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Your first bass

Still have your first bass?

  • I still have my first bass

    Votes: 311 57.3%

  • Nope, sold it / got rid of it somehow

    Votes: 232 42.7%
  • Total voters
    543
#101
Been playing since March of 01 so that would be a little over 2 and a half years. And my Cort Action bought for 300 dollars new and shiny and scratch free. And now its probably worth 300 dollars still including 150 dollar pickups.

Its been with me since the beginning and has a bunch of dents and scratches and cracks on the neck and rough spots and we have a love/hate relationship. I love it because it fits my hands and they are used to the flat neck, but I hate it because its poorly made Korea trash(compared with other basses).

Its had several mods recently, including: Bartolini P/J pups(I play it through an Aguilar DB594) so it sounds pretty decent, the pots have been cleaned in the past 2 months, the pot connections have been resoldered and thats about it.

Here she is as of May without clean pots or Barts.

Glenn

PS- She's my one and only bass I have in my collection. She is not a keeper, she will be one that i will try to salvage any good parts out of and move on to a real bass. I've spent too much time playing my beginning bass, I foresee a new bass within the next 6 months(hopefully less).
 
#102
Been playing since March of 01 so that would be a little over 2 and a half years. And my Cort Action bought for 300 dollars new and shiny and scratch free. And now its probably worth 300 dollars still including 150 dollar pickups.

Its been with me since the beginning and has a bunch of dents and scratches and cracks on the neck and rough spots and we have a love/hate relationship. I love it because it fits my hands and they are used to the flat neck, but I hate it because its poorly made Korea trash(compared with other basses).

Its had several mods recently, including: Bartolini P/J pups(I play it through an Aguilar DB924) so it sounds pretty decent, the pots have been cleaned in the past 2 months, the pot connections have been resoldered and thats about it.

Here she is as of May without clean pots or Barts.(forgive the grainy quailty, goofy smirk, and hat-hair)
Invalid Link Removed
Glenn

PS- She's my one and only bass I have in my collection. She is not a keeper, she will be one that i will try to salvage any good parts out of and move on to a real bass. I've spent too much time playing my beginning bass, I foresee a new bass within the next 6 months(hopefully less).
 
#104
My first bass was a short-scale, unnamed Jazz Bass copy with chrome "mini" humbucker-looking pickups, like from those Les Pauls, except these were single coils because they buzzed like hell. I bought it from a Hammond organ store in the mall. I bought a Rick4001 within 4 months.

I gave it away when I graduated high school to some younger kid who wanted to play, but couldn't afford to buy a nicer instrument.
 
#107
My first bass was a black Memphis P-Bass copy. It had a neck like a log and action at the 12th fret that you could slip your entire finger under. My hands have never been the same. When I bought a real bass, a 78 Fender P-Bass, I took a mattox (you know, the thing that looks like a pick but with the skull-crusher blad on the other side) to it. It was GLORIOUS! I remember nearly de-fretting most of the neck with one swing. Alas, the world needs more Memphis basses!
 
#108
My first bass was a Hondo fame. A knock-off p-bass essentially. Great bass and great memories. I graduated to a Steinberger and sold the Hondo to another student of my teacher's to help finance a new amp. Many years later, I was waxing nostalgic and called her out of the blue asking to buy it back but I never got a call back. So needless to say I no longer have it but I occaisionally see them on ebay for under $100 and I get very tempted.
 
#112
FungusHummungous, is that a Peavey TNT 115 amp you're plugged into? If it is, that's the same thing I play on at school I hate it so, so much. Maybe it's just the one WE have at school, but I can't stand it.

I don't know if I've replied to this post before, but I do still have my first bass... an ESP B-104.

Oh yea, it's still my only bass.
 
#113
I sold my first bass(Yamaha RBX370A) 3 months after buying it. It helped that I wasn't emotionally attached to it largely due to the fact that I was never comfortable with it. Its construction was immaculate. Everything was perfect but somehow I just couldn't get used to the neck and the sound was too "hi-fi" for me. I sold it off promptly and bought an Essex SJB-62 with quilted top. The Essex played and sounded really well, plus it was cheaper than what I sold the RBX for. Those two factors contributed to my decision as well.
 
#114
My first bass was a Zimgar. It was made in Japan when instruments from there were really considered of inferior quality. It weighed a ton and actually had been my borhter's. He bought it for $75 new from money he won in a baseball pool. I was taking guitar lessons at the time, but he needed a bass player for his band, so that was me. At one our gigs I left it leaning up against my amp , Ampeg B15, and it fell over and cracked at the nut. I was able to bolt it together, but the action was ridiculous. I gave it away or thew it away I can't remember, when I replaced it with a Burns of London. Now that's the bass I wish I still had.
 
#117
That one above is the made in Korea Club Series Bison. About 400 bones with black finish, and gig bag. Wild dog setting and 3 pups. '63 style reissue.Batwing headstock and black body.

I couldn't afford the made in britain reissue, it was Brit Lbs 2000. It has the hand rests, and the scroll style head, probably like the one you had. Those are worth a fortune now...

But it is a nice bass, it was terrible when I got it, but I had new strings put on and
a professional setup, and now it totally rocks.

Burns has a website in the UK, google it,
if you can't find it, I can dig it up. I'd be
curious to know if the model was a Bison, Shadows bass or one of the other small run versions.


Thor

Edit: I also got a book called
Pearls and Crazy Diamonds by Per Gjorde
History of Burns Instruments.
very interesting. Lots of color pics.
About 27 bucks from Elderly Instruments in Lansing MI
 
#118
I found some Burns websites and I can say for sure that it was the redsunburst Bison with the batwing head stock. Besides the black strings, it also had black tuners. I had it for about three years and I wan't real happy with my playing, thought I would give it up, and sold it to an acquaintance for --- $25!!!. Argh. Oh well, that's ancient history now. I do have an old Hagstrom, medium scale, but the neck is so warped that it won't play in tune above the 5th fret.
 

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