What was the first so called "Bass" you owned

[Leo R]

In 1988 (high school) a friend convinced me there were too many guitar players and I should learn the bass. Conveniently he had a buddy who was looking to sell his "bass." It was a Mako bass, definitely short scale as I recall. An additional feature was you could hold it up to your face and yell into the pickup and hear your voice come out of the amp. I paid $15 for that beauty. I then got suckered into paying too much for a Memphis bass that had bad machine heads ("they'll only cost you about $5 to replace"). I finally bought a somewhat decent Washburn, set the Memphis on fire in my back yard and traded the Mako (which by then I had drawn a picture of Iron Maiden's Eddie on in black sharpie) to my drummer buddy who, for some reason (drugs?) loved that bass, for a half bottle of Smirnoff Vodka. I can't believe how LOW the low end instruments were back then.[/QUOTE

 

[Leo R]

I guess the Smirnoff bottle should get a Steve Harris smile sticky picture as a trophy

 

[Leo R]

My first bass was nice one. It was an Ibanez lawsuit Ric 4001 copy in fireglow. I bought it for $200 from a friend who needed some $$ and had a few basses.

It was a nice bass but MAN that thing was huge. I just remember it seemed as tall as my lowly 5'6" vertically challenged frame! I had it for a few years where I wasn't too serious about the whole bass thing. I sold it to a friend who loved it. He and I lost touch over the years and I heard now he's passed, I wonder if he still had it all these years later?

That's a cool doubt, trying to discover where it is about to be
Ibanez Ric replicas sound to me the best copies of that iconic bass with a quite honest price
Among several replicas shown in YT, it has more good finish and sounds better than those Chickenbackers copies
Guess Aria made some Ric replicas also
I would go for a Ibanez, certainly

 

[Michael Stanley 2112]

My first was a '72 P-Bass. I over-paid (but who hasn't, from time-to-time?) and was glad to move up to an '83 Roadstar II

 

[Leo R]

My first was a '72 P-Bass. I over-paid (but who hasn't, from time-to-time?) and was glad to move up to an '83 Roadstar II

Roadstars were difficult to find in stores in downtown overhere while you couldn't find a shipped US P-Bass and when you eventually find one, it would cost you a kidney, so those Roadstars in the 80s were rated $ high
I tried one once in a store and like it ! It was a brand new collectible but I couldn't afford to it

 

[Leo R]

I guess the Smirnoff bottle should get a Steve Harris smile sticky picture as a trophy

BTW, nice Avatar of that golden Ric !

 

[Leo R]

My first bass was a black Squire Affinity P-Bass. Got it with a small amp in a "starter pack." Looking back it was a good instrument for a learning bassist; In all the time I had it I don't think I ever changed the strings. By the time I bought my 6-string Ibanez and traded it for a car stereo the chrome, nickel, or whatever plating on the outside of the strings had worn off and had revealed a coppery colored underneath.

A Squier P-Bass Affinity Series nowadays value worths a lot, very rare to find one !

 

[Leo R]

My first bass was a 5 string Squire, I assume Affinity series but not totally sure, that my parents bought me for my 14th birthday in 2000. I'm sure it was quite terrible, but at the time I loved it because it looked just like (or close enough) to the 5 string Sadowsky basses Jason Newstead played (who I idolized at the time) and I loved it. The following year when my parents saw my interest in playing bass wasn't just a whim, they bought me a 5 string Ibanez BTB with a purple quilted finish that looked amazing and got me a lot of looks when I would bust it out in my jazz band class.

I've had a number of basses over the years of wildly different styles but the Fender jazz bass style will always hold a special place for me all because the person I spent years idolizing played them (albeit Sadowskys). One of these days when I am rich (because of course we will all be rich someday lol) I'd love to pick up a 5 string Sadowsky jazz bass so I can hold in my hands the same instrument my idol played. Then again, the idea of dropping $4000+ on a bass seems pretty absurd for someone like me who doesn't even do gigs or record...though I'd love to get into that someday. I've heard a kidney goes for around $70,000...so maybe that's an option =)

Keep the kidney healthy drinking the best german beers you'll find in your path...
Or you can have a Dutch beer as well !

 

[Leo R]

My first bass was a green Japanese bass back in 1965 before the Japanese started making good basses. I bought it from a nurse at a convalescent home where I would deliver prescriptions for my Dad's pharmacy and I paid $40 for it. For perspective, I made $1.25 and hour week working 23-hours a week and took home $23 a week. Come to find out, the bass was absolutely terrible, but it was a bass. I did not have an amp at the time and would just butt the back end of my bass against a closet door, using that door as a sound board. At least I could hear what I was playing without putting my ear against the body of the bass.

