Drop the bass...

[iamtheelvy]

In fact, don’t. Don’t drop it. It’s a heart-wrenching moment...

Yep, I’ve done it before and I did it again at my gig this weekend. Rested my bass against the wall to get on with other stuff only to watch it slowly fall lengthways down onto the floor. Nice new dent in the neck to remind me that it’s a bad plan to do that. 😞

Make me feel better - what’s the worst you’ve done to your bass?

[BreadBin]

Sold it on eBay for £26

[Reggaebass]

Not me ,but my girlfriend spilt a glass of red wine Down the front of my new fender p ,while it was on the stand 😭

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 2, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Huge Hands]

When my first wife left home, I thought "Sod you, I'm going to put the double bass back in the dining room", after she had insisted it was relegated to a corner in the hall.

Before our (then) 2 year old son came to stay for his first weekend, I leant it into a corner of the dining room and tried banging and knocking it.  "That's not going anywhere" I thought...

Little did I know he would manage to get behind it and push it.  Like a felled tree it tipped forward..  The neck hit the archway into the lounge and the whole thing exploded on its many seams.  I was left with a neck and several panels.

It was a "cheapy" Gear 4 Music one, but still cost me £400 of my finest kebab tokens at the time. 

It took a long time to find someone who was able to glue it back together under tension without it exploding again...

7 years later, I still haven't let him forget it 😂 

Edited November 26, 2018 by Huge Hands

[AndyTravis]

Lost my rag and bounced a telecaster off a stage once. Didn’t do that again...

turned around in a tight stage which had a rough brick pillar on the edge of the stage (the old pint pot in Salford...) and chipped a rickenbacker headstock...

lost a double bass to a singer hoovering the rehearsal room (leant it against the wall and the cord caught the endpin) was in about 12 pieces when I went to see it.

let Mansons post me a Tacoma Thundercheif bass in a gigbag...ended up a box of splinters.

[FinnDave]

Watched my Fender Jazz and the Hercules stand it was on fall gracefully straight into the drums kit during the set break at a gig. No damage to the bass other than an almost completely severed G string where it had hit the edge of a cymbal. Changed to spare bass for second set, put a new string on when I got home. I've probably done worse, but too long ago to real any details.

[Teebs]

55 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Not me ,but my girlfriend spilt a glass of red wine Down the front of my new fender p ,while it was on the stand 😭

Nooooooøooooooooo! 😢

[bassbiscuits]

Took a bass off over my head onstage in Derry and smashed it straight into the lighting rig above me. 

About 25 years ago after seeing a Mr Big gig I decided to try supergluing three picks together like a clover and sticking it to a drill.

Too impatient to let the glue dry properly I fired it up, splattering the bass with little beads of superglue which I never managed to remove. Oops. 

If anyone out there owns a black Charvel model 1 bass with mystery little bumps all over the front, that's the reason....

 

Edited November 26, 2018 by bassbiscuits

[Teebs]

1 hour ago, iamtheelvy said:

 😞

Make me feel better - what’s the worst you’ve done to your bass?

Played it live

[chris_b]

I was walking/staggering home after a gig and the case opened. My P bass fell out and bounced down the road. I just picked it up and put it back in the case. Next day I saw some very large gouges out of the top of the body. It was a shame but what is done is done. The impacts became part of the life of that bass. I did buy another case.

[Cato]

No damage done but I once heard my jazz bass hit the ground with what sounded like some force about 45 minutes after I left it propped up against the sofa.

It must have been tipping over very, very slowly from the moment I left it there until it reached a point of total over balance and plummeted into the floor. 

[Drax]

6 minutes ago, chris_b said:

I was walking/staggering home after a gig and the case opened. My P bass fell out and bounced down the road. I just picked it up and put it back in the case. Next day I saw some very large gouges out of the top of the body. It was a shame but what is done is done. The impacts became part of the life of that bass. I did buy another case.

People pay extra for that these days 

[Reggaebass]

32 minutes ago, Teebs said:

Nooooooøooooooooo! 😢

I jumped up and said what the f***  have you done, she said ,yeah I know, that was my last glass! 

[musicbassman]

Late 1970's - The roadie of the band I was in somehow managed to leave my '63 Precision (in it's case) overnight leaning up against his gatepost at his house after returning home after a Sat night gig - we were playing the Sun lunchtime and he'd agreed to leave the gear in the van but take all the guitars indoors overnight.

Two little boys had knocked on his door about 10am on the Sun and asked him if he wanted the 'old guitar' that he'd left outside and 'was it for the dustman ?'.....

