Rex Brown, best known as the bass player for Pantera, has collaborated with Gibson to develop a new signature Thunderbird bass guitar.
The Rex Brown Thunderbird has been in the making for nearly two and a half years. It is also the metal bass titan’s first collaboration with Gibson. The bass features a mahogany body and mahogany neck with a slimmer-than-usual profile. Furthermore, it boasts a 34″ scale and a 12″ radius rosewood fretboard with 20 Medium Jumbo frets.
Things become a little more interesting from there.
On the four-string bass, for example, the bass uses a pair of “Rexbucker” Thunderbird pickups, which are controlled by two volume knobs and a master tone knob with a push/pull active/passive switch.
Meanwhile, the hardware is all gold (a nice contrast to the ebony finish) and includes a Hipshot bass bridge, Graph Tech nut, and Hipshot Mini-Clover tuners with a metal-friendly Drop D Xtender.
The four-string bass features Brown’s autograph on the truss rod cover, a self-portrait sketch of Brown on the backplate, and ‘R.B.’-stamped pickup covers, among other unique features.
“Before meeting up in Nashville for a tour of the Gibson factory, I had the opportunity to meet the entire Gibson staff,” Brown said in a press release. “On that day, Caesar Gueikian (Gibson’s Brand President) and I formed a close bond that I can only characterize as long-lost brothers. He invited me to his house that night, and we played music late.”
The Gibson Rex Brown signature Thunderbird is now available for $2,799.
Brown is the second hard-rock A-lister to be honored with a signature Thunderbird bass this year, following the Gibson Gene Simmons G2 Thunderbird, which was unveiled in April.
Visit Gibson for more information about the bass.
