[wheels]

My fancy basses are a Lakland and a Sandberg (also German). But even, say, Ibanez was doing a lot of interesting stuff with low-cost instruments in the 90s, and on the high end there was Alembic, Modulus, Fodera, Ken Smith, hell, even Music Man (from Leo Fender), Tobias (and later MTD). Neck-through construction, active electronics, composite bodies, fiberglass necks. I don't want all of those things in my basses, but it was exciting to be able to try them. There was so much experimentation in basses at that time, but it was pretty rare with guitars. Again, Parker seemed to be the only well-known company doing it.

My theory has been that it was that bass guitar is a new instrument. Electric bass really isn't an electric double bass, but electric guitar is an electric version of a steel-string guitar. There was a lot of history and nostalgia in guitar playing, whereas bass was this new thing.

The other part of my theory is that bass amplification demanded it to some extent. Amplifying a bass was hard at the time. And it's come so incredibly far. Guitar players still basically use the same amps they did in 1965. But bass players moved quickly from tubes to transistors, and now to class-d amplifiers, and miniaturized speakers. My 500 watt amp weighs 1.1 kg and fits in the pocket of my gig back, and my 4x5" cab which handles 400 watts of power and goes down to 35 Hz is 30 x 30 x 30 cm and weighs 9.5 kg. Those together are smaller and weigh less than my 15 watt guitar tube amp.

[whstl]

Man I love how pragmatic bass players are. I also have a tiny Class D for my bass (I play a bit of fretless for fun) and it's magical how much better it is than the amps I played in the past. Granted I never had an SVT, but on the other hand my back is thankful for that.

I feel like guitar players are constantly trying to get into the technology but then fashion changes. Grunge for example made everyone sell their racks and shredder guitars.

Now that I think about it, I actually had a POD bean before I even had an amplifier, but then it became unfashionable to not have tube amps among my in-group back then. On the other hand I see lots of touring bands using Kempers, Quad Cortex, Tonex, etc. so maybe the tide has turned! For now!