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Bass Mishaps

#21
Several years ago, I dropped my bass on an escalator of all things. Not pretty. It was in a cheap gig bag that had the zipper running all the way across the bottom. I guess the peg made a gap in the zipper and the rest was just waiting until I hiked the bag on my shoulder, and ZZZZIIPP!!..SHWWIINNG!!..CAAATHUUNK!!...down went my fretless Ernie Ball 5 with translucent blueburst finish...now with some nice deep escalator "teeth marks" across the bottom. :hmm:
 
#22
cgworkman said:
I went to a local concert with a girlfriend once - and the bassplayer was swinging his bass around his body - well the strap came undone and the bass smacked against the floor. When he picked it up the pups were hanging out.

I laughed my a$$ off.
Click to expand...
Was he doing the Victor Wooten stuff???
If he was, that IS the "best" worst story of the thread:D


If I remember, there was a thread about the death of a MTD 535. With Pictures...
 
#24
During a bass lesson, I notice my teacher's newly acquired nylon string guitar sitting in the corner. Above it, the neck of his seventies P-bass is hanging on the wall, waiting for a nice body to be attached to some day. As we discuss the qualities of the new guitar while both looking at it, the neck comes off the wall, crashing into the side of the guitar...
 
#25
Two stories to share here:

1. For those who don't like lead singers near their rigs.

I'm on stage playing my new '92 P Bass Plus. The singer says he wants to sing a solo w/ the keyboard player only. I say OK and we all get off stage. Well, the bass is resting in its stand. Until the singer takes a step back. His heel steps on the "forks" of the stand that the bass is on. All of a sudden the bass gets catapulted down toward the floor. Luckily, the damage was only cosmetic. Gotta love Fender toughness.

And...

2. For all you gig bag owners out there.

I'm getting ready to head out to church to play one Sunday morning. I bring my Peavey Axcelerator 5 (it's in the Hard Peavey SKB case) outside to put in my Ford F-150. I get to the back but the camper's locked. I leave the bass and go back inside to get the keys. Well on my way back out I remember I haven't fed my dog. So I step back in, get a scoop of food and feed the dog. In my rush, I lock the house, get in the truck, and back up. Right over the bass! Well I get out and look at what's now under the truck. The Headstock side of the case is smashed and looks like someone really big took a bite out of it. I'm still running late so instead of grabbing my P Bass I put the case in the camper and head to church. Once there I open up to find not only my bass unharmed, but still in tune. I joked with everybody there that my cases are built Ford tough.

Lesson learned there: I never buy gig bags. I never did before and I certainly never will after that.
 
#26
i had a old epiphone P bass clone that had a few hard falls on concrete...

I had to walk about a mile for bass lesson at the time, didnt have a gig bag, so i just carried it on NON LOCKING STRAPS, so it was subject to curb droppings, sidewalks, getting nailed by any poles signs..if it was just a jazz bass, i would have defreted it and left it like that and make it a jaco relic: P

insted i repaired all the damage, refinished it in blue marble, and totaly revamping it ( Jazz, Perc, Jazz set up on pups, zebra wood pickguard/head vanner, defretted )
 
#29
Years ago my trusty old Spector fell face forward flat on a concrete floor, resulting in a very nasty crack in the head. But it was still in tune and I continued to play it like that for years, although I was always a bit carefull to keep my face at least two feet away from the head when putting on a new set of strings. I'm still amazed the head never came off.

I finally had a good luthier repair it, about two years ago. But for all those years I never played any other bass that stayed in tune so nicely as my Spector with the cracked head. Even my Ibanez Musicians (weight seems to indicate that these are build from either solid steel or solid concrete) detune a lot more than the old Spector did.
 
#30
I was on a mission trip in the Czech Replubic and I had been out doing something and we had a gig that afternoon. The guy that was helping us set up had taken my cable out of my case(unknown to me). I proceeded to pick up the case and it flopped open sending my Ibanez SR885 crashing to the concrete. It made about a 1/4 ince deep and 3" gash down the body of the side. I felt sick for days....
 
#31
Anton Visser said:
During a bass lesson, I notice my teacher's newly acquired nylon string guitar sitting in the corner. Above it, the neck of his seventies P-bass is hanging on the wall, waiting for a nice body to be attached to some day. As we discuss the qualities of the new guitar while both looking at it, the neck comes off the wall, crashing into the side of the guitar...
Click to expand...

ooh, that's awful, but I gotta admit, I'd be laughing hysterically if I was you!

My buddy was laughing horrendously hard about something and rolled off the couch onto the floor, snapping the neck off his Ovation acoustic in the process....dummy.

