Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Nice web site.

Forgive me if this was shown here before. It's new to me.

http://www.12stringbass.net/master.htm?http://www.12stringbass.net/TomsRig.htm

That's a pretty wild setup!

I saw him live in the early 90's with this rig, in Phila. I was in the front row, where I could hear more of the Transonic's then the house PA.

I wish I could find some 200's for sale, they were awesome.

Apparently Tom's bass rig once belonged to Jimmy Page. The speakers have been swapped out.

Each cab is driven by a different pickup on the bass guitar he uses. Yup, it has 3 outputs....

For that you need pretty strong hands (and some strong roadies to carry the amps)!
I always loved his sound.

Absolutely, such a fantastic sound - I think a Waterstone TP12 is on the cards once they get their international dealers in place.

I believe Scott Jennings hooked him up with those. He has a lot of stories about Tom.

I want to hear them ALL.

Tom is the reason I started playing bass, to be honest. I worked security for one of their shows in 1980, and stood in front of him all night, down in the pit. His sound was so AWESOME, not to mention LOUD (I couldnt hear for 3 days), that I knew I had to have a 12, and now I do.

I have seen them 52 times now and usually go whenever they are in town. He hasn't used that backline for a while now.

>>I saw him live in the early 90's with this rig, in Phila. I was in the front row, where I could hear more of the Transonic's then the house PA<< This contradicts what one stagehand at a Vegas show said about these amps when CT played his venue with this rig (comments were on the CT site forum back then.) He said the amps were just for show, and that stenciled on all their backs was "blown, do not use." Of course, like Rick, Tom has used a couple of Fender Deluxes for his house sound most of his career.

Rick generally mikes up a Fender Twin or Deluxe (don't know the model, the checkerboard one) and the stacks behind him are filled with lights.

Tom said he used two or three Deluxes back in the day, Hi-Watts aside. I talked to him once back in '84 or so, in a store in LA that was selling off a ton of his stuff...his first Hamer Quadrabass, two or three other Hamer basses (the ones that looked like big acoustic guitars...the necks were bowed severely) and another one...Modulus...with an inscription from his ex-wife.

So he sold the Quad bass? That's a shame, there were only a handful made and I have always wanted one.

Hmmm....well, you could have had one in '84, THE Quadrabass, in fact, for sixteen hundred bucks, which when I was in college back then seemed like an astronomical amount of money. Then again, back in those days the same shop was selling PreCBS strats for 13 hundred bucks, which also seemed like madness. I suspect he was hurting for money in those days, that or just needed more closet space. I wonder if Tom misses that bass. It was painted brown at the time. The shopkeeper said it had been sunburst and of course before that it was natural, adding the headstock or neck had broken off during a Japan tour. I wonder who has it now. The bowed 12-string basses would have been cool CT memorabilia for a couple of hundred bucks. I think a friend of mine had a copy of Hit Parader with Tom on the cover playing one of those. Don't think they could have been brought back to playable condition.