Gear Nut Incident

[IvanMike]

I walk into my local bass shop the other day. The 2 guys that run it are there, no customers. One guy starts to vent to me and his co-worker.
"you know what my new pet peeve is? Dudes who call up and start talking about their gear. This guy just called a while ago looking for groove tube mullards and starts off on a 15 minute rant about all of his gear! He tells me he's got blockhead, bogner, victoria amps, fender custom shop relic strats, etc. The guy's claiming he can tell the difference between all these different kinds of tubes, wants to get his tone just right, blah blah blah! Guy drove me nuts!!"
I laugh with them, and I relate how my guitar player is constantly swapping out tubes, calling the companies, calling me with the results of his experiments, etc. He'll ask me "how did it sound when i switched from the blockhead to the vibroverb during the solo?"
I say "oh cool!", but in my head i'm thinking "ya did???"
We all chuckle about that and how half the time once the whole band starts playing you cant tell the difference, and that most of the audience has no clue, 'specially the drunk dudes in the corner table screaming for free bird.
"man, i tell my guitar player that all the time, he just won't listen!!", i rant

Just then my cell phone rings................
It's my guitar player................
"hey Ivan, dude! i hadda call all these places but i found a matched set of these groove tube mullards for the new blockhead 100 head......................"

you guessed it, he was the mysterious caller that irritated my pal not 30 minutes before ..........................

[jenderfazz]

Hah wow!

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by IvanMike

We all chuckle about that and how half the time once the whole band starts playing you cant tell the difference, and that most of the audience has no clue, 'specially the drunk dudes in the corner table screaming for free bird.

That's sort of my GAS grounder. "Yeah, it's a nice bass, but can they tell the difference between this and every other bass in the world?" Nobody will care what bass you're using, or what amp, or what tubes, and if their all matched, yadda yadda. Bottom line: are you rocking out, or sucking ass? A $3500 bass and $5000 amp setup won't fix that.

[IvanMike]

got even better tonight...................

we had practice and i walk in to find him with both blockhead 100's out of their housings, in between songs he's biasing, adjusting dr z power brakes, adjusting pedals and the controls on both blockheads and his vibroverb, switching between all 3

only 1 catch, he messes up on every song, even the ones he wrote and we've been playing for a long time. poor guy's brain is so full of tubes it has no room for anything else. If he wasn't 6'4" and 270 lbs of muscle i'd kill him

this is what gets brought to gigs now; 2 blockhead 100s (one set up for rythym, one for leads), fender vibroverb amp, 2 marshall slant 4x12 cabs, (i'm begging him to get 2 2x12s or mod a cab to be split - 2 12's for each head, a pedalboard bigger than a bass case, fender relic strat, fender strat with noiseless pups, les paul, fender relic tele, gibson doubleneck. Oh, and then there's the pa.........

i swear, if we werent such good friends..........

at least he makes me feel like i dont have G.A.S.

[IvanMike]

even better!!!...........
today i get a call - "dude why didnt you stop me from buying another head and torturing myself??" (iv'e tried)
"maybe i should just get a blockhead 18 watt combo or 2" (i've only suggested that since the clinton administration)
"i was reading in this amp book today and the guy from groove tubes said if he walks into a club and he sees a guy playing a 100 watt amp he knows he's an a-hole, what would he think of 2 hundreds and a vibroverb??"..........(hmmmmmm)

[IvanMike]

yet better...............
at our latest gig on friday (today's sunday) he decides to bias his amp during break as he "biased the amp too low and now there's not enough low end"
i so don't have gear issues in comparison...........