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your first ever bass

My first bass wasn't even a lefty. It was my dad's Kalamazoo, which I bought off him for $80, flippsed the strings, and played it lefty.

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Univox UB-1, sunburst, short scale, flatwounds, flimsy case, $90. One of the strings soon pulled it's tuning machine out of the headstock (attached with short wood screws). I fixed it with a #6 SHCS going all the way through. Sold it for $105 (hey, I improved it!). If anybody runs across it, I'd like to buy it back.
 
Semi- hollow body Vox, it had a 335 style body and the odd lucking headstock. Probably from the sixties, I bought it in 1972. I wish I would have kept it, not that it was any big deal. A kid in the neighborhood talked me into trading it for his giant bass cabs (you know the ones back then with the folding horns and it was as big as a frig) needles to say it was an absolute piece of S##T. Lesson well learned.
 
i just bought my first bass last year...still playing it, but i ripped the frets out since it is so cheap. Its a dean playmate starter kit i got off ebay for 100 bucks....sound ok through its own amp, but plug it into something nice and it will make it sound like crap(the amp)

my first drumset story is better. well the first one was s toys r us special when i was 7. but the second was an old oryce kit i found at a yard sale. it was 30 dollars and i though i was in heaven when i saw it. I tried everything but stealing it to get it, but eventually got the lady to pay her for it over time. it had 2 cymbals no hihat and a busted pedal. I later stripped it to wood, added some roto toms and had a nice little neal peart set up...it served me for many years....now i play pearl masters...
 
The first bass I OWNED was a 1971 Gibson EB-0. I got it in 1984-5. It had already had the headstock broken off at least twice.

Here it is in 1986 or so...

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It was an awesome playing instrument, it looked cool, it was light. But it sounded like poop. Over the course of the past 20+ years the headstock has broken off 3 more times, I replaced the bridge, I routed the bass for a couple dozen different pickups. Right now, the headstock has not broken off since 1995, and the bass actually sounds pretty cool. It's still awesome comfortable to play- but it's a very situational instrument. I'm glad I haven't gotten rid of it when I was very dissatisfied with it.

Here it is as it is now:

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My first bass was a yet-to-be identified ripoff of a '51 P made in the early 60's. The Rhythmline neck is a replacement for the original, or so my granddad says (he's the one who gave it to me), and the pickguard he handmade in the 70's 'cause apparently he put a big crack in the original:

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It was the worst sounding bass I've ever played, mostly because of the subpar electronics. A little tweaking however, and now it has great tone and looks like this:

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It's still one of my main basses to this day.
 
My first bass was a Yamaha RBX260 with natural finish that I bought secondhand off my friend for $100 and a used skateboard.

He had gotten the bass in Junior High to start a band with our other friends and they didnt want to practice so nothing came of it. By the time I had bought it from him he had personally stopped skateboarding. So now after that deal and 7 years later, he is still skateboarding and I am still playing bass over that one transaction.
 
My first bass was a Robertson. I have no idea what it is. Google searches come up empty. It is a neck through with a body that is basically the same shape as a G&L L2K with a P bass split coil pickup. It has a HUGE neck with action that is about a half inch high with the worst fretwork imaginable. I bought it for $50 used with a case off a friend of mine in high school. I still have it.
 
my first bass was a fender squire.


when i got my warwick corvette standard limited (oh yea), i popped all the frets off of my squire, filled the gaps with puddy, sanded it down, refinished it, and had my very own self made fretless!
 
The first bass I played and learned on was a Mexican-made Fender Precision.

I didn't own my own bass for over a year, and then I got an Ibanez from a jump start pack. I still have it, but I also haven't been playing bass very long (just over 3 years).

My Ibanez:
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The first bass that I would call my own was a black short-scale Les Paul shaped thing made by an Italian company called Gherson that I bought new. It weighed a ton, and even with both humbuckers engaged didn't have much oomph. But I thought it looked rock&roll, just the thing for "Smoke on the Water".

For the same price I could have picked up their J-bass copy (but I was dead set not to have anything even resembling a Fender) or their Rickenbacker 4001 copy, which I kick myself to this day for not selecting.

Ha! Just found a picture of them from someone's website!!!
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