Have you ever seen a 13-foot, 16-bass wielding, massive piece of low end art that is actually playable by multiple bassists? You’re about to. Italian artist Marco Menin has just unveiled his bass masterpiece titled “Bass Giant.”  

From Marco: 

The genesis of my Bass Giant begins two years ago, as some kind of nomad, I’m always on the move between my different homes in the North and Center Italy. Being a passionate bass player, at some point I decided to collect multiple substitute basses and have them ready in all my favorite destinations, so that I wouldn’t bring my number one guy everywhere with the risk of harming it. In the end I collected so many, that I almost found one in my shower, at that point I understood I overdid it! Although that many, the number was still not enough for what I had in mind: an interactive musical art installation, a human “totem” figure made of electric bass guitars which could be played and performed on by bass guitarists only, explicitly not just guitarists! And so I bought even more used basses and while I was restoring them I also realized I wanted to bring in tattoo artists and other performers to create an art show.  

In the end, of all the people I invited, just four remained, but being strong of my ideals, artistic knowledge and passion to achieve the end of my project, I ploughed through the adversities and brought it to fruition. Nonetheless I still honored those four people that stayed by my side.

In my day job I work at a professional distribution for major live music shows and that’s where I gathered more material to build my Giant: quarter inch cables for the hair, wallstands, used shoulder belts, used pick guards, scraps from more used basses, all finally welded to the piece. Hence from all that, the “Gigante Basso” was born. The baddest, tallest, for bassists only, unique in the world iconographic art piece.

Technical specifications:

The “Bass Giant’’ is an interactive sculpture which offers the possibility to multiple bass guitarists to perform at the same time. It carries a programmable audio system, equipped with USB flash drive or Bluetooth®, that can playback any track while the bassists are performing. The bearing structure, built with scaffolding pipes and boxed sheet metal pipes, is over 13ft high (4m) and 237lbs (130kg). The base structure is constructed by two multilayer modular comb parts in birch wood, with customizable size feet and two boat tie rods for maximum stability. 

The whole sculpture comes with LED lighting, except the laser core in the “chest” which flows between two independent amplifiers positioned on the belly and the face of the Giant.

Only one power cable is visible since all the other cable mass is hidden on the back of the Giant.

The whole piece is built of fourteen hand decorated bass guitars and other hand made components.

The “Gigante Basso” can be assembled and disassembled in a day tops and must be sheltered by the elements because of the sensitivity of wood and other components.