NEWS

Gigi Zimmer (Chickabass)

By: Dino Monoxelos

One thing that I’ve learned in my forty-something years of being a professional bass player is that if you wait around for your phone to ring, you’re gonna be waiting for quite a while. You have to make things happen FOR you and not wait for things to happen TO you. Especially as an up-and-coming bassist, and even more specifically in a music industry jungle like Los Angeles.

Today, I find a lot of up-and-coming players are branching out into creating opportunities for themselves, not just as bass players, but in so many different aspects of the music industry. And in Gigi’s case, producer and engineer, and then some.

How often do you come across a killer bass player and vocalist, who plays several various styles and genres, but is also a world-class engineer who works in some of LA’s most renowned studios? Meet Gigi Zimmer, aka Chickabass! Oh yeah… she’s also an Ampeg artist who’s been using Ampeg^® SVT^® amps and cabs since day one. Gigi is just as at home on stage, standing in front of an SVT rig as she is in the studio sitting behind a mixing console. Once again proving that making things happen will eventually lead to places other than sitting waiting for your phone to ring.

Now I would be remiss if I didn’t credit “how” I met Gigi because let’s face it, there are a lot of, and I mean A LOT of great musicians, bassists, players, producers, engineers, and more, in and around Los Angeles. But this is where making things happen, and especially networking yourself, comes into play, as in Gigi’s case.

Long story made even longer…

Enter the SVT Suite that Ampeg launched a few years ago. This is an all-Ampeg plugin that we developed to help move Ampeg into the digital realm of recording and DAWs. And I must say it does it very well.

Now, enter a good friend of mine, Mr. Daniel Liston Keller, who has been in the industry as long as I have (if not longer) and has just about as extensive a list of producers, engineers, FOH engineers, and musicians as I do bass players. Daniel now runs his own company, appropriately named Get It In Writing. Now enter Ampeg, celebrating its 75th Anniversary. You see where this is going, right…?

I reached out to Daniel about the possibility of working together to help get SVT Suite into the hands of people he knows who otherwise wouldn’t think to look at Ampeg as a solution to their bass amp plugin needs. All this is tied into the 75th anniversary celebration and all. Through Daniel’s wisdom and contacts in the studio and live sound world, he eventually puts me in contact with Gigi Zimmer. Who is not only already an accomplished producer and engineer, working with places like Atlantic Records, and in some of the best studios around LA, but she’s also a killer bass player and singer for her own projects. It was a win-win-win all around. Gigi is the epitome of making things happen instead of waiting around for the phone to ring for a gig, and networking all along as well.

Check out Gigi as she talks with us about her first experience as an Ampeg player, right up to her experience with the SVT Suite in the studio, and beyond into the future of bass amplification.

Dino has spent over 25 years in the Ampeg world conducting seminars and clinics all over the globe. He’s also the author of four instructional bass books by Mel Bay and his own publishing company, MonoTunes Music.  His favorite bass to play is his MTD 534-24.