Circa 1999 - In my second year of college in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, I wanted to start playing bass, but of course had no clue about ANYTHING about it - I had started drumming about a year prior and did not have the internet, so I wasn't overtaken with GAS and non-stop information at my fingertips like I am today.
I was lucky enough to stumble upon a little flyer with a gorgeous and strangely-shaped bass and a big bass head & cab for sale in Oyen, AB, approximately an hour away. $350 Canadian.
I did not have a car in those days (nor do I now - I am one of those hippy-types, I suppose), so when my girlfriend came to see me on the weekend I dragged her across the Alberta prairie to Oyen to see the bass. A couple that owned a odds & end's store purchased the bass & amp either from an older fellow or from an estate sale for an older fellow (can't remember which) and it was absolutely mint - as fresh as the day it emerged from its case (even have the hang-tag in the original hard-shell case. As I said, I knew nothing about bass other than what I noodled around with on my roommate's Samick. So I perched in the back of a little junk store on Main Street Oyen playing the only thing I knew - the bass line to Dazed & Confused.
I was smitten by the rig, but of course, $350 was a lot of money to me back then (heck - it still is now, but back then it was food and tuition money I was spending on gear!) so I thought about it for a week. Since I did not go a moment without thinking about this bass & amp, I dragged my girlfriend again to Oyen the next weekend and bought it.
Amazing what $350 used to get a guy - a mint neck-through MIJ Ric copy and a Garnet Deputy bass head and 2x15 cab! (any Guess Who fans out there? Garnets are highly sought after hand-wired point-to-point tube amps from Winnipeg - played extensively by teh Guess Who in the day). I of course had no idea what I had on my hands other than a slick looking bass and a very loud amp. I didn't even know how to spell Rickebacker, let along that I had a high-quality copy of one.
I still have the bass and the amp. They'll be up for sale in my estate sale in 50 years or so - that's the only way I'll part with them.
(13 bass, 26 electric, 3 acoustic)
. Sure it's not the real thing but it looks like one and will hopefully sound like one so it doesn't bother me any. And with this deal, I can't go wrong.
