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Do you hang on to your basses for sentimental value

Hi everybody,
If you just take a look at my profile, you'll find there are 15 basses now and 30 gone.

So I do trade.

But never with instrument presented to me. Each and every bass I traded, or that will be traded, was bought by myself.

I mean:
In the 15 present basses, there are:
Yamaha RBX350 (very first bass: I'll never part ways with... I'm a - enthusiast only - player and a - enthusiast only - athlet but this means I'm superstitious and letting first instrument go leads to misfortune);
Yamaha Attitude Special (my brother's);
Yamaha BBN5 (my brother's);
Fender Precision jr. (my son's);
Eko Florence Acoustic (presented me by my brother).

The best basses (money & technical value) are not mentioned: they can go at any time if only an incoming trouble demands liquidity.
Look: I'm parting ways with my wife. But I'll never let the guitar she presented to me, should it be the one and only thing I'll keep (son's gonna get usually assigned to moms)

Cheers,
Wallace
 
I'm quite sentimental. I will never, ever sell my first bass. It started life as a cheap Peavey P-bass copy.

I ended up having rather different tonal tastes, and hated the way it sounded, so it sat unused for years. But I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. It's my first bass, and it was a Christmas gift. Eventually I wanted to be able to use it, so I routed out the body to put a Rickenbacker high gain pickup in, and put a badass2 bridge on, and then strung with the bottom four strings of a five string set, tuning to BEAD. I intend on modding it further, with a couple more pickups. Also I want to replace the stock tuners with lollipop style tuners, if they'll fit.

I like it much better now.
 
... kinda depends. A few instruments will be passed along through my will (as noted by reasons above) ... a couple I hang onto because they are collectors times and when the market heats-up again I'll sell them ... the rest are "for sale" at all times. The Deal around here is Do What You Want ... but remain Cash Neutral.
 
Yes. I have an 08 SX 4 string jazz copy. It was only 150 bucks. It doesn't seem like much on the surface. It has the best feel though...very easy to play after a good setup. Sounds great stock too. I was going to sell it, but then I recorded a tune with it recently and determined I'd be an idiot to sell it.

My "better" basses just sit around now
 
definitely, to my detriment

i had this dream bass, it was a Precision in my local music shop and I had that wayne's world "she will be mine" thing with it. I saved up, doing as much as possible every day for the summer (i was pretty young) and raised the money to buy it. Loved it, sounded exactly how I wanted it to, was just my baby, the first proper bass I owned.

The bridge was messed up on it though, as were the pickups. I brought it back, they fixed it, two weeks later it was gone again. Brought back, fixed it, 3 weeks gone again. At this point, any person in their right mind would have told the music shop that it isnt working, they want their money back. But I couldnt do it and I still have it, and it still breaks once every month or so. Sigh.

it's amazing though
 
I have sold/traded several basses and miss all of them for one reason or another. I now have 5 and will hang on to 'em. Two were gifts, one was my main 'gigging bass' for years and is really only valuable to me. One I just built out of parts and sounds better than the rest (right now) and one has been my 'church bass' for the last 15 years. (I traded a nicely restored 1968 Ric 4001 for this one, a MIJ Precision in my avatar. You should have seen the face on the guy at the music store...I just REALLY didn't like the neck on the Ric...or the sound.)
 
GAS is a cruel mistress. I buy and sell basses all the time, although not as much as I used to.

There is one, however, that I don't intend to ever get rid of. During a dark and low-income period of my life, some of my family members bought me an Essex Jazz bass. That bass has been played in churches and gigged in clubs quite a bit. I have some boutique instruments now, but when I want to play a four-stringer, I still reach for the Essex.
 
So not to highjack this thread or anything, but let me pose this question/scenario:

Lots of times if I go see local bands in my area, I will see someone that plays in a band, that is technically an extremely good player, but they don't have the passion or the heart in it, and it comes across. On the flip side, I will see someone who's maybe not technically nearly as good, but has passion and plays with their heart on their sleeve.

Here's my question, do you think that these two types of people correlate to the two types of people that hold on to basses (or instruments in general) for sentimental reasons, and those that just see them as a tool? As in, the people that have the passion, have a sentimental connection to their instrument, and vice versa? I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything, and I hope I don't offend anyone here, I'm just curious is all.

Me personally, I do have sentimental instruments. I have my first student trombone that got me into music in the first place, that holds a very sentimental place in my heart. The first bass I bought, the first bass I built (well assembled is more like it), my Grandpa's old acoustic and banjo, things like that. I do have some that don't hold as much of a sentimental place that I might be willing to part with, but at the same time, they fill a need, so unless I'm upgrading, they're not going anywhere.