When I was first starting to play, I didn't always get the strap onto the horns correctly. A couple times my bass dropped right out from under me midsong, BANG! Luckily, no real damage, Fenders are pretty solid.
 
#32
i like tictacs said:
Well last night while playing at 2AM in my bed with the rest of my house asleep, this huge ass wasp landed right on my shoulder. Bee-phobic as I am, i freaked out, and twisted a little bit. Unbeknownst to me my Corvette is sliding right off the side of the bed and directly onto a glass cup thats sitting on the floor. Hell ensues. Loud noise, me screaming obsceneties and a dead bee. Now theres a little dent on the bottom of my bass down by the straplock, and nobody would notice it except me because I keep my stuff meticulous. So let's hear some stories of basses falling off stands, falling off straps...etc.

Now, to find me an iron...
Click to expand...

I had a wasp land on my bass's neck during a song. Being in front of my entire school (homecoming pep rally which they were cool enough to let my band play an hour at), I didn't want to stop playing, so I quickly transposed the line high up onto the B string (thank goodness for fivers) and sent a :help: to our rythym guitarist. Anyway, the thing simply refused to get off, and I wasn't really willing to smear wasp guts all over the neck of the bass, when I had the idea of holding it front of my amp and blasting it away. That scared it off, and it ended up smeared on a set list :bassist: . Due to all the twisting around to get right in front of my amp, though, my strap got loosened and came off during the next song :rolleyes: . I managed to catch it right before it impacted on the concrete and only dropped a bar from the song! Since then I've never played without a straplock, and I certainly look for wasp nests a lot more carefully!

Moral: The bugs are really in charge and also dislike funk covers. Yes, even of that song.
 
#33
um... yeah said:
Several years ago, I dropped my bass on an escalator of all things. Not pretty. It was in a cheap gig bag that had the zipper running all the way across the bottom. I guess the peg made a gap in the zipper and the rest was just waiting until I hiked the bag on my shoulder, and ZZZZIIPP!!..SHWWIINNG!!..CAAATHUUNK!!...down went my fretless Ernie Ball 5 with translucent blueburst finish...now with some nice deep escalator "teeth marks" across the bottom. :hmm:
Click to expand...

Dang, thats a kick in the balls.
 
#34
modflea said:
2. For all you gig bag owners out there.

I'm getting ready to head out to church to play one Sunday morning. I bring my Peavey Axcelerator 5 (it's in the Hard Peavey SKB case) outside to put in my Ford F-150. I get to the back but the camper's locked. I leave the bass and go back inside to get the keys. Well on my way back out I remember I haven't fed my dog. So I step back in, get a scoop of food and feed the dog. In my rush, I lock the house, get in the truck, and back up. Right over the bass! Well I get out and look at what's now under the truck. The Headstock side of the case is smashed and looks like someone really big took a bite out of it. I'm still running late so instead of grabbing my P Bass I put the case in the camper and head to church. Once there I open up to find not only my bass unharmed, but still in tune. I joked with everybody there that my cases are built Ford tough.

Lesson learned there: I never buy gig bags. I never did before and I certainly never will after that.
Click to expand...


sorry to all you ford lovers out there but "darn fords can't do anything right >.< lol glad your bass survived tho
 
#36
Every bass I've owned so far has suffered a ding here or a ding there. The bad thing is, it's never me that does it. The main culprit is my gf, however, my seven year old niece is up from Texas right now, and while she's been here, my babies have taken the most abuse they ever have and will (until her next visit). Luckily, the main damage was a tiny headstock ding in my Jazz and a small body ding in my Peavey. Sadly, it was the first time my Peavey gave into the abuse. :(
 
#38
i like tictacs said:
Well last night while playing at 2AM in my bed with the rest of my house asleep, this huge ass wasp landed right on my shoulder. Bee-phobic as I am, i freaked out, and twisted a little bit. Unbeknownst to me my Corvette is sliding right off the side of the bed and directly onto a glass cup thats sitting on the floor. Hell ensues. Loud noise, me screaming obsceneties and a dead bee. Now theres a little dent on the bottom of my bass down by the straplock, and nobody would notice it except me because I keep my stuff meticulous. So let's hear some stories of basses falling off stands, falling off straps...etc.

Now, to find me an iron...
Click to expand...
:confused: :eek:
 
#39
Here's a good one for you..

We used to have acid jams way back when.
One time around 1982 I took a bit too much (first bad trip I ever had) and kinda started freaking out a little. In an effort to pull myself together I strapped on my bass and started playing. When I deciced that wasn't working I took off the bass and tossed it out onto the floor in front of me from a standing position of about four feet high.
The bass was a '74 Precision (built like a tank) and survived with nary a scratch (it was a carpeted floor).
To this day my buddies and I are still getting laughs from my 'episode'.
 

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