There are a lot of cool tribute basses out there that celebrate influential artists, from "The Tractor" to Leland Sklars legendary P Bass. My personal favorite "tribute" bass is actually a tribute to a guitarist, but in bass form…. The EVH Tribute Bass, an awesome one off made by Moonshine Custom Guitars a while back. IMO, he absolutely "nailed it" as far as the look of Eddie's most famous guitar. It was the No Treble "Bass of the Week" a while back, the photos are from that article …
Bass of the Week: Moonshine Custom Guitars EVH Tribute Bass
I'll attach some pics below….This bass still gets my heart going every time I see a pic of it….
Whats your favor Tribute bass ?
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To be Honest? I don't really have a "favorite tribute bass". Even though there are 2 of them in my 30-strong bass "herd"...
Why?
- Well, first of all - I'm very, very left handed. As in - if I try to play right handed for more than about 15 minutes? I get a sick headache, and have to quit. Funny thing about tribute basses... very, very few of them are available as a lefty. So, I've simply never been all that interested in them...
- Next? I based my "herd" mainly on
types of basses;
ie., "Long Scale Neck-thru" or "Short Scale Fretless". There are a few based on the bass itself - like "Gibson Thunderbird" (try finding a left handed one of those sometime...), and a few based on the maker - like "a Gretsch"; but, mainly just types. And, "Tribute bass" has never been a herd category... Still, I did wind up with 2 of them, but... it was strictly based on them being a type of bass that filled an empty spot in the herd. What are they?
1. '15 G&L Tom Hamilton Signature ASAT Bass. I'd tried for several years to find a bass to fill the "Long Scale Set Neck" herd spot, but... without much luck. But, one day I realized that the bass in the "Active Bass" spot - a '15 Alembic Epic - was also a long scale set neck bass. So, I simply "moved" it over to that spot. Not a big deal, since the bass in the "active" spot could be almost anything - as long as it was active - and left handed. And... the first decent lefty active bass I found on eBay the day I started looking, was the Tom Hamilton ASAT Bass. It's a custom Shop bass, since there are no production lefty ones; and, they don't have Rosewood fretboards, either. It's a very nice bass, and the price was right, so... mine, now. But, since ASAT basses are only
sort of active, it got replaced, a few years later, by a Schecter Stiletto Studio lined fretless bass - which is
very active. But, the blingy, metalflake blue Tom Hamilton ASAT is still a really nice bass, so - it's still mine. And, it still gets played; but, it's one of my "orphan" basses, because it currently has no spot in the Herd...
2. '22 Epiphone Jack Casady Bass. One of the spots in the herd that proved hardest to fill, was "Long Scale Hollow-body". Right handed ones are pretty hard to find, but a lefty? Uhh... no. I'd resigned myself to either having one made; having a right handed one converted (which I felt was cheating, and seldom looks good, anyhow); or, just leaving the spot unfilled. I had considered the JCB as a viable conversion candidate, because I'd poked around inside a couple of them. I saw that, while they did have a couple of small blocks inside the body for the pickup and the bridge, they were hollow enough to meet the definition of a hollow body instrument. So, when Epiphone released the left handed ones in 2022? I snatched one up, quick as a bunny. Which, at the time, left only one spot to fill, but... that's a story for another time...
So, yeah... I do have 2 signature basses. But, not because they have some bass player's name on the headstock. I have them because they fill - or filled - a spot in my herd that needed filling, because of what
kind of bass they are... period.
