My new bass

It's been 15 years since I sold my bass, but today I bought a new one.

After doing careful research to find the best entry-level bass for the money, I settled on the Ibanez GSR200. A good, solid bass with nice features and decent craftsmanship for the cost. I mean, you get what you pay for in musical instruments, but at this point in my life, I do not need to spend a lot on a bass, nor can I afford to. So the GSR200 was my choice.

There were a few used ones on Craigslist, but I was leaning towards a used one at this guitar shop called Guitar Center (it's a chain...I don't know how widespread it is). So I finally got a chance to check it out again today. I wanted to make a decision before it got bought by someone else. I played it and it seemed fine. I'm going to get a little technical here, so if you don't care about technical details, just skip down to the next paragraph. Basses these days sometimes have an active pickup. That means that the guitar has a 9V battery that powers one of the pickups. Kind of like a preamp in a microphone. If this existed 20 years ago when I bought my Peavey Foundation, I hadn't heard about it. I think it's a relatively new feature. I dunno. Anyway, according to the dudes at Guitar Center, it's a feature that the higher-end basses usually have. My research had shown that the GSR200, however, had an active pickup, but the used model I was considering didn't seem to have one. When I asked about it, the guy said that the model in question was from a kit, and the GSR200's that come in a kit (that is, packaged together with a little amp, strap, cord, etc.) do not have the active pickup. Hmm. This was a bit of a bummer. I was really kind of excited about having the active pickup. So as I thought things over, I got a new GSR200 off the wall, plugged it in, and played it a bit. It just sounded better. More responsive. The fretboard felt better, maybe just because it was new instead of a few years old. It was $75 more than the used one, but I decided I'd just work a few sub periods to cover the difference. So I got it. A brand new, black Ibanez GSR200.

When I got home, the real test began. Last Wednesday, I bought a used Peavey KB-60 amplifier off Craigslist. It's 50 watts (despite what the model number might imply), which is more power than I could possibly need for my purposes (but better to have too much than not enough!). Peavey makes good amps. My original bass amp was a 50 watt Peavey. This one is technically a keyboard amp, but everything I had read said that it was a great multi-instrument amp, including bass. When I picked it up, it had a bit of a buzz to it, which made me a little nervous. But amps often buzz a bit, so I chalked it up as negligible. And I hoped in the back of my mind that it was just the dude's bass that was causing it, because the jack on his guitar was really loose. So I plugged my new bass into the amp this afternoon and turned it on. No buzz! And it sounds freaking awesome. I think it sounds better than my bass and amp did 20 years ago. I could never really get a slap and pop effect with my original bass and amp. But with this one, it's easy. Not that I use much slapping and popping, but it's still fun to do once in a while.

So that's it. Now I just need a good microphone that can connect to my computer, and I'll be ready to start adding bass tracks to Baffum's new songs. And I need to practice. My ring finger feels like it's half asleep when I go through my scales. Gotta get in shape again.

Here's some pics of the new bass.

I told Alex to give me his rock-n-roll face in this one.

Vivien likes the "new bass" smell.