Latest
G.A.S Rehab Center Online… Have Gear Acquisition Syndrome? We can help you! by Igor Saavedra
G.A.S Rehab Center Online… Have Gear Acquisition Syndrome? We can help you! by Igor Saavedra… Dear G.A.S patients, your doctor talking…. I assume all of you have got your special pills for anxiety today, if not please do so before reading this!
If you want to get better, it’s really important to follow all the points listed on this treatment that I’ve designed specially for you; health is the most important asset in life, so I’m confident you’ll do the right thing.
SPECIAL GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME TREATMENT
1. Put things into perspective right now; don’t forget you are supposed to buy gear to play music, and not the opposite.
2. If you spend all the money in gear you won’t have money for gasoline, or eating right, or fixing your car; don’t compromise those extremely basic things that are equally important for being able to work as a musician.
3. Don’t brag about your new gear or your next gear purchase in front of your wife/husband. Some exceptional and supportive partners do exist, but in general terms, the last thing you want to do is to talk about prices in front of them; you and your relationship will end up paying the cost for your lack of discretion. Strings or diapers? Always choose diapers please!
4. Listen to the content of your daily speech, when it comes to music… do you talk mostly about chords, inversions, scales, nuances, dynamics, technique, arpeggios, phrases, patterns, etc. or are you talking the whole day about compressors, equalizers, cables, instruments, pickups, gig bags, strings, amplifiers, etc.?
5. What is good for others doesn’t necessarily mean that this will be also good for you! Sounds easy and obvious, but this specific aspect is usually not taken into account very often. Read carefully about every detail of every piece of gear you are thinking to acquire. For example, I am sure you are aware I have my own Signature model of La Bella Strings… after you read why I like them and why I’m recommending them for you, if those reasons fit with your specific interests please go and buy them, but please don’t buy them just because I use them; apply this concept to all the gear sponsored by all those great bassists around.
6. Constant fast & cheap reselling of your “one week old” gear can kill your economy very fast. Be wise, take your time to make any decision about buying or changing your gear, analyze the pros and the cons, and enjoy what you just bought at least for a while.
7. A very good way to prove that you are indeed suffering from serious G.A.S. is by just taking a look at your gear to see how much of it you are actually using. If it’s less than 50%, your case is really serious!
8. There’s life out there besides acquiring gear… Traveling is great, having quality time for going to a good restaurant, inviting somebody to the cinema and spending some money on music text books is not a bad idea don’t you think so? Have you asked yourself how much money you spend in gear and how much money you spend in music/bass educational material? I’ll tell you that the results of that simple question can really scare you.
9. If you really love gear so much, then learn deeply and seriously about it and not just “use it”… you’ll end up finding out that in most of the occasions you don’t need a lot of the gear, and that you might be actually killing your natural sound if you don’t know how to use it properly.
10. Maybe you are not going to like what I’m going to say right here, but believe me it’s like that, and I’m almost sure that any “G.A.S Rehab Specialist” will endorse this opinion.
Forty-five percent of the quality of your sound is generated by your “conceptual sound” or said in a different way “previously knowing exactly the sound you want”, maturity and experience are some of the main ingredients to achieve that, but also practicing, studying, thinking and listening carefully are very important ingredients. The other 45 percent is generated just by your fingers, this means being sensitive about the nuances involved with technique and achieving the right “touch” so to extract “all” the sound contained in your instrument, which believe me, is much more than what you think even if it’s a $100 bass. The resting 10% of your sound will be provided by that gear you love so deeply, in the sense that the only thing that this gear has to proficiently do is not to interfere with the sound achieved on that 90%, and just let it flow from your brain through your fingers and come out from that speaker. Believe me, it takes really high quality gear to provide that, but don’t forget the proportion involved… I said it once in a previous article “What do you want to become, a real bassist or a bass proprietor?
See you on the next!
Check out our top 10 favorite basses on Instagram this week…
Click to follow Bass Musician on Instagram @bassmusicianmag
FEATURED @kilianduartebass @meridian_guitars @adamovicbasses @marleaux_bassguitars @jcrluthier @sandbergguitars @ibanezuk_official @dingwallguitars @torzalguitars @ariaguitars
Check out our top 10 favorite basses on Instagram this week…
Click to follow Bass Musician on Instagram @bassmusicianmag
FEATURED @bacchusguitars @franz.bassguitars @mendesluthieria @ramabass.ok @meridian_guitars @adamovicbasses @shukerbassguitars @fantabass.it @andys_vintage_guitars @valdesbasses
Check out our top 10 favorite basses on Instagram this week…
Click to follow Bass Musician on Instagram @bassmusicianmag
FEATURED @murraykuun_guitars @ja.guitars @combe_luthier @overloadguitars @kevinhidebass @franz.bassguitars @indra_guitars @petercrowdesign @baboomin_bass @jcrluthier
Check out our top 10 favorite basses on Instagram this week…
Click to follow Bass Musician on Instagram @bassmusicianmag
FEATURED @sandbergguitars @benevolent_basses @rayriendeau @olintobass @wonkorbasses @bite.guitars @adamovicbasses @maruszczyk_instruments @skervesenguitars @ramabass.ok
Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
Visit online:
Official Website
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Spotify
Gear News: Fender Unveils Highly Anticipated Vintera III Series
New Music: Oteil Burbridge & Lamar Williams Jr. New Single, Hush
Interview With Bassist Virginia Franks
Nathan East, Echoes of a Lineage – April/May 2026 Issue
Gear Review: Italia Leather Straps
Feb 23 Edition – This Week’s Top 10 Basses on Instagram
Mar 2 Edition – This Week’s Top 10 Basses on Instagram
Mar 9 Edition – This Week’s Top 10 Basses on Instagram
Mar 16 Edition – This Week’s Top 10 Basses on Instagram