My name is Bert Gerecht and I am a Bassoholic...

...which is not as bad as it sounds. I know many who suffer from the same symptoms: You get itchy hearing music, you get a strong cause of GAS (Gear Aquisition Syndrome) which makes you shell out loads of money for funny instruments and related stuff... You live in a world of low noises which you cannot escape from... 

Some of you might know me from MR. BASSMAN. I was pissed-off from my boring music studies, and thought I should make humankind happy with bassic stuff. So I rented a shop in the Bornheimer Landwehr in Frankfurt-Bornheim, put a few basses in the window and started on August 1st, 1980.

It picked up real fast, many bass players visited the shop, after one year I had four co-workers and rented the upper floor to serve as stock room and workshop. Slowly it became WORK! More than I had thought... I got up early and late at night I was still going... maybe I should have rather become a school teacher?

Some time later I decided to write a bass book. From this, the idea for a Bass Magazine arose.  I launched a publishing company and put out the first bass magazine, DER RASENDE BASS-BOTE. I started writing for other magazines as well. I did interview with interesting bass players and got a lot of gear to review. Life was good...!

I was in a blues band and played lots of gigs. As the day only had 24 hours, I sold the shop to my partners to have more time for music and journalism. 

When this attack was over, I became a music producer. I founded the label HOT WIRE RECORDS to make humankind happy with BASS-TALK and many more bass-heavy CDs. But then suddenly there came the internet, and everything changed.. So I experienced the demise of the CD and the raise of downloads and online shops and lost a lot of dough in the process... In late 1999 I was desperately looking for something new to do. I needed to work on something that was not as easy to copy and to pass on for free.

I got back to where I started in 1980 at MR.BASSMAN: building high-class bass guitars to customer´s specs! 

So it was goodbye, Hot Wire Records, but hello, Hot Wire Bass!

Each Hot Wire Bass is a handmade original.