Category: Bass Guitar

I spent money on music gear today. I haven’t done that, directly, in a while. Oh, I’ve spent a little bit here and there or replaced things that had been broken, stolen, etc. But, I haven’t bought anything NEW until today. — quick warning here – this is going to be a story about technical music gear, so don’t bother… Read more →

Rozz Zamorano is a bass player I’ve known for quite a long time. He has many times been nominated as bassist of the year in Houston and he and I have shared the stage (albeit with different bands since no one is cool enough to allow two bass players to play together – bastards!) with him more than I can… Read more →

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come to the realization of what I do as a musician. Yes, I’m a songwriter. Yes, I play guitar. Yes, I arrange songs, produce records, dabble in engineering, program drums and a variety of other things relating to the artform. But, at heart, I’m a bass player and not just any bass player,… Read more →

It has been a while since I bought a new piece of music gear for myself and I’ve been eyeing a couple of things over the past couple months, one of which is on order and the other I picked up today. This is the Aphex Punch Factory, a floor pedal optical compressor and, man, is it cool. It not… Read more →

Recently, I ran across a website with lists of the greatest BLANK of all time with BLANK equalling everything from Rock Guitar Solo to Jazz Drummer. Interesting site though the lists seem to be skewed by the site owners’ personal preferences. As a bass player, I thought I should, at the very least, critique their top 10 and give my… Read more →

Bass players are so under-appreciated. And I say that not just as a bass player but as someone who understands the fundamental aspect of holding down a groove in rock music. Rock music has two fundamental elements – energy and groove. Without them, nothing works. Obviously, it can be frustrating trying to explain just how important bass is, especially with… Read more →

I know I’m everyone’s favorite, but I have everything on this list, so feel free to pass it on. This is a list of what I consider to be the records that most influenced me as a bass player. Some of them rank up there with the greatest bass records of all time. Others were just big influences on me.… Read more →

A few weeks back, I bought new pickups for my basses and I finally got around to installing them this past weekend. They sound unreal. It is hard to imagine pickups making that significant of a difference, but these have. Throughout my years playing the bass, I have always preferred active electronics like EMG’s to passive pickups in my basses.… Read more →

Peter, knowing my interest in his stage tuner, was kind enough to pick one up for me and give it to me today. Besides being a really kind gesture on his part, it led me to realize that it is time for me to do some updating to my bass rig. Back in the early and mid-90’s when I was… Read more →