The First Bass Nostalgia Thread

[wafu_vasco]

Hi All,
Apologies if this has been done already, I did a quick search but couldn't find anything, but I thought it might be fun for some people to post some pictures and stories of their first basses. Kicking off with my own, I started playing at the age of 14. I had a band at school with no bass player who said if I got a bass, I was in. I had no idea what to get, I only knew I loved Iron Maiden and idolised Steve Harris.

With the sage words of 'whatever you do, don't get an Encore' from the two guitarists, I put a beginner's bass guitar on my Christmas list. Knowing that if I was to get one for Christmas, the only place in the house that could hide a bass guitar was the loft, I waited until my parents were out one day and, to my eternal shame, crept into the loft and found my first bass guitar waiting for Christmas day. To compound the shame of my actions as a 14 year old little ****, I remember my disappointment in discovering the bass was an Encore E83, and it was black with a white scratchplate which looked really boring to an aspiring teenage metalhead being forced into an Oasis tribute band.

Anyway, here she is in all her glory - effectively a very cheap Fender Precision bass clone, I think from Korea? When I opened the bass on Christmas, all disappointment instantly went away. I absolutely loved that bass and went full Bryan Adams, playing it 'til my fingers bled for the next 4 years. I always wanted it to be a Precision and after 4 years of sticking it out, my father was kind enough to offer to buy my first 'proper' bass for my 18th birthday. We went out to buy a entry level Precision bass, and after trying many out I found that I was actually a Fender Jazz bass man, and still am many years later - but that's another story. Going home with my new Mexican Jazz Bass deluxe, the Encore E83 was retired to the loft for the next 5 years or so.

After university, now with a profession and a paycheck, GAS began. I added a Hofner to my budding collection, and then remembered the old Encore I'd left at my parents. I figured it would be a good blank canvas to learn how to modify guitars, and I ordered some parts. Here's v2:

Encore E83 v2 included:

- Body sanded down and recoloured white
- New scratchplate
- Pickups replaced with Fender USA Precision standards
- Headstock sanded down and Fender Precision decal and varnish applied
- Body drilled through and Fender Hi-Mass bridge and ferrules fitted.
- Bridge and Pickup covers fitted

This was a perfect project to try to learn the ropes with, and I learned a great deal from it. Also, a bass I was sentimentally attached to was now markedly improved, mainly tonally from the new pick ups. But several years later I went back in for another shot...

For v3, I bought a Mexcian Standard Fender Precision neck and a mirrored scratchplate. The neck fitted very well, but not perfectly - there was a tiny gap in the pocket, but the screws and bridge lined up perfectly so playability was absolutely fine. I'd also learned that, whilst most dimensions of the Encore E83 were close to identical to the Fender P, the scratchplate wasn't so I needed to get a custom scratchplate made rather than use a Fender dimension one. With a proper Fender neck, pick ups, bridge and an alder body, I'd achieved my childhood dream and effectively transformed my old bass into a Fender Precision, albeit with a lot of areas still lagging a long way behind the real article. But that wasn't the end...

V4 saw the addition of an original 1975 Fender Precision neck, imported from the States. Now that I'd established the neck pocket was a good fit, this aligned well. However, I had a problem. It turns out that Fender have changed the machine heads over the years, and I now needed machine heads that fitted the neck of a bass which cost more than the rest of the instrument combined. The closest I could find was some 1972 machine heads, which I ordered for quite a high price. Only once they were paid for and on transit from the States did I discover that 1972 was a transition year, and if they were early '72 they wouldn't fit. Luck was on my side and they slotted in nicely.

The final change was taking it to a guitar tech and having all of the wiring and pots ripped out and replaced with Fender parts. Now, the only original part left on the whole thing is the body, and I've returned the original scratchplate. And, even though I'm firmly in the Jazz bass camp, I did get the opportunity to spend a day with Iron Maiden many years later, and got the neck signed by all of them:

Now it's good enough for me to call a Fender Precision, albeit a very odd and unique one, and in a Trigger's Broom sort of way it's still somehow the first bass my dad got for me 25 years ago. And now I get to teach my son, and here he is playing it to end my story! I hope this has been of some interest to some people, and it would be great to hear any stories from you guys about your first basses or first bass mod projects.

 

[Samatza]

My first bass: Jason Lyrebird, I was 12 when I got it and it’s still with me. I don’t gig it now but use a Höfner instead.

 

[p smith]

'75 Precision, walnut/maple. Still stock and it's still the one bass I have. In the meantime there has been a Gibson Victory (great sound but only with fresh ML roundwounds) and a custom built neck-through Precision-style (thin neck) with EMG PJ pickup set. That was the go-to bass for years, very very versatile, but when time came to go down to one, the original Precision won out.

 

[mtdkingstonheir]

'75 Precision, walnut/maple. Still stock and it's still the one bass I have. In the meantime there has been a Gibson Victory (great sound but only with fresh ML roundwounds) and a custom built neck-through Precision-style (thin neck) with EMG PJ pickup set. That was the go-to bass for years, very very versatile, but when time came to go down to one, the original Precision won out.

