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Gear that made you better

I give my first active bass (Ibanez Ergodyne) the most credit for improving me as a bass player. Once I got that bass I never "needed" a pick again. It opened my eyes to the many techniques out there. I still will grab a pick for metal or rock or if I am too drunk to play (sid style often @ metal shows.)
Funny thing is now after years of trying to get an active to sound like a good ol' passive P bass....... I don't play active any more & still have no need for a pick.
 
I guess I have another thing to add then

My ATK305

Before it I mainly stayed on just the standard punk tuning of DADG
Now every now and again I'll experiment with tunings. What that has done is helped me find the sound of the song instead of looking for just a cool sound.

It's probably hard to understand my crappy explanation but, if you heard me play before my ATK you'll understand....maybe.
 
Fifth.

Back in the day, most manual transmissions had three gears, plus reverse. They added fourth gear, and called it overdrive. It was enough to make you think about driving an automatic! Well, almost.

Anyway, the first time I had a Mazda RX7, and I drove it with brand new radials, I appreciated fifth gear, and the way I could take a curve marked "35 mpg" at 70 or more. Thank God for five speeds, and fifth gear.

That is the gear that made ME better.
 
My SR885. I didn't want a 5 string but it fell in my lap at a price I couldn't ignore. The closer strings, super low action it was set up with, and the added hazard of accidental B-string mud forced me to refine my technique. Since I picked it up my skills have improved greatly.
 
My first set of Moog Taurus Pedals.
They introduced me to the wonderful world of analog synthesizers, and taught me to stop looking at my bass when I played (too busy looking at the pedals & attempting to hit the right notes).
The interaction of playing bass & pedal synthesizer at the same time also helped me learn and appreciate harmony and melody, really helped fill out the 3-piece band I was playing in at the time, and enabled me to learn many more Rush covers than if I had only played bass. I've been playing pedal synthesizers for more than 25 years now, and I picked up my 4th set of Taurus pedals last year - a set on the mighty Moog Taurus 3s. They are the best bass pedals I've ever owned.

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1. EMG 40DC pickups
2. SWR Studio 220 head
3. Flite 103W 3-way cab

The combination of the 40DC's (big upper midrange spike), the SWR head (scooped mids, brittle top end, Fender tone stack), and the PA-like Flite with it's 5" midrange driver, put my technique under a microscope.

The slightest sloppiness in my fretting or damping produced tons of unwanted clack and finger noise. This forced me to really focus on cleaning up my execution.
 
Let's see, I have quite a few

Seymour Duncan SPB3 pick-ups - These gave me a much better sound when I put them in my old Squier P-Bass, after I put them in my confidence skyrocketed becuase I sounded worlds better than I did with the stock Squier pick-ups

Hennessey strap-locks/With an Ernie Ball Strap - I have long arms and I prefer to play lower, so the Ernie Ball strap helped me lower my bass to a comfortable playing level, which improved my right hand/wrist/elbow/shoulder movement (I use a pick, so I use my entire arm to hit the string). The strap locks just helped me avoid the annoying situation where a stap comes off/is about to come off while playing and you either have to stop what youre doing and fix it or hope that it doesnt fall at all

Ernie Ball Power Slinky strings - After bouncing around several different kinds of EB strings, these really gave me the sound and playability I've been looking for for a while

Fender Kingman EAB - This wsa perfect for me, it had the Fender neck and felt very comfortable in my hands, it was perfect for playing when you cant plug into an amp yet want to hear what youre playing, and with the high action it helped strangthen my fingers and forearms so when i went to play my p-bass, scaling and moving around the fretboard was significantly easier. Also, it helped me with my finger-playing, learning how to play with my fingers came much easier on the Kingman that it did on my p-basses. All-in-all, it was probably one of my best investments as a musician, I play it almost everyday. Plus, with the built-in tuner, my pitch recognition became such better, now I don't even need a tuner that much anymore because I can hear where I need to be.

that's about it for equipment, at least the things I can think of off the top of my head
 
I want so badly to start using GarageBand but I can't figure it out for the life of me...can you recommend anything?

What exactly has you hung up?

As far as learning how it works, I would recommend this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/GaragebandandBeyond/videos

You'll probably be more interested in his early videos as they are more basic but this guy is a gold mine for Garageband tips.
 
...And affordable electronic tuners.

I was waiting for someone to finally mention TUNERS!

Us old farts remember the days before electronic tuners. Life was miserable...tuning to a tuning fork sucks. Especially if your intonation was off.

(As proof, try listening to some of the early Grateful Dead shows. They'll play a song, spend the next 15 minutes retuning,start the next song, and STILL be out of tune.)

Even in the 90's I still encountered some guitarists who insisted that they could tune by ear better than that-there new-fangled tuner. Yeah right buddy... go drop some more acid and listen to those early Dead concerts....
 

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