About my first electric bass and guitar

So, ... I thought to write something about the first two "real" instruments (from metal music point of view) I received in the early 1990s as financed by my dad (RIP). I had both these instruments with me for close to 10 years overall and I crafted my first "more real sounding" Aeuk tracked metal tunes with the help of these two instruments. Only quite recently my main axe (Gibson SG Special) broke that time record as I've had it since March 2012.

I don't have many pictures about these two instruments but I found at least some. Without pictures I wouldn't had remembered that the first proper instrument I had, electric bass, was actually good brand as it was Ibanez, to be precise Ibanez "blazer bass". I might had remembered Ibanez, but certainly not that "blazer bass" without a picture showing it. I remember dad paid about 100 euros for the instrument, so it wasn't too expensive. But it gave me inspiration big time, for sure.

I remember later stumbling across the guy who was in the music store as part time clerk when I was trying that bass, stumbled across him at high school and he asked me if I'd gotten into playing slap bass / funk style yet ... I was like "ummmm ... nope, I don't think that's my style" ... and at the same time some tune from Pungent Stench's "for god your soul, for me your flesh" was playing in my head ... :)

Anyway, here's a pic of this first bass of mine:

Around 1991 with Ibanez bass jammin' some deathy metal

So, about the first electric guitar then. I don't actually remember what made me want to get electric bass first. It's quite weird, because I had always been playing guitar. I don't know, it could have been the explosion of death metal genre in 1990/91, the dark low soundscapes, which made me want to enter the world of bassguitar first. But it didn't take long before I wanted to finally get an electric guitar, too. I certainly didn't get "anything I wanted" from my parents, more like the opposite - but I think dad sensed how much music meant for me (bit the same with computers) and that's perhaps one reason how I won him at my side and he ended up buying me a guitar for my 18th birthday in 1992.

The guitar I tried in the store some weeks before my birthday and the one I ended up choosing, was ...  a wine red flying V type of guitar by Charvel with rather weird V shape (it wasn't too pricy either, converted to euros it was like 250 euros or so and I didn't suspect anything about the price). That was my choice back then, knowing really nothing about electric guitars to be honest (while on the opposite knowing a lot about metal music) and ... I could had chosen better. Or perhaps the store owner guy could have instructed a young fella like me a bit more? Because that guitar was pain in the ass to play while sitting - it was only playable when standing. V style looks good, it's a stage guitar for sure but for young fella at home, especially if you plan to sit and play ... well it plain sucks. That's how I experienced it anyway. So, at first I was playing around with it a lot, but gradually that guitar turned into ornament for me - sad but true. But here's a picture of this Charvel, and believe it or not, the body shape of that guitar was genuinely so weird, it's not optical illusion of any sorts in this picture below (and there's explanation to it, I'll write about it below the picture) :

Around 1992 with Charvel guitar jammin' some death again I guess

I sold both that Ibanez bass and Charvel guitar away around 2000/2001 or so. It is mainly this Charvel guitar you can hear downtuned to the underground itself on the forthcoming 'Selected raw sewage works' compilation, with tunes dating back to 1999-2000.

Unlike with Ibanez bass, I don't remember any special events happening after dad bought the guitar to me. But there is a special event related to it, and it only happened when I sold this guitar away. I sold it to a guy who was a pretty good instrument builder / fixer. He phoned me after he had started to purge the guitar into pieces (as he was going to rebuild it from scratch). He went like "you can never guess what happened!?" ... I was baffled and couldn't guess at all. He was like I don't know if I should laugh or cry, but can you believe that this guitar of yours isn't actually a Charvel genuinely, but it's a guitar which has its' all parts from different brands of guitars, it's like a gigantic, sick puzzle put together! Wait, what ... !? Yeah! Not a single part was from the same guitar, but everything in it was taken and pieced together from different instruments. Really  a freakin' weird case. Headstock, neck, body, tremolo system, pickups, knobs and pots, tuning pegs ... what a weird thing. And the guy who bought it wasn't pissed off at all, but he was like "I should go and hang this on a wall as a frankenstein of all guitars!" ... how fitting considering the sewer metal stuff I used it for in 1999-2000 or so. :)