My moniker - a 2009 MTD Kingston Heir. Felt great, looked great, played great - stiil have it and love it.

 

[bucephylus]

Cool thread. Here is a thread I recently put up, describing my First Bass situation.

First Bass, Last bass

 

[godofthunder59]

My first bass was a Klira my folks bought for my 12th birthday. Here it is in action, my first gig 7th grade "talent " show. I still have it it is one of my most prized possessions.

 

[Malak the Mad]

This story is most assuredly not for the TL-DR crowd!

Despite growing up with musicians and/or musically-inclined relatives on both sides of my family, and despite getting into playing drums when I was a teenager (Go ahead and try firing me! You're not my bandleader!! ), I didn't really feel "the itch" to get into bass until my mid/late thirties.

Despite the "itch" growing progressively stronger, I kept putting the notion aside. Not as much due to procrastination, but because I had tried to learn six-string guitar back when I was in fifth grade, about five years before I started drumming. Learning six-string went nowhere…fast! I couldn't wrap my brain around it, got bored and decided it wasn't for me.

I often look back at that decision and wonder how things would've turned out if I had taken my mom's advice. Y'see, in my pre-teen years, my mom was a drummer in a couple of all-ladies bands. When I told her of my interest in learning guitar, she suggested I should try bass first. Even though she listed a bunch of really good reasons, I obviously knew better (…just like every fifth-grader does! ). Who knows? Perhaps I would've taken to learning bass much, much better. Then I could really lay on the "back in my day" stories on thick!

Having had that experience, I didn't want to go to some kind of massive expense for something that might turn out the same way. But that "itch", man! It just kept getting stronger and stronger! So, having a whole sea of information at my fingertips, I started doing my research. Over time, I discovered Fender's budget-conscious Squier line, but not just any Squier…oh, no! I discovered a thing of beauty. I found the first bass I ever wanted to have for my very own…the Satin Pewter Metallic Squier Standard Precision Bass Special!

The hunt…oh, it was on!

One little complication there, though…this was 2011 and Squier stopped manufacturing that model and color back around 2008. What followed was an uphill battle waged throughout Teh Internetz to find this elusive bass. Yep, I finally decided to scratch that "itch" and I picked an effin' "Unicorn Bass"! Well, ain't that just great?!

For about a month, I tried to locate that Precision Special to no avail. Let's just say there were a lot of websites that had that picture up as a buyable item, but when I reached out to them, it was the same story…"Oh, sorry. That's out of stock and we haven't updated our website yet." Thanks, ya schmucks! I even called up Fender to see if they could point out any retailer that might have it. That's when I found out it'd been discontinued three years earlier. I was almost ready to give up on the whole thing, but soon enough, things were about to take an interesting turn…

In the course of my borderline obsessive research, I was also reading up on similar Fender models. I knew I wanted something of a P/J-ish persuasion, but I didn't want to invest a lot of money. The Fender P-Bass Special looked intriguing, but I didn't want to start off with an active bass. I also learned about the Fender Aerodyne, but it was way too expensive for what would probably amount to a hobby, which was a shame, 'cuz they are soooooo cool looking!

So, yet again, there I was wheedling my way through the web, trying to find my elusive prey. I was even checking out listings on pawn shops well over 1,000 miles away just to keep my momentum going. Well, one day I was noodling through listings on a website for a chain of pawn shops down in the Deep South called "Pawn Mart". (Don't bother looking them up online. They've since been bought out by, Cash America, a payday loan company and have little-to-no web access to their stock.) What should I find, but a shockingly low price on a Fender Aerodyne!

The price was $360, which was a bit higher than I was initially willing to spend. Plus, it wasn't the P-Bass Special I'd been trying to find for weeks. So, I mulled the idea over for a while. I even picked my girlfriend brain (now "wife" ) to see what she thought. No surprise, my live-in-professional-artist took one look at it's design and said if I could afford it, to go for it, which I could. The next morning, I called up the Pawn Mart location to see if they could email me some pictures and if I wanted to purchase it, would they be willing to ship it all the way to Delaware. They told me they could ship it for a reasonable fee and sent me these pics…

It was dusty, chipped and slightly dinged up…and it was beautiful! I had to make it mine!! $376.01 later, it was on it's way to the Archduchy of DuPont and I still have it to this very day!

One fun side-story about my 'Dyne was when I brought it in to one store for a much-needed setup and restringing, then to another store for a strap, case and other accessories. Both times I walked into those stores, an employee stopped in their tracks and exclaimed, "Is that an Aerodyne?!", which went a long way to ease my concerns if I'd made a good choice for my first-ever bass.

"But Malak," you must be thinking, "what about that Squier P-Bass Special?!"

No surprise, but eventually GAS started setting in and my "itch" for the first bass I ever wanted to own started to take hold again. Long story short (yes, I'll be merciful this time ), not only did I manage to track one down, but I eventually assembled "The Three Amigos" which, coincidentally, also happened to nicely complement my most favorite, diesel-powered Volkswagen.