Rolling Stone

 
 

Rolling Stone Magazine

 

  • Article Title

  • Magazine

  • Country

  • Issue

  • Date

  • Pages

  • Rick Nielsen: no cheap collector

  • Rolling Stone Magazine

  • USA

  • Issue No. 285

  • February 22, 1979

  • 54-57

Rick Nielsen is pictured with some of the guitars in his collection. Included in the photo are the Hamer Quad 12-string bass which had been modified from the natural finish to transparent black, the Alembic 8-string bass and a Rickenbacker 4-string bass. About his guitar collection Nielsen stated, “It’s almost like traveling to different cities with art,” he says, adjusting his bow tie. “You know, like bringing King Tut to America. Only my guitars are better looking than King Tut.”

Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick with some of the many guitars in his collection, including the Hamer Quad 12-string bass and the Alembic 8-string bass.

The February 7, 1980 issue of Rolling Stone includes their “Sonic Boom” section, which is a guide to musical instruments. An interview with Paul Hamer and Jol Dantzig of Hamer Guitars includes a discussion of the 12-string bass.

“Not even Nielsen, though, has given them as much trouble as Cheap trick’s Tom Petersson, who asked them to make a twelve-string bass. “Our immediate response was, ‘No way!’” says Dantzig. “We thought that would be too many strings, that there would be too much tension on the neck,” But after an overzealous fan hung from the neck of a ten-string bass Hamer had made as a compromise and caused no damage to it, they went full speed ahead with the twelve-string.

Of course, not just any twelve-string bass would do. Now Petersson and band wanted a quadrophonic twelve-string bass, one with a miniature console built into it that would allow each set of strings to be placed anywhere in the quad mix.

”The more ideas get kicked around, the more out of control things can get,” says Dantzig, who came through for Petersson. “It gets to the point where people start suggesting things just to top themselves. And then we have to go and make them!””
 

The June 14, 1979 issue of Rolling Stone featured Cheap Trick on the front cover. Most of the article is about the band’s exploits in Japan. A single sentence mentions the 12-string bass: “Over to the left, Tom Petersson hunches studiously over his twelve-string bass, occasionally looking up to pose for a snapshot.”