List Your Bass Malfunctions!

[THE DANiMAL]

Bad jacks, bent double stacks, broken ground wires from the battery box. That's about it.

 

[giacomini]

Once I thought I was deemed to have basses with bad jacks... only to find years later that I had only a bad cable (there was a point in my bassist life when I bought more basses than cables)

And I still have that cable!

 

[Big Boss]

Scratchy pots and a warped neck.

 

[Lee H]

my most common malfunction is operator error

 

[PaulExcellent]

I've had a few with different instruments, but stringed ones are always fun to remember.

My 'first' bass and it's broken bridge from the store, the pickups dying on the P-Bass about the 6th day I had it, the input jack on ThunderCougarFalconBird, and the tuning head falling off my Ministar Basstar while trying out to play with a group in Panama while on vacation.

Guess who didn't get the spot...

My favorite one was taking off my new guitar's back plate to change the strings and finding a pair of rusted strings inside it.
-_-
(The guitar was a used Peavey Foundation that I got in Guitar Center. Lovely quality control.)

 

[Dellers]

The bridge pickup on my Marcus Miller signature bass is screwed. Really thin and weird sounding with no low end, and the bass cannot sound like a J now. Neck pickup sounds fine soloed though, but that doesn't get me a Jazz sound. Don't really have the money to buy new pickups etc. now, so I haven't really used the bass for a couple of years. I will fix it eventually, cause it's a great bass.

 

[mcnach]

I'll play, here goes:

Broken G strings from being a noob trying to learn slap-pop.
Broken other strings from buying defective strings.
Strings that come DOA.
Tuners that lose their bushing
Tuners that break a gear-tooth
Tuners that shear off their alignment screw
Tuners that get plain broke-off
String retainer screws that pull out.
Splitting headstocks.
Cracked nuts
Nuts that shift to the side from glue failure and being on a Kramer hockey-stick neck
Pull-up fingerboard from truss rod maladjustment.
Twisted neck
Ski-ramp neck
Stripped trusses
Broken trusses
Raised frets
Stripped neck bolt (from the factory)
Neck pockets too wide/narrow.
Rattling pickguard (stripped or non-existant screws)
Broken pickup mounting ring (old EB-O)
Stripped pickup mounting screws (pickup wont stay down)
Missing or failed foam/springs (pickup wont come up)
Glue failure on pickup magnet letting magnet pop-off (Dimarzio model P during middle of a recording session)
Vanishing bridge adjustment screws
scratchy pots and or jacks
worn-out side mount jacks
Broken connections
Loose pots
Defective preamps that cause overnight battery drain.
Leaky "exploded" batteries
Strap-lock failure (schaller and dunlop both)
Stripped/pulled strap button.

And these are primarily from basses that I've owned. I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head.

Remind me never to lend you a bass!

 

[MultiScaleMale]

Does getting my hoodie string tangled in my guitar strap when I did an around the world count? That's had one to recover from. My only real malfunction that I can remember would have to be broken strings when I had a Steinberger with a TransTrem. They broke at the ball end at the bridge.

 

[mcnach]

All I've had are bad pots...once during a gig (tone control went first time I used it, then whilst trying to sort it out I stripped the screws, so ) and once I don't know when (had a slightly dodgy volume pot on my mustang - it'd work 95% of the time but it'd suddenly go silent, just touching it would sort it out...but the other day I got it out to try it out having not played it for years and if anything it was worse - WD40 didn't help either, looks like it needs a new pot or some re-soldering ...)

EDIT: I'm no good with electronics, and I seem to strip screws almost every time I tighten them...

Wd40 is not a good idea. It may help for a moment, but it will ensure you get a sticky mess you will not be able to fix.
Use electrical contact cleaner instead. Usually it's just isopropanol, it cleans and evaporates leaving no residue behind.

 

[Batmensch]

Haven't owned a lot of basses in my lifetime, the only problem bass I ever recall is a Hondo Ric copy with a badly bowed neck. Got rid of it fairly quickly because of it (it was a biotch to play) , which is a shame because it was really a nicely built bass otherwise. The thing is, I didn't know about adjusting the truss rod at the time, and I sometimes wonder if I had just gotten it properly setup ...
Oh, and I almost forgot, an EB3-L with the infamous dead spot on the G string, and a slightly iffy 4-way switch.
That's about it.

 

[Rickenbassist]

Ive not had many malfunctions but the ones I've had have been very difficult to deal with.

Stripped truss rod nut - Hofner HCT 500/1

Broken nut (and half-assedly tried to fix from the factory)- Squier Classic Vibe 50's PBass LPB

Broken truss rod right out of the box - Squier Vintage Modified P-Bass

And the 60 cycle hum that comes from my Sting P when I'm recording digitally. For some reason it doesn't really manifest itself when played live. Weird.

 

[ksandvik]

Wd40 is not a good idea. It may help for a moment, but it will ensure you get a sticky mess you will not be able to fix.
Use electrical contact cleaner instead. Usually it's just isopropanol, it cleans and evaporates leaving no residue behind.

Yes and with very old pots and switches only solution is to replace them.

 

[GreenWithEnvy]

I'm trying to correct a malfunction, replacing a p-bass pick-up on a Fender "hot rod". The fender site lists two separate inventory numbers for the "neck" pick-up and the "middle" pick-up. Huh? Is that common, that the two pieces of the pick-up would be different from each other in some way?