It was a short scale bass although I had no idea about long or short scale basses at the time. In 1966 I bought a Fender Bassman 50-watt 212 all-tube amp. Then I found out just how bad my green bass sounded. It was really bad. Nonetheless, it was good enough to get started with and I played my first gig with it in 1966 at a battle of the bands. The band was called "The Warlocks" and we knew about 5 songs at the time. We were only allowed to play two songs, so that wasn't a problem. I remember we played The Leaves version of Hey Joe and can't recall the second song. Got free movie tickets for 2-years for 2 people for playing the Battle of the Bands, so that worked out pretty well for a 16-yr. old kid with a girlfriend.

Some of my high school friends who had a band called "The St. James Infirmary" (named after a song about an insane asylum), were in the audience, so I went and sat down with them. In between acts they turned to me and asked if I'd like to play bass for them. My first questions was, "what happened to Craig" who was their bass player and was sitting next to them. Craig said that Tim, who played organ, was leaving town and Craig wanted to play organ, so they needed a bass player. I gave a resounding YES! Play in a working band (high-school dances you know!), with my good friends? Wasn't even a question.

Craig came over to my house to show me some of the bass lines on the songs they played and when I started to play it on my Green Japanese disaster, he handed me his 1965 Jazz and said, "Here, use mine". That's when I found out my green bass was short scale. Took me a few minutes to adjust to the longer scale but it wasn't a problem and it sounded sooooooo good! Then he asked if I wanted to buy it. Told him I didn't have the money and he said, "I'll take payments." So he sold it to my for $175 and away I went.

I used that throughout high school and some college, toured with it for three years in a touring nightclub group playing 5-nights a week, 50-weeks a year, then then used it for weekend gigs until all my gear was stolen in 1976 when our house was burglarized.

Here's a shot while touring with it in 1971. That's my Standel amp peeking out from behind the guitarist. Keys were on the other side of the drummer but he'd given his notice so he's not in the promo shots.
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I guess there's some tunes on YT of that band, The Warlocks

 

[Zooberwerx]

Early 70's "Lafayette" J bass type thingy...no name on headstock. Sported gold foil pickups screwed directly to the face of the instrument...who needs height adjustment?!? Strangely enough, it had a multi-lam neck that rivaled that found on Hagstrom and Kubicki.

Riis

 

[Formula73]

81 Grabber

 

[Rip Van Dan]

I guess there's some tunes on YT of that band, The Warlocks

Make sure it was the 1965-66 incarnation and all the band members are 15 and 16-year old kids. We weren't around for long and no, that wasn't us on You Tube. Music videos were still about 20-years away back then.
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[bassbrad]

I first started figuring out bass lines on my guitar and after buying a Gibson guitar I downtuned my first guitar to play bass lines on. I was also playing cello at the time and was known to play basslines from popular songs on it too.

My first real bass guitar was an awful Gibson EB0 that had a broken truss rod and turned out to have been stolen which I found out when I went to trade it for a Hagstrom HBIIBN like this.

 

[WG Plum]

@Gaolee gave me one of these.

 

[Gaolee]

@Gaolee gave me one of these.

View attachment 5049153

Neck dive like playing a broomstick with a bowling ball on the wrong end. I don't miss it a bit. And I think Thunderbirds balance well. Think about that for a moment.

 

[RoadieP]

My first bass was a late 70s Aria that my mom's first husband sold me in high school (late 90s). One of my guitarist's drunken friends broke the neck one night when I wasn't home

 

[Passinwind]

I guess there's some tunes on YT of that band, The Warlocks

The name The Warlocks also = an early version of the Grateful Dead: How the Warlocks Became the Grateful Dead

 

[flannel cat]

My first bass my mom picked up, when i was heading into grade 8 band.. Glad i never got rid of it.
model paint artwork for the case lol.. (scroll down)

 

[Marko 1]

A $100 Rogue I got for only a few dollars (obviously I'm not a long-time bass player)... bought it just to have a bass in the music room. It was later that I was needed to play bass.

But I actually never played that Rogue, I went and got a new Mustang (thought short-scale would be good coming from learning guitar), but ended up next with a used MIM Jazz, then a used MIM Precision, then went to fivers, but still have that first P.