What was your first bass and why did you start playing?

[molan]

Mine was a nice shiny new Fender Musicmaster in white bought from the Soho Soundhouse for about £120 in 1980.

In those days there wasn't a great deal of choice if you wanted a well made bass at this sort of price.

I had always been a bit of a bass freak from my early teenage years listening to Chris Squire & Mike Rutherford in their prog heydays. However a Ricky was way out of my price league, maybe £400 from what I can remember.

I was sharing a flat with a, Precision playing, bass guy and used to roadie for his band. He said if I bought a bass he'd teach me some basic patterns so we trudged down to Soho & bought the Musicmaster. At the same time he fell in love with a Ricky & nearly killed himself working over time to earn the money to buy it!

First thing he taught me was Lizzy's Dancing in the Moonlight

Eventually I bought his P off him for about £150 (it was a mid '70's sunburst - what would that be worth now eh?) but I had a complete aberration & traded it for a bloody Sequential Circuits synth about 2 years later & then didn't own another bass for about 15 years!

Edited February 2, 2009 by molan

[Buzz]

Peavey Milestone III was my first:



Was alright, bit noisy, wasn't particulary memorable apart from the tone control doing pretty much nothing at all.

Started playing because I wanted something different to do as a hobby, never really been overly serious, and currently I'm 120 miles away from my basses while I'm at uni this year.

Edited February 2, 2009 by Buzz

[XB26354]

Aria Pro II in black. Cost £193 from Kingfisher music, paid for entirely by my paper round when I was 13.
Mind you, my next bass at 16 was a Wal, paid for by working in the horrible Goodmans factory in Havant all summer
I loved the bass sound (and wacky video) to Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. My brother played guitar so I wanted to play along.

[pete.young]

A 1964 Hofner Senator, £15 second-hand from Bell Music in Surbiton, c. 1972. A lot cooler at the time than the double bass I was playing.

[Brother Jones]

A Kay short-scale in 1985. It was basically a toy, and the action was so high I had to play it on my knee, using my thumb to hold the strings down. But I guess my first 'proper' bass was a Hohner Jazz copy, black, with a maple board and tort guard. My Dad bought it for me for Xmas in 1986. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.

Didn't get a proper amp, mind you, until I went to Uni two years later and blew my grant on a Peavey stack...

[steve-soar]

I first was drawn to the bass because I have always had a fascination with how it sounded, low, groovy, sounding like a guitar but moodier.
In our house we had no music what so ever, Mum didn't play, nor did my Dad. We had one record, one, I tell you and that record was "With The Beatles".
I played it over and over and over again, until my Mum bought me The Beatles Red and Blue albums for my 10th Birthday.
With money from relatives, I went to a local newsagents and bought Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, because I loved "A Day in the Life" on the "Blue-67-70" album. This was summer 1976.
The Stranglers, The Sex Pistols, Yes, Motorhead, Pink Floyd, Magazine, Earth Wind and Fire...... later, we arrive in 1985.
A tax rebate gave me enough money to buy the only lefty bass I had seen in the flesh that I could afford, an Ibanez Blazer P bass copy.
I saw a lefty Ric in "Feedback Music" in 1979 but it was £600. My Dad told me to "Go Forth and Multiply".

[evilLordJuju]

I'd played guitar for ages, but my brother had a bass, so I was using his for a while. Eventually decided to buy my own, and got a modded and refinned 1973 Gibson EB-4L (although being sold as an EB-0) from one of the shops in Denmark street. It was wired up all wrong and somehow blew any amp that I played it through.

Eventually fixed that and semi-restored it, but eventually parting it a few years back because I could never find the right switch, and I had a (cosmetically) much nicer EB-4L by then.

Serial number was 904991

Would love to see what happened to this old bass. Anyone here got it?

[Kiwi]

A white Sierra Precision copy with a plywood body and a black scratch plate. Put me off Fenders for the next 23 years. I took up bass because I had wrist injuries from volleyball that made it hard to practice drums. So I took up bass because I''ve always been moved by the groove and it seemed a bit more interesting musically.

[simon1964]

A black Hohner Precision copy bought circa 1982, back in the bad old days of cheap plywood copies. It was better than some, but it shows how far budget basses have moved on.

[ogri]

my first was a ricky copy, in 1976,a cml i think, from a club book (ask your mum/dad) . it was godawful. my second was also from a club book, but it was great, a westone thunder 1A.
the 18v active circuitry made up for my crappy backline, andi was hooked on getting a good bass thump for ever.

i started playing at 16 for the noblest of reasons, that girls would hopefully let me "tit them up" in the bike sheds at the back of ramsey youth club. a boy can dream...

[northstreet]

A EB3 copy in a faded cherry colour way back in 1974. Can't remember the make. I'd being messing around with various different instruments trying to find something that inspired me. I'd just bought my first album - Quadraphenia, by The Who. One listen to John Entwhistle on The Real Me and that was it - I wanted a bass. The EB3 was quickly moved on but 35 years later I'm still playing.

[steve-soar]

[quote name='ogri' post='398299' date='Feb 2 2009, 08:30 PM']my first was a ricky copy, in 1976,a cml i think, from a club book (ask your mum/dad) . it was godawful. my second was also from a club book, but it was great, a westone thunder 1A.
the 18v active circuitry made up for my crappy backline, andi was hooked on getting a good bass thump for ever.

i started playing at 16 for the noblest of reasons, that girls would hopefully let me "tit them up" in the bike sheds at the back of ramsey youth club. a boy can dream...[/quote]I like the cut of your jib, Sir.
I've been gettin' me tit since I was 14 but I've only lately realised that you had to squeeze girls and not your own.

