It was 1976 when I bought my first bass. I was just a kid growing up in a small island fishing community in Alaska about 8 hours by boat from the nearest city. (I never saw a traffic light until I was 18 years old). We didn't have a music store, so I went to the nearest thing I could think of, a furniture store, and told them some friends of mine wanted to start a band and they wanted me to play bass, and I asked if they could sell me one. They said maybe and told me to come back next week.
Meanwhile, they called Seattle and a week later they were showing me magazine like pictures of basses and telling me prices. I gave them my savings from my paper route and chose a Fender Jazz with an ash body, maple fingerboard, white pick guard, blocks and binding. Why? I thought it looked cool and I liked jazz and thought if it had "jazz" in the name, I could use it for that too.
However, when it arrived, my friends made fun of me for ordering a bass named after a "car part."
I immediately had buyer's remorse.
They thought I should have bought a Gibson SG like the other bass player in our town had.
I shook it off immediately though. I didn't care though, the bass looked even better in person than it did in the picture, so I kept it. I have it still to this day in fact.
Anyway, although I read that others were replacing their bridges, I didn't do it. The only change I wanted to make to my bass was to remove the frets like Jaco!
Anyway, I digress.
Thanks for the insights on Tom Barney's bass with this bridge.
