It was Sunday, the last day of the Charlotte Guitar show and I was preparing to pack up the booth and load the truck. Lee walks over and lays an Aria XX case on the table and says, "We got this from Greg" and tells me the price. Greg, by the way is the fine gentleman that bought Atlanta Vintage Guitars (Frank's old place), so I knew we were dealing with a fellow Son of the South and had no worries. I flipped the case open and muttered, "That ain't no Aria. It's a Kramer". Lee just shrugged and walked off to look for any other last minute deals he could score and I went back to my packing. Fast forward to the moment when I had this bass detailed, cleaned and restrung. The more I fooled with it, the more I wanted to play it. I have been going through a King's X phase in the last few weeks and it struck me that I might be able to get my Dug Pinick on with this thing so instead of plugging it into my SWR rig, I ran it through a 90's Yamaha combo that I knew would "dirty up" nicely. Simply put, this bass sounded like a double chainsaw through that amp and I had a good few minutes trying to pull a few songs off before my dear wife, God love her, just could not take another second and stomped down the stairs and threatened me with torturous forms of being "cut off" if I did not cease and desist immediately. Well, since we've been together for about 27 years, I hammered out the intro to "She" by KISS while staring directly at her and smiling. In my mind, I was letting her know who the hell stands up to pee around here, but in her highly female mind, I was daring her to set herself on fire and jump off a cliff after hitting the lottery. So now it's just me, this bass and a remote control to the TV in the basement, but I don't care. I'd rather play bass than cuddle at my age...