eric's gear page

>Who the fuck is Eric Charles?

I started playing bass in metal bands back in Pennsylvania, and eventually found my way out west. I spent a good bit of time with CornerTable Productions, in Sonora, CA before moving north (which was actually a bit of "giving up on California." I would have finished college sooner if I'd maintained residency, but that state was not my home). I am currently in a gigging Seattle band called ubik. that appears to be the love of my life. I never use guitars (never learned, never cared), and after years of playing my normal basses with odd effects for another group (Negative Entropy Squared, who are currently being kind of neglected), I made myself a "lead bass," my custom tenor that I use for live shows along with what may or may not be the largest pedalboard in Seattle.

> What is ubik.?

ubik. (spelled lower case, preferably in a fixed-width system font, followed by a period) is the independent Seattle band that I play "lead bass" for. There aren't any guitars in ubik., simply because they aren't needed-- two basses, drums, and vocals (also well effected and realtime controlled) are as dense and busy as any band needs to be, really (and besides-- most people assume I'm playing a guitar, anyway... most people don't even notice it's a bass). We play around town constantly, and at the time of this writing (August 2008) we are just about to release our first album.

>Why do I care?

Therein lies the rub, eh? My problem with a lot of review sites is that anyone posts there, and they post fairly anonymously-- it's impossible to tell what their credentials are (or might be), or if they're writing about a pedal they tried at Guitar Center once, or even if they've tried it at all. I write about pedals that I know, have owned, and a lot of the time, have used for years (or, similarly, tried to integrate into my setup and had them fail miserably). I am frustrated, when I want to buy a pedal, that all sound examples are of somebody playing a wanky blues guitar... which tells me nothing about how a pedal will work for me. I always need more information than I can get out of the pedal enthusiasts that always seem to be in blues-rock cover bands, or "praise and worship" groups that have a weekly (sunday) gig. So I write what weirdo like me appreciates about this gear... it seems to be an unfilled niche.