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Meet the twins!

…and then there were two.

For a long time, I’ve always liked my guitars to have a matching ‘partner’. I can remember the exact moment this way of thinking came into being. In 2004, I was playing bass in The Tremors and we’d scored the support slot for Southern Culture On The Skids, but our drummer Cess had another gig that night with his other band Mess Hall. So we roped in Regurgitator/Hard Ons/Front End Loader drummer Pete Kostich to fill in. He learnt the songs, we had one praccy to run through the set and we were ready to go. So, the night of the gig, second song in… ‘POP’… there goes my E string. No backup bass, no spare strings. I had to slink off stage and watch the band finish the set, with Elea our keyboard player playing the bass parts on keys. I was pretty bummed… after the show Pete walk up to me and says “..well, you’ll never do that again, will you?” And he was right. Since then, my ‘backup bass’ phobia has all consumed me. Every gig I play now, I make sure I either bring another bass or make sure the support band has a bass I can borrow. Failing that, I bring a spare set of strings for an onstage string change (record time is 45 seconds.) The rare times I have no backup or spare strings, I’m a nervous wreck. Every pluck on my bass strings is like someone punching me in the guts.

When I started playing my Les Paul bass a while ago, I remembered my mate Chris in Perth from the band Capital City had a rare Ibanez Les Paul bass that he’d played for years. I mentioned to him that if he ever wanted to sell it, to let me know as it would be the perfect partner to my Gibson.

A few weeks ago, Chris contacted me and asked if I was still keen to buy his bass. I said I couldn’t really afford it at the moment as I’ve bought a bit of other music gear, and he’d be better of selling it on eBay as they’re quite rare and worth around $1200 to Ibanez collectors. But I said, if you want to sell it quick and cheap, let me know. He replied he just wanted it out of his house as he was moving and it was in the way, so $400 later… it was mine.

As soon as I got it, I got Tim from Tym’s to set it up, and put one of his bass boost circuits in there to match my Gibson. Instead of adding a mini toggle, I got him to use the phase switch as the boost control as I never use that weird phase stuff… plus it keeps the bass looking original.

The neck is a bit different to my Gibson. The profile is more P-Bass while the Gibson is more Jazz Bass. Also, like most Ibanez Gibson copies, it’s bolt on. I totally fine with that… this bass is solid as a rock.

It’s in fantastic condition for it’s age. The only change (apart from the new bass boost) is that the machine heads have been changed to Gotoh’s. I’m also fine with this, as the original Ibanez tuners are pretty primitive.

So all in all, I’ve picked up another bargain, quality instrument. I can’t wait to start playing the twins soon… we’ve got a gig next Thursday, so that will be their first gig as a couple. Wish them luck!

Check out Chris playing this awesome bass in Capital City here…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HlauZrRJw8