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Does skill = your bass??

#82
None of the people I play with make disparaging comments about each other's gear - unless someone has equipment that adversely affects the band's overall quality. Never for having nice gear - that calls for compliments.

On a related note:
The lead guitarist in one of my bands has a '72 Strat that he loves like a child. He only owns one other guitar, but the Strat is used 95% of the time. It goes out of tune after about ONE song, and we often play stretches of unbroken music with extended jams and segues. So quite often at gigs, we will wind it down from a monster power jam to some quieter mood piece, and he is so far out of tune that it's often a 1/2 step out. It wrecks the mood, the sound and the song, and sometimes people will leave the dance floor when it sounds so bad.

And I still have a hard time saying anything to him about it because it's his baby. I've tried gentle suggestions, but to no avail. I should buy him a gift certificate at the local setup master's shop....
 
#83
My bass equipment is insured for more than my 2007 Mustang GT convertable... and I kinda suck!:crying:

I mean.. I can learn almost anything and play some pretty complicated cover tunes, but after 20 years of playing bass.... theory-wise I stink.

The quality of one's gear generally shows (im my case anyways!) that they have more money than brains IMO.:hiding:

"Less eBay, more Mel Bay" should be tattooed on my forehead!;)
 
#84
heh, i've only been playing slightly over a year and probably have spent more than $1500 on my current amp/cab and $2000 on basses (I have 5...), maybe another $300 for effects, cables, and etc. I paid for it all with my own money so I don't care what anyone else has to say about it. I'm done buying stuff for now though, I sorta have all the things I wanted from the start, crest amp, tube pre, and a walnut neck thru bass.

I can definitely see someone being jealous, but I have one thing to say about that...



:D
 
#85
ivyman said:
im twelve years old and i have a jaguar every bassist and guitarist in the school is jealous except the bass teacher who has a modded five string american jazz a year 11 kid as an american presicion but stills prefers my jag for looks. The school bass is an olp so that doesnt match it. I get the same comments since about how its a waste of money and i am too young since im in year 7 but it took me six months of getting up early and delivering papers two afford my jag and since im in australia itl probably take just as long to get enough for a good amp.
Click to expand...

You may as well just smash your keyboard, the end result would be about the same.
 
#86
Folks, the sound is in the PLAYER, not the bass. (although its also somewhat in the hands of the recording engineer or sound man.)

As a source on that, I'll turn your attention to the movie "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." If you haven't seen it, you gotta. All about the motown session players, and Jamerson in particular. They talk about a time when somebody brought in another bass (not Jamerson's Funk Machine) that sounded awful. Jamerson picked it up and it sounded great.

Jamerson used an off-the-shelf P bass. Osborn used an off-the-shelf J bass. How good a bass do you need?
 
#87
The only thing worse than gear snobbery is anti-gear snobbery. If someone can afford a $9,000 Fodera Imperial with just about every option I could ever dream of but can't play as good as me, so what. I'd be asking him to play his bass a lot but hey, if he can afford it then it's his every right to go out an buy one.

There's not enough time in a life span to argue and fight over stupid stuff like this. It sounds like this guy has some major insecurity issues, not just about his gear but his playing also. If I knew I could out shred someone who owned a $4,000 Sadowsky NYC with a $300 Squier then I'd be up there on stage right next to the guy playing right along. Just tell this guy to shut up and play! Sounds like the guy's got ovaries.
 
#89
j.a.e.r.i.p said:
My friend and fellow bass player always gives me crap because i play a mexi-jazz with some mods. At a party that both of our bands were playing he told me to borrow his bass, and that i'd love it. Well after the first song i handed the 2008 Standard Jazz (most of which, i loved, hated his though, didn't like the neck, and too bright) back to him and told him i wanted to use my bass, and that i couldn't stand this thing. I guess i like my bass better because i bought it, i modded it, i've played it for a couple years, and his bass was a brand new $1200 bass bought by his parents haha
Click to expand...

you also put your heart into your bass. Not that no talent a$$-clown of a bass guitar. MIM's TILL DEATH DO US PART!

alos not to hijack the thread or anything but, I bought my MIM-J and the neck is now fubar (different story), my parents are paying for a replacement. Now my family can live very comfortably, so should I use this to my advantage? I feel like I'll be a cocky ******* if I have a top-of-the-line amp since I've only been playing a year, but I (myself) can afford it.
 
#90
So I'm a 13 year old kid. I've been playing for 6 years. Most of the guys I know my age play samicks and squires. I have a 71' Jazz and a Warwick Corvette fretless. I dabble a little on clarinet and mandolin. Maybe I don't deserve the gear I have, but the majority of what I play is bebop and fusion jazz, sometimes I need to go fretless. Other times, those guitarists on the samicks and squires want me in their hard rock band, and that's when the jazz really shines.
 
#93
The issues are all his, walk away and remain friends.

On the flip side, when I was your age, I scraped and skimed to buy gear. I remember having to go in with a few other players to get a set of Moog pedals and even then it was used and held together by duck tape. It pissed us off to see a guy in school just go out a get them brand new as well as any bass he wanted, when he could barely play. But when it came down to it, we gigged and he didn't, so what does it matter?

His equipment (or personality) shouldn't hold you back.
 
#96
To get back into the OP topic, if my gear equaled my talent (or the other way around), then I'd be the combination of Lee Sklar, Mike Porcaro (TOTO), Mike Brignardelo (GIANT), Randy Coven, Tom Bowlus, Crusader (and other notable TBers) (I own a bass of each and every one of them). Oh boy, it would be great

Then the alarm went off :mad: and I just woke up :confused: realizing I'm just another bass player in love with bass:hyper::hyper::hyper:
 
#98
My gear is far above my playing skills.
However I enjoy A LOT owning the stuff I have. I work hard the whole year and owning basses is probably one of my biggest pleasures, so I really don`t care.

I always see it this way: do you have to be Michael Schumacher to drive a Ferrari ?
 
#100
Gear doesn't equal player at all. I had someone buy an SX fretless off of me once. I told him that I had gigged often with it (and successfully so), and he told me about his multiple >$1,000 basses and stopped just short of calling me a low rank amateur for having played a >$300 bass live. He visibly couldn't play the bass in tune when trying it out, came up with a list of problems with the bass, then lowballed me. I ended up giving him the bass, because what he shortchanged me in cash, he gave me in a boost of confidence that I can outplay many of these snobs. Quite frankly, he's lucky I didn't show him how to play the bass, and I'm not even nearly the greatest player out there.


Moral of the story, expensive gear can certainly have desirable performance characteristics over lower cost basses, but if for one second you think the price tag on the gear equals the quality of the player, you'd better be ready when David comes along and takes you down with his pawnshop slingshot.
 

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