Gibson also gave Gene a Ripper bass which he used live occasionally. The Gibson Grabber can be seen with Gene on the front cover of the Alive! album. One was a dark red stained, the other black, and both featured a 20 fret neck and a moveable pickup which could slide into bridge or neck positions depending on which tone was needed. In the mid-seventies Gibson became sponsors of KISS and Gene consequently began using a pair of Gibson Grabber basses - in fact, Gene’s Grabber basses were the first two that were produced. Just before the Alive! tour Gene had it painted black, with white binding as can be seen below: Somewhere along the way a Gibson EB-0 pickup and chrome bridge cover were added to the bass, and the scratchplate appears to have been removed. This was the bass that Gene used both live, and to record the first three KISS albums. The LoBue also had a fully exposed 24 fret neck, a stained natural wood finish and a black pickguard. The LoBue bass was the first of Gene’s basses to feature symmetrical horns, a feature that Gene carried forward to several other bass designs including his current bass, The Punisher. This bass was sold in the early seventies, and Gene used the money to have a bass custom built for him by luthier Chalie LoBue.
As a replacement he purchased a Fender Precision bass that had been modified to include a Gibson Humbucker pickup, lending it a rather unique tone. This bass, along with the rest of the bands equipment, was stolen from their rehearsal loft at Mott Street and Canal Street in New York. His first bass guitar was a $50 Segova, which he bought because it resembled his hero Paul McCartney’s violin shaped Höfner bass.īy the time he was playing with Wicked Lester (a band he formed with Steve Coronel, Brooke Ostrander, Tony Zarrella and Paul Stanley, and which was the forerunner to KISS), he was playing a Gibson Epiphone bass. After joining his first band (Lynx, later renamed The Missing Links) in 1967, he switched to bass since the group had no bassist. Inspired to write songs of his own, Gene started out on a secondhand Kent guitar which his mother bought him for $15. Gene simmons’ BassesGene Simmons was exposed to rock ‘n’ roll as a young teenager, mesmerised as many were by The Beatles’ performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964. The modified Charlie LoBue Bass Gibson Grabber Bass
Just before the Alive! tour Gene had it painted black, with white binding as can be seen below: In the mid-seventies Gibson became sponsors of KISS and Gene consequently began using a pair of Gibson Grabber basses - in fact, Gene’s Grabber basses were the first two that were produced. By the time he was playing with Wicked Lester (a band he formed with Steve Coronel, Brooke Ostrander, Tony Zarrella and Paul Stanley, and which was the forerunner to KISS), he was playing a Gibson Epiphone bass. His first bass guitar was a $50 Segova, which he bought because it resembled his hero Paul McCartney’s violin shaped Höfner bass. KISS BASS TRANSCRIPTIONS VOLUME 1 4 GENE SIMMONS’ BASSES Gene Simmons was exposed to rock ‘n’ roll as a young teenager, mesmerised as many were by The Beatles’ performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964.
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