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Post your "Beater" bass - a thread for the Mutt's

#21
Flippy said:
What if my beater is also the main bass? :D
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My main is my beater!

one pup + two pots a "plug in and play nobrainer" she rocks! :bassist:

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bucephylus said:
But, all a player really needs is one good bass.
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yeah but sometimes my other girls can use a good beating too :D :bassist:

(not talking about women these are treated with respect :))

may your beaters be with you

Wise(b)ass
 
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#22
How about a whole couch full of SX "beater basses" (I call them "bar basses")?

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Except for the fretless 6 string SX in the center that I converted with an ebony fretless fingerboard that is my baby and I'd never put her in an unpadded gig bag!
My first bar bass was the one in the front row with the sort of Fender-shaped (bandsaw) headstock. I STILL love that bass! Think it was $99 new back then.
Also note top row right with weird shaped headstock cost me $10 from a guy I bought some pickups from.
 
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#24
Yea, I gots me a few beaters.....
1988 Warmoth neck and a mid 2000's alder body. Fender '62 pups and Gotoh 201 bridge.
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1984 Squier neck and an '85 Squier body with Geezers and flats
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I will throw this one in here too as I don't care if it gets dings and such as I want it to get beat up asap. Being tossed down and around an airport might bother me, but here it is. 2007 AVRI '62 Jazz. It's my main blues gig bass.
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There all beaters and I play them all about equally.......three cheers for beaten basses!
 
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#28
As one might guess from my musical taste I tend to rough-house all my basses. By all, I mean my two plus my acoustic, but anyway... I've got a really cheapo Samick Corsair 5 stringer that I don't even have at my buddies' place right now that I would consider my true "beater." It was like $180 new, maybe worth ~$50-80 now. If that. I have that one tuned E-C and it's definitely been through hell. High school winter performance ensemble being the epitome of that. Tossed around by high school percussionists, accidentally smacked against the keyboard that played next to me in the show more than once, I'm pretty impressed with how clean it actually still looks.

My main bass isn't quite "beater" quality necessarily; it's a fairly new (very new to me) Epiphone Thunderbird IV with the pickups out of a Epi T-Bird Pro-IV (still passive though). While I wouldn't exactly let it be handled roughly by anyone but myself, I'm also not afraid to go hard with it. At the end of the day basses are chunks of wood and tend to be pretty solid, and those little dings and scratches just look cool at little-to-no expense in actual quality of the instrument. My only fear is the headstock... Heard those can be delicate on birds and I definitely believe it.
 
#32
My beater is my Chris Squire signature 4001CS Rickenbacker I bought new in 1992. Within 2 years the finish went weird, so I never took much care of it. I've put somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 hours on it. I retired it last year when I sold all my other gear and got 2 new(ish) 4001v63s, which are both immaculate. I still pull out the 4001CS every once in a while for old times sake.

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#34
Deleted member 264575 said:
My beater is my Chris Squire signature 4001CS Rickenbacker I bought new in 1992. Within 2 years the finish went weird, so I never took much care of it. I've put somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 hours on it. I retired it last year when I sold all my other gear and got 2 new(ish) 4001v63s, which are both immaculate. I still pull out the 4001CS every once in a while for old times sake.

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I always love seeing this specific bass pop in in threads. I'm glad you decided against refinishing it.
 
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#36
My beater began life as an SX SJB-62 fretless before I replaced everything but the original body (i.e. just the wood) and the original neck plate. I replaced everything else on bass, with the vast majority of parts being bought used here on TB over the course of a few years. It was an extremely UN-cost effective a project as you can imagine but unless someone knows what they're looking at most people would never know how heavily modified it is. It's a little heavy and the neck feel is a lot chunkier than a typical Jazz bass neck, but it sounds fantastic and is a real "wolf in sheep's clothing" kind of bass.

I call it my beater even though it's actually in excellent condition rather than in typical "beater" condition.

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EDIT: May as well list out the mods:
- Hipshot A bridge
- Nordstrand NJS5 pickups
- WD Music 4-ply tort pickguard
- Audere 4-band preamp
- Ernie Ball Super Lock strap locks
- Hipshot Ultralite tuners
- Fender Deluxe string tree
- Fretted neck from another SJB-62
- Side jack cut into body and jack plate mounted
- Bone nut
- Fender Jazz control plate
- All assembly done by a local luthier/builder

Like I said above, very UN cost-effective! The only parts remaining from the original bass are the body itself (just the wood) and the neck plate. :D
 
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