Bernadette, my new main squeeze

Every night, I look forward to getting the wife and kids to bed so I can sneak back downstairs and hold her on my lap and run my fingers up and down her neck . . . and don’t even get me started about her big fat bottom. Wanna see her?. You can read more about her here.

I’m still about as bad a bass player as you’ll ever meet, but I play and sound so much better with this baby than my old axe it’s scary. I’d been looking at new Mexican P-Basses and even used American-made ones, but then I came across this. As far as I can tell the main differences from the Stingray are in finish – black painted neck and headstock, textured matte finish instead of gloss, and the admittedly odd aluminum diamond-plate pickguard. I picked up a couple of new Stingrays as well as the SUB when I bought it, and for me the playing experience was indistinguishable. Perhaps someone more adept would have a different take, but there’s almost no chance I’ll ever get that good.

I had (still have) qualms about naming her Bernadette, since she’s not a P-Bass and I’m more of a Duck Dunn-style guy than a Jamerson acolyte, but it just seems to fit, and I couldn’t think of any Stax/Volt stuff Dunn played on that had a distinctive woman’s name featured.

While married to Walt she met Werfel,
And he too was caught in her net.
He married her, but he was care-fel,
'Cause Alma was no Bernadette.

– Tom Lehrer, from his song about Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel