Your first bass... and the story behind it.

[EBS_freak]

I thought this could make quite an interesting thread (I don't think it has been done before). OK, some of our first basses may not be as what we class as porn now, but certainly back in the day, it was definately love... and surely everybody has a soft spot for their first bass?

Here's mine... a custom 4 string bass made for me by Jim Cairnes of Redcar, Middlesborough.

[center]



[/center]

Controls are vol, pickup select, tone. It's got a great sound to it and every so often when I gig it, people always comment on the great fat sound that it produces.

The story? Well, it all began when I had gone to the show that would become Music Live looking for a bass. I didn't really know what was out there so I thought it would be an idea place to try things out. Jim Cairnes was there. He is a friend of my friend's father and he was there primarily promoting his pickups (which are out of this world - they are on all my electric guitars). Anyway, I had found a used Patrick Eggle at a well known major store's stand which just spoke to me. Not having enough money on me, I left a deposit and the bass was secured with an "on hold" card stuck underneath it's string. I was looking forward to the next day where I could go and pick up my new baby.

The next day came (very slowly I seem to recall) and went to the stand in question. No bass. I was mortified. I produced the receipt which I had wisely requested (the salesman in question had said previously that "It'd be alright, I never forget a face" - I wasn't so sure). Reluctantly they gave me my money back after failing to sell me anything else they had in my budget - I just didn't like any of them!

I'd gone back to Jim's stand to my friend's dad and told Jim and he what had happened. Jim was mortified and was disgusted that somebody should do that to somebody my age. He muttered that it was a disgrace and would make me a bass that would fit my budget - he said it wouldn't be flash at the money I had but he could guarantee it would sound a hell of a lot better than any other bass I had played that day... and certainly feel as good if not better.

And it did. I didn't realise at the time, but he actually made it a shorter player because he thought that my smaller hands would cope better. It's funny - I've grown up now and my hands must be larger. I favour a 35 inch scale now!

It holds a lot of memories for me - the first gig, the hours of practice going from being a root player (or a single string player for that matter) to a more competant player and the carefree days of being in a band with schoolmates dreaming of being the next big thing.

[wateroftyne]

Nice story! There's a lot of good people in the world, and Jim seems to be one of them

I met him at a gig a couple of months back. I'd never met him before, but heard a lot about him. He did a support slot at the gig and it was only afterwards he penny dropped who he was. We walked about a lot of stuff, and he was rivetting to listen to.

My first bass... a Kay Precision. I doubt there's any photographic evidence in existence. I lovingly resprayed it with metallic blue car paint(!) which rendered it unplayable as it rubbed off onto my clothes.

Anyway... my mam sold on the QT it when I was in Edinburgh for the weekend. I think she was sick of it lying around. Cheers, mam.

[steve]

wow, a custom bass for your first one, I bet there won't be many stories like that!

My first was a Westone Thunder II IIRC, I bought it when I was playing g**tar about 12 years ago, and was jamming with another guitarist. The intention was to use it to record some bass parts to our twin riffing madness, but shortly after buying it, I realised that I hadn't picked up a g**tar since, and I'd been enjoying jamming all the more.

The rest, so they say, is history. I've got a lot more out of music, and haven't hit any brick walls since....

and the bass? well, I defretted it a few years ago, and then sold it later on to fund an EUB, which I've since sold

[phsycoandy]

One of those dreadfull three quarter scale Encore basses shaped like a telecaster, how times and budgets have changed, I guess its all part of the growing up curve which we all go through, the best bass you have at that place in time is the one you cherish i guess.......now I sound all philosophical and im gonna cry!

[Buzz]

I had a Peavey Milestone III:



I bought it when I was 16, collected it after being picked up from college one day with the parents.

Buzzed a bit, tone control didn't do much, was enough to cut my teeth on though, sold on via a friend to his then girlfriend for £30 I think.

Still use the neutrik lead and the Peavey Microbass amp though.

[BigRedX]

Here's my first bass which I still own and even occasionally use:



It started life as a Burns Sonic Bass and had already been quite heavily 'customised' by the time I bought it.

The band I was playing in at the time was pretty much a 'bedroom recording band' only. We'd get together during the school (and later university) holidays and record the songs which we had written. Bass (if we thought the song needed it) was supplied by an instrument we would borrow from a classmate. However by the time we all went off to university it wasn't so easy to borrow anymore and it became obvious that one of the band would have to buy one if we wanted to continue having bass on our recordings.

I don't think I was actively looking for a bass when I saw this hanging up in the musical instrument store in Loughborough, but it looked interesting and I had sufficient money left over from that term's grant to afford it. At the time the alternative would have been some horrible Grant or Columbus J or P copy and that didn't really appeal to me in the slightest. To be honest at the time, I wasn't entirely sure that this bass wasn't home-made - there were no identifying marks on it other than the Burns logos on the pickups - and it wasn't until the Paul Day "Burns Book" was published several years later that I was able to finally identify it. After a bit of haggling I got it for £55 including the battered but original hardcase and a Fender strap.

When I bought it, the original (probably red) finish had already been stripped off, but it did have the original bridge, scratchplate and machine heads. However the bridge was held together by several feet of wire wrapped around all the movable parts making action and intonation adjustments impossible, and the machine head gears were so worn that it barely stayed in tune. The scratch plate had a load of extra holes in it for controls that weren't actually wired to anything. After a few weeks I was able to buy replacement machine heads and the first of many bridges (the one on there at the moment is my third and is mounted on a block of hard wood so I didn't have to have the action screws right at the end of their travel to get the strings high enough up so they cleared all the frets!) The controls that were actually wired up were horribly noisy so all the pots and the switch were replaced. I added another lamination to the scratchplate to cover up the surplus holes. However I couldn't find a replacement pickup selector switch that would fit in the shallow control cavity, so I worked out a way of using a mini toggle on-off-on switch instead. The only way to make this switch work resulted in the both pickups on position wiring them in series rather than the more usual parallel configuration. The result however was a wonderfully massive sound from such a short scale instrument and probably the main reason why I kept using it for so long.

There's no truss rod and the neck is like a baseball bat split down the middle. However it has a totally unique sound that was spot-on for that bass-driven post-punk sound (think Joy Division, Delta Five, Modern English) that I was playing at the time. Because I was the one that bought this bass (rather than one of the other members of the band) I ended up playing it most of the time, which got me started as a bass player and also intersted in instruments outside of the mainstream types.

[birdy]

My first bass was a Satellite Jazz bass purchased in 1979 second hand. I bought it from a friends brother for £50.00 when I was 13. I remember at the time I had about 30 LP's and I sold 25 of them to get the £50.00 to buy the bass.

I really wish I still had this bass just for nostalgia. The bass was shortly followed by an amp for a birthday present. A Laney K50B combo which I still have in the garage.

Steve

[warwickhunt]

I 'think' my first was a short scale Jazz copy, in the SG mahogany cherry colour, which I subsequently sprayed white. I say 'think' because I do recall that I got it off the same mate that had a NT Ibanez Rickocopy (Bruce Foxton was an early hero) that I also bought at roughly the same time... which was first! Either way like WoT, I doubt any photographic evidence exists.

[matt_citizenbass]

BIGREDX- that bass is beautiful, if the neck were a little more stable looking and thinner i'd be honoured to have that as a bass now let alone my first bass.

matt

[EdwardHimself]

[url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_mb222t.htm"]http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_mb222t.htm[/url]

that one, pretty good for the price, new bass from a very reputable music store and not some ebay jobbie, good tuners, alright pickups and a very good quality durable bass. I actually got it cheaper then they are selling it for now, only £65!

Edited December 24, 2007 by EdwardHimself

[Brave Sir Robin]

My first bass (and an amp) was bought by my brother, as he wanted me to rehearse with his mates to play some Rage Against The Machine. Problem, they lacked a bass player.

Boy was I suckered! The thing is, I also had a driving license, a car and the drummer lived way out of town. So there, Little Brother quicky got ripped off and bought me a Stagg P bass copy, plywood, scratchy pots and all, and a crap Ross 60 watt for around £200 I believe. Still, not much gear you could get for that price in the mid 90's.

Problem though, He bought me a right handed bass and I'm a die hard leftie! I thought about killing him when I saw the thing, but then playing right handed wasn't so bad (I used to doodle on an right handed acoustic before), and in the end, I'm quite happy it went that way. I can now go in a store and try any bass I choose without any second thought.

So I learned BombTrack and Killing In The Name Off Friday evening ("man, electric bass is easy!"), drove me bro', his mate and all the gear packed up at the back of a Clio, and off we went for our first rehearsal! We were beyond crap (all beginners), but lots of fun. 2 years later, we were still crap but with slightly better gear

I turned the old POS into a fretless, jaco style: wood paste to fill the fret grooves, sanding paper, layers of wood sealant we used for our boat, the works! It had lost 1/2 its hardware and the nut was broken. The action then became sky high, so I fitted a stack of wood blocks and some bits of thick carpet at the neck joint Still, it sounded miles better like that! I gave it away to a friend who's a bit of a musician. I believe he still has it somewhere.

Edited December 27, 2007 by Brave Sir Robin

[beeg]

Mine was a Hondo Explorer in bright red (I couldn't find any pics of it except me in my living room aged 15) It played like a slab of concrete and sounded not unlike a damp fart. Unbelievably I paid £75 for it and for about a year I thought it was the greatest instrument in the world. The action was so high my fingers soon became vice like and to this day I am grateful. When I traded up to my marlin sidewinder (not very far up) I sold the bass to a friend for £50 I must remember to apologise. I have no excuse for the jumper I am wearing.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='matt_citizenbass' post='108853' date='Dec 24 2007, 11:22 AM']BIGREDX- that bass is beautiful, if the neck were a little more stable looking and thinner i'd be honoured to have that as a bass now let alone my first bass.[/quote]

There's nothing unstable about the neck on this bass despite the lack of any visible re-enforcement - however it's profile is pretty much a semi-circle. It's a set neck with an interesting heelless design which considering that it dates from around 1961 I'd say is pretty innovative and long lasting! It saw plenty of use up until I got my Overwater in the mid 90s. Since then it's been retired, but still gets pulled out for recordings when no other sound will do.

[Road Dog]

My first bass was a Kay SG-style bass from Woolworths.

My mate Richard had come back from Portugal (his place of birth) and changed all the money his relatives had given him into pounds.
He bought two basses and an amp from a music shop in Hounslow (no longer there). I was hooked on the bass.

Two weeks later, he came round to my house while I was at school and took them away to sell (they were his after all).

I was so heartbroken, that I went to John Kings Music in Kingston (also no longer there) and spent all of the £70 I'd been saving on an Antoria semi-acoustic bass that howled like a bastard.

So began the trail of basses that I've owned which must stretch to 20 or so over the last 30 years.

Trev

[Exile252]

My first bass was a cheapo copy make called "Westlake" or something like that. I wanted to play bass because hardly anyone where I lived played bass, they were all playing greenday and other pop-punk sh*te on cheap guitars (Encores) from Argos.
Now I find that bass hard to play, the neck is extremely square at the edges making it really uncomfortable, the pick-ups are horrible. Bridge nasty, everything about it was nasty. But I carried on playing it, until I bought my Ibanez, which was alot nicer lol.

[Guest TheBigBeefChief]

Imagine three bears fighting over a pair of knickers. Only one can win and chances are it will be the polar bear. They have a long torpedo like neck.

My first bass was a Tanglewood Rebel 4K. I used to strum the guitar a bit until the accident. I now have a Gibson Thunderbird 4 Studio and the bears stay away.

And yes, I have been drinking.

Mother???

[Guest TheBigBeefChief]

Random bears.

[Guest TheBigBeefChief]

You're telling me.

And people want to give them the vote.

[BigRedX]

[url="http://www.scarygoround.com/index.php?date=20060818"]Were they Devil Bears?[/url]

[TPJ]

Back to topic...

My first was an Ibanez Rick copy not too dissimilar to this.



I was 13 and found myself wanting to rock with my friends who where already into Led Zepplin and Kiss. I found it in the local rag and my dad (who also bought me my first amp, thank you) sprung the $125 for it. Played it for years before selling it to by another Ibanez Musician, both of which I wish I had the forsight to keep.

those where the days...

Edited December 30, 2007 by TPJ

[steve-soar]

1984. Ibanez Blazer, natural, black scratch plate, Precision a like. £99, played it through a Trace stack in the music shop, Fusion Music Birkenhead, so it sounded amazing, got it home, plugged it into my hi fi and blew the speakers. I was 18 and didn't now any better. Had to buy new tweeters for my Wharfdale Diamonds.
Stranglers and Level 42 basslines, happy days.

Edited December 30, 2007 by steve-soar

[lukeward2004]

Me - it was the year 2000, I was 15 and at the time playing Piano/Keyboards just wasnt "cool". All my friends where playing guitar and making horrible "squeelly" noises to Blink 182, Green Day and various other pop-punk bands. I thought I would pick up the bass as my hands and fingers where a bit too big for guitar (so i thought at the time anyway) and Im a big bloke - guitars just didnt look right on me, they looked too small. Bass looked just right!

So I went out and got myself a Westfield P Bass copy - id like to say it was nice but it was actually a big shower of brown stuff - it fell apart in about three months of fairly frequent playing. Then I moved on to a Crafter Musicman copy which was better but didnt play too well, and about a year later I bought a Squier 5 String jazz type bass.

As I got into different types of music, and as ive grown older, ive gone through loads of basses and thankfully they have got progressively better - now the proud owner of a sexy Warwick Streamer Stage One 4 string loaded with EMG's, a Warwick Streamer LX 5 string, a 70's style Fender Jazz Bass, and an Ibanez Gary Willis Fretless Bass.

Who knows what the future holds......