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Mr. & Mrs. Guitarnerd

Apologies for not posting in the last few weeks… I got married!

When I started guitarnerd, I promised myself no matter what… I’d post at least one story a week. My work load for my day job is pretty intense, as are my freelance jobs I do for friends. Along with playing in 4 bands, my guitarnerd time is a few hours every Sunday (before band practise!). But 2 weeks ago I married my gorgeous wife, and as anyone reading this who has organised and been through a wedding… They take a LOT of work! So guitarnerd got put on hold for a few weeks. Girls are better than guitars, after all.

I met my wife through our shared love of music… we both played bass in AWESOME rock bands. I’d seen her band a few times (actually my old band ‘Stag’ played at her band’s E.P. launch) but had never spoken with her much… me being scared of chicks in bands as they’re obviously so frikken’ cool. As luck would have it, both our bands were supporting Magic Dirt for their late 2005 tour.  Second show in, she asked if she could use my guitar lead as her’s had broken at the previous night’s gig… and the rest is history.

Our first Valentine’s Day was coming up and I wanted to impress her as we’d been dating a few months. Flowers? Boring. Chocolates? She hates sweets. Then I had a crazy idea. We’re both bass players, we both met playing bass… what about a Valentine’s bass?!

Up until then, she’d been playing a very nice but very ‘metal’ Ibanez Soundgear SGR bass. This is from the first series… great basses, but she was copping it from her band mates that it looked like the same bass that the crab walking dude from Korn played.

A quick call to Tym’s and I was the proud owner of a cream white Japanese reissue Fender Mustang Bass. I got Tim to modify it by replacing the little jelly bean pickups with some high output Seymour Duncan P-Bass replacements.

Her band is hell loud and the standard Mustang pickups wouldn’t cut it. The bass itself was fantastic. Really light but solid. A slim, easy to play neck with the Jazz Bass nut width I love. I was considering keeping it for myself and buying her roses for a little while.

Valentine’s day arrived… and she was astounded. My fellow band mates & friends weren’t so impressed as their girlfriends heard about what I’d done and were expecting awesome presents as well. Sorry dudes.

Over the years, the Mustang has been played at a LOT of gigs, by my wife & myself. It sounds pretty much exactly like my fave Fender P-Bass, but with slight less clarity, probably due to the smaller scale length. This could also be due to the fact it hasn’t had it’s strings changed since I bought it… As we love the plummy bass sound from Sonic Youth and all those noise bands… where you can hear the note but not the pick attack.

We’ll never sell this baby… it’s a reminder of how we met and means a lot to us. I even put it on our wedding invites (the cartoon on the top of the page)