[agroupuk]

First bass was/is (I still use it) an Ibanez BTB07Ltd.

Please dont laugh folks but the reason I started playing is because I, er, well, erm I imported Rockband for my ps3 on release day in the states and liked playing it I thought why not buy a guitar.
So I did and then realised I couldn't handle 6 strings very well. Figured I would try a bass instead as I always felt the basslines of songs before any other part.

And that, dear reader, was that. (although I play one other 4 string instrument - the other end of the scale as far as size is concerned. Ukulele!)

Sad but true - RockBand made me play!

[steve-soar]

That's the best reply I've read all year, my faith has been restored.

[YouMa]

Fender precision,girls,adoration.

[Krysbass]

Ever since my mid-teens when I started listening to music, it was usually the bass-line that caught my attention.
It was only later when I became a student and my 3 best mates all turned out to be guitarists, that I decided to buy my first bass and have a go myself. It was a secondhand £20 short-scale Fender copy with a plywood body.

My first proper bass was a Westone Thunder 1A. I liked everything about it, so a couple of years later I upgraded to the Thunder III that’s still my main bass, getting on for 24 years later. No regrets whatsoever.

[Fitzy73]

My First bass was a bass collection sb301 (i think) ,it was so light and easy to play , my two best friends in school were a drummer & guitarist ,so no choice really

[damo200sx]

If anyone has any info on any of the rarer basses on this thread add the info. Could be quite good to know. (bump in diguise lol)

[fekalizatorius]

Well I had a really awfull bass... An Encore PK40 (Now named e4)... Ugh... The tone of the pickups makes me wanna cry - rapes Steve Harris's tone so badly ;( The last time I used it, was ~half a year ago... I sold it (Thank whatever diety you worship), for 85 euros, 120eu being the original price. I'm still lugginh around my old amp tho (Good for small rehersals).

[NancyJohnson]

I had an Arbiter bass...it was SG shaped, white with a black scratchplate. I honestly couldn't say whether it had a rosewood or maple fingerboard. It had quite a short scale. Sold on for £35.00 in about 1978. Why? Two of my mates played drums and guitar. There were several guys about who played guitar, but no bass players. Ta-daaah!

Distinctly remember when I got it that it had flats on and I broke the G string during an early bedroom jam. I got a single roundwound replacement (didn't know the difference), was amazed at how much better that string sounded and spent the next jam just playing on the G-string, ignoring the rest. When I'd saved up my pocket money, I bought a set of rounds and I've never played on flats since.

P

Edited February 6, 2009 by NancyJohnson

[stinson]

Learnt on a double bass in the music room at school. First proper bass, a red Marlin Sidewinder.

[rhino]

My first bass was a Rosetti Lucky 7 (red) the cost was 21guineas and I was 14 (1963)

I wanted to play bass after hearing the Everley Brothers and Chuck Berry, followed by The Shadows, and the Big Three at the Cavern with Johnny Gustafson playing an ice blue Precision through a Fender Bassman (black face).


Rhino.

[MattM]

[quote name='Krysbass' post='398869' date='Feb 3 2009, 01:10 PM']My first proper bass was a Westone Thunder 1A. I liked everything about it, so a couple of years later I upgraded to the Thunder III that’s still my main bass, getting on for 24 years later. No regrets whatsoever. [/quote]

Ditto, bought my first Thunder 1A in natural ash from Sound Control in Glasgow when they were based in the Saltmarket near the Barras market. This was in 1984 with my first student grant cheque. Think two guys from Hipsway were in at the time, and it was a concession to the nice sales guy who let me have a shot on a Stingray and Wal they had in (way out my means even then). Loved the thing, did great service with me for nearly 20 years home, gigging and recording but sold it on impulse when I was playing more guitar. Now back in the fold via an MIJ Precision, since traded for a Hohner Steinberger clone (for hideability purposes upon arrival of my young son). Having fallen in love with the design, have now splashed out on an original Steiny from a fellow forum member which will hopefully do me at least as long as the Westone did.

Started out on bass mainly because my mates big brother played a fretless Westone which I had a few goes of, Mick Karn and Pino Palladino were driving the fretless side then, but I was more into Hooky, Adam Clayton, Simon Gallup etc. Have since played every style known to man from trad/folk through rock and funk, just love playing bass at the end of the day.

[xilddx]

Because I started off as a guitarist, I used to borrow friends basses for recording my songs, so I only started playing because I had to. It turned into a love affair. I don't get a kick from guitars at all anymore. Borrowed a cheap Yam BB and a SGC Nanyo Jap Bass Collection. The first bass I bought was a s/h Jap Squier Silver Series Jazz for £90. It was a very nice bass. Then I took all the frets out and stripped most of the paint off and generally f*cked it up. I refretted and resprayed it last year, didn't like it, broke it up and flogged all the parts and made a small profit. I then got a Hohner Pro Jack Custom which was excellent but I eventually sold that and got a Corvette $$, I completely adore it.

[NancyJohnson]

[quote name='rhino' post='400706' date='Feb 5 2009, 09:44 AM']My first bass was a Rosetti Lucky 7 (red) the cost was 21guineas and I was 14 (1963)
Rhino.[/quote]

My first six-string was Rosetti III guitar (clearly numbers were important). Looked a bit like a Fender Jaguar...whammy. The top had this weird vinyl wallpaper type covering.

P