while it was a lovely bass to play, its tone & style just didn’t suit me, so I sold it and then bought a beautiful fretless Maton bass guitar. I really loved that bass, although I also had another fretted bass – a reliable old Ibanez. Sadly the warehouse/old church I was living in in Latimer Square CHCH got broken into and one of the things the fckers stole was that fretless bass. I got an insurance pay out for it & decided to just play the old Ibanez bass & invested the funds into some new cutting edge technology of the time, a Yamaha SPX900 with two foot pedals! It was amazing – real time pitch shift and about 1 second of sample time…
A long while later I got a Trace Elliot amp & 15″ bin… and a Washburn acoustic bass, along with a weird old Silver Star violin shaped bass, a replica of the infamous Hofner. All good… until I blew the speaker in the Trace Elliot bin – for a brief moment it sounded awesome, with some minor sparks flying from the cone… I got it reconed, all good. But recently blew the Trace Elliot amp and I haven’t been able to find someone local to fix it (suggestions welcome!!) so to placate my bass playing I got a small Orange bass amp/combo. Its tiny & convenient but it really doesn’t produce the SPLs of bass that are necessary for serious fun… ok as a practice amp I guess, but I always play bass through a Moogerfooger LPF101 and rolling off my bass into the Orange amp just makes it disappear… So I’ve had a vague urge to replace my old Trace Elliot rig and… today was the day!
I keep an eye on every auction at a local auction house, as they deal in deceased estates & lost property ex Police & liquidations etc… But they are also old school. No online bidding. You have to be there to bid & all goods have to be removed by the end of the day, to make room for the next auction. I’ve picked up lots of great gear via them… So todays auction I noticed there was a Gallien Kruger bass amp with a 15″ bin… and further in the auction was a Gallien Kruger quadbox!?! I googled the models and they all belong to the same kit – the amp is actually a bi-amp: it powers the 15″ bin and the quad box seperately… So I went to the auction with no great plan but when the bass amp came up, no one much was interested & I got the amp & 15″ bin for NZ$300!! I think I paid that much or more for the tiny Orange bass practice amp!! I waited for the quad box to come up & got it for NZ$180, so my total for this beast of a bass rig was NZ$480 = US$284! I’ve paid far more than that for a single plugin or synth module… and look at it:
I got it home, hooked it up & powered it up & it sounds great… and makes my entire house rattle!! I only did a quick test with trusty Ibanez bass but tonight will plug in a Yamaha CS01 and maybe my SH101 or TT303 and hear what analog synth bass sounds like through it… with maximum squelch!
Whoever it belonged to also had three bass guitars in the auction and no one was really interested in them, so I got them too… but they each need work to restring and/or set them up, so its a little hard to tell how much use they will be. But again, having not spent too much I can always resell them cheaply & get my money back…
– Strinberg Bass
– Ibanez Axestar headless 4 string
– Ibanez Ergodyne 5 string
The weird shapes of the Ibanez basses makes me think they are from the 80s/90s… and hah a quick google and the ‘Axestar’ is from 1985 lol… and the Ergodyne: “It’s a very ergonomic somewhat lightweight design built off a synthetic material calmed Luthite. They have a single humbucker pickup in about the middle position and piezoelectric pickups in their bridge saddles”
Both the Ibanezes don’t appear to have been played in years… And the Strinberg buzzes a bit so needs to be set up properly…
One last thing. There was a bunch of PA gear at the auction which got a luke warm response, so I ended up buying a Fender PA passive sub with dual 15″ drivers in it for $50 lol… I’ve got an old 300W amp somewhere that could drive it, and for NZ$50 there was nothing to lose… But I do pre-apologise to my neighbours because when I get it hooked up to the Gallien Kruger rig, they may be getting their chakras realigned whether they like it or not!