Things we didn't know or do in the 60's and 70's

[Wisebass]

Hi 2tonic

The Wrigley's chewing gum wrapper...... the original "emergency" 50 amp fuse!
It got a lot of guys through a gig, but I doubt many of them knew the risk they were taking!

No risk? No fun!

Wise(b)ass

 

[bobyoung53]

And they weighed a ton !

Mostly during the 70's, 60's and 50's P basses weren't heavy.

 

[gvbassman]

In the 70s I played rock, blues, jazz, bluegrass, prog and a nice duet with a grand piano all on my P bass because that’s all I had. I almost bought a Ric instead of the P and you know what? I would have played all the above on the Ric with nary a concern. You played what you brought.

I have owned way to many basses and always wanted a Ric . I bought a beautiful Ric and got it home played it for a couple of hours and took it back to Guitar Center . I hated it ,to heavy and just did not like the sound went back to my Fenders and G&L's

 

[bobyoung53]

Yeah and for 200 bucks you could buy a used Fender P or Jazz

I bought a brand new Fender Precision in the obligatory sunburst/tort for 250.00 on layaway in 1971 with case.

 

[Wisebass]

In the 60's... Sex was safe, driving was dangerous (sorry ladies)

Sex was fun! Driving too!

Wise(b)ass

edit: not sorry about anything!

 

[bobyoung53]

and tweeters in bass cabs.. I do remember playing through a bass head hooked up to a PA cab sometime in the late '70's and thinking that it was nice to actually hear some definition in the high end.

What's a tweeter?

 

[gvbassman]

The basses were cool though. First bass I ever played in 1970.
View attachment 3487073

My first bass in 1967 was a Klira violin bass ,bought it cheap and played that for a few years and then bought a New Gibson Ripper bass in 1978

 

[SCOTT_GROVE]

We didn't have digital tuners, and we couldn't afford a Peterson strobe tuner, so we tuned to each other.

We would just use a pitch pipe or a harmonica.

 

[Pauly 4001]

Nice Hohner Bass

Thanks!
It was the bass I really wanted in jr high school in 1972 or so and was talked out of. Found one about 8 years ago but it certainly looks much cooler than it sounds.
I guess that might be another thing we didn't know back in the 60s and 70s

 

[gvbassman]

Thanks!
It was the bass I really wanted in jr high school in 1972 or so and was talked out of. Found one about 8 years ago but it certainly looks much cooler than it sounds.
I guess that might be another thing we didn't know back in the 60s and 70s

I bought one also and played it for 2 weeks ,didn't like it and sold it on ebay within a week . It had poor sound quality but it was just like yours very good looking bass

 

[Daddy-R]

I played bass for Jerry Lee Lewis a bit. He had a Bassman 50 with a violin mic behind the piano going into one channel, bass into the other, he controlled volume at the amp. Used house PA

 

[pocket_groover]

It was very simple to set the switch right, the way of least hum, if you couldn't hear any hum both ways, you would unplug your bass, turn the volume down so it hum wasn't really loud and then switch it back and forth, again whichever way had the least hum was the correct position, you would sometimes get little tingles from a mic or worse if the moron who set the PA up didn't bother to check for correct polarity though. It became a habit of mine to touch the mic and a tuner on my bass lightly with fingers from the same hand just in case, that way if there was a problem no current would go through the heart. I can only remember having a problem once and it was because the cap in the standby switch in my SVT had evidentially shorted, I got that fixed in a hurry.

See my previous post #129 in this thread about the neon bulb. It worked every time. I don't remember where I found this out; maybe reading a magazine called "Popular Electronics" but all the band members started doing it. In fact, we had one lead of a neon bulb wrapped around the chassis screw on top the Fender amp and all we had to do was touch the other lead to find out if the switch needed to be thrown.

 

[GZboat]

I was gigging in the early 1970's and we most certainly knew the difference between guitar cords and speaker cords (well, at least most of us did). I don't know about Fender bass cabinets by themselves, but Fender Bassman rigs (especially the black face ones) sounded great and were very much desired. Our biggest problem was keeping guitar players' hands offa them! Yes, we did put JBL's and EV's in pretty much everything, but usually it worked out just fine. We weren't stupid, we were just working with the level of technology that existed then. If you actually knew what you were doing, it came out sounding pretty good. It was even possible to make a Shure Vocal Smasher sound decent, if you knew what (and what not!) to do...................
Greg

 

[bobyoung53]

See my previous post #129 in this thread about the neon bulb. It worked every time. I don't remember where I found this out; maybe reading a magazine called "Popular Electronics" but all the band members started doing it. In fact, we had one lead of a neon bulb wrapped around the chassis screw on top the Fender amp and all we had to do was touch the other lead to find out if the switch needed to be thrown.

That was a good idea.

 

[pocket_groover]

That was a good idea.

It's a good thing we don't need it anymore!

 

[Pauly 4001]

I bought one also and played it for 2 weeks ,didn't like it and sold it on ebay within a week . It had poor sound quality but it was just like yours very good looking bass

The pickups and electronics do sound surprisingly bad and it doesn't even sound good or play nice acoustically but it a cartoonishly beautiful bass so it makes a good avatar anyway.
There's a lot of variation on that model as far as finishes and body shapes and contours.

 

[JimmyM]

I played bass for Jerry Lee Lewis a bit. He had a Bassman 50 with a violin mic behind the piano going into one channel, bass into the other, he controlled volume at the amp. Used house PA

You're not the guy he shot, are you?

 

[Maartenaerts]

I melted two londoncity 120 watt tube bass amps, had to dime ‘m cause the two guitar players also dimed their 100 watt amps. (London city, sound city, all copies of Marshall and high watt I believe. Loud popular and cheap back then) Bass rigs got only heavier
Sometimes i had someone help me haul the Ampeg up the stairs. Lot of venues were at attics ...as was the rehearsal room. One of our twin reverb crashed down a flight of stairs once. Stairs were damaged, twin was ok Our first BandVan was a VW also used at a farm, so it was held together with matchboxes, tape, wire anything. Worn tyres etc. When it finally got taken of the road, we got a hefty fine. So we got a better bus.We build and welded our own light show, no one got electrocuted We build a monitor speaker for the singer, that was an improvement. Of course we put some celestion guitar speaker in it, because it was a speaker. We really had fun.

 

[Maartenaerts]

Because we used Coil Cords! Can't make the best music of the century without 'em!
View attachment 3486667

The first set I got -had me a second hand stereo bass- I ripped both at the first gig... though i’d Try how long they really were...that was a noisy cracking evening

 

[wluffman]

We used the biggest amps we could get, which usually weren't really all that powerful. OTOH, we seldom needed all that much power anyway, and club managers might even ask us to turn down. People could actually talk to each other while they were dancing; most of our audiences got to keep their hearing, even if we didn't.

Our basses almost always had just four strings; somehow we made-do.

And we didn't worry all that much about "originality" unless we had records out or hoped to get a contract. Instead, we usually played the songs people wanted to hear, often as faithfully to the hit version as we possibly could. Showmanship counted for a lot, so we tried to look as professional as possible -- no shorts, no T-shirts, the drummer (and only the drummer) *might* wear sneakers, and our gear looked new and/or well-maintained.

Am I showing my age?