[CameronJ]

45 minutes ago, musicbassman said:

Late 1970's - The roadie of the band I was in somehow managed to leave my '63 Precision (in it's case) overnight leaning up against his gatepost at his house after returning home after a Sat night gig - we were playing the Sun lunchtime and he'd agreed to leave the gear in the van but take all the guitars indoors overnight.

Two little boys had knocked on his door about 10am on the Sun and asked him if he wanted the 'old guitar' that he'd left outside and 'was it for the dustman ?'.....

I would have been livid!

[josie]

Quite a while back I had a Strat on a wall hanger directly above my Jazz Aerodyne bass on a floor stand. Great crashing noise one day and the hanger had fallen out of the wall. The Strat somehow missed the Jazz by an inch or so and neither was damaged. There was a thread at the time about hangers falling out of flaky walls, and the need for longer screws than hangers standardly come with. 

I've never damaged a bass during a gig, but I've hit a headstock hard enough against a wall to need re-tuning. (In my extremely small local venue.) 

[AndyTravis]

2 minutes ago, josie said:

Quite a while back I had a Strat on a wall hanger directly above my Jazz Aerodyne bass on a floor stand. Great crashing noise one day and the hanger had fallen out of the wall. The Strat somehow missed the Jazz by an inch or so and neither was damaged. There was a thread at the time about hangers falling out of flaky walls, and the need for longer screws than hangers standardly come with. 

I've never damaged a bass during a gig, but I've hit a headstock hard enough against a wall to need re-tuning. (In my extremely small local venue.) 

I worked in a shop for a number of years...

One summer (2003) I worked in the Stockport branch...there was a guy I worked with who was decent enough, just no social skills.

i said we should re-display some guitars as we were quiet and at least if people came in, the display would look ace and entice the few customers that we had that week to buy.

He agreed and set about disagreeing with everything I suggested, so I walked off and left him to it.

upon my return from lunch or a fag break, this lad had set up an awful display and up high were some USA G&L basses, as He gloated about the majestic display he’d conjured up there was a loud “ping” and down came an L-1000 or 1500 into a lower hung set of ASAT and Commanche/s-500/legacy guitars...BOOOM CLANG CLUNK KERRANG!!! THUMP.

About 10 guitars on the floor, and the sorriest looking G&L bass ever.

it’d landed on a Line 6 Flextone and folded the top Chassis of the amp.

couldnt believe it.

Anyhow, we got a round bollocking - I’d only been there two months and somehow some of the blame was imparted onto me.

About 4/5 years later, I warned of this tale to a cocksure colleague (who ended up as store manager) who proceeded to destroy a wall of Manuel Rodriguez classical guitars in much the same manner...(he actually overloaded the run of slatwall mdf shop fitting stuff...and the front layer of the wall effectively peeled off).

bloody waste of nice instruments.

[mingsta]

No accidents so far. At a gig it's the last thing out and first thing back in its case. I bring a proper stand for everything in between. I've never ever smacked the guitard with the heastock yet,though we've come close in a few tight spaces. I'd image that track record will come to an end if I ever got a 35 scale bass.

[Bassassin]

Not a bass - my first-ever 6-string guitar was a quite decent Columbus SG copy which I had in 1980. Aside from a bolt-neck & fake humbuckers, it was a pretty reasonable facsimile of the original, down to having a very slender, volute-free neck/headstock junction.

Can't quite remember how it happened but it probably involved the enthusiastic execution of inept powerchords, playing along with Motorhead or somesuch, and a surprise meeting of Columbus headstock and bedroom wall. I do remember a sudden loss of string tension and very rapid de-tuning.

And then the "plop" as the newly-liberated headstock hit the floor.

I lacked the skills to correctly repair my newly decapitated guitar - but I didn't lack imagination:

I've still got it now.

[Teebs]

15 minutes ago, Bassassin said:

... meeting of Columbus headstock and bedroom wall. I do remember a sudden loss of string tension and very rapid de-tuning.

And then the "plop" as the newly-liberated headstock hit the floor.

Hence the forum name then, Bassassin?

[Jonse]

Great thread. 

As a teen, I had a very tall cabin bed with a ladder and a climb akin to Everest. One morning, on my descent before school, I blacked out for some reason (possibly the altitude) and fell face-first onto my Squier Precision. 

I split my brow and chipped a tooth. The bass lost the ear of a cheapy tuner which I glued back on, other than that, no damage at all although the wardrobe it was propped against sported a very large gouge down its front. 

The bass still exists in some state although my brother in his infinite wisdom decided to paint it slime green at one point. 😊

[Cat Burrito]

In a drunken youthful, um, tantrum back in the early 90s following a bad gig, my guitarist snapped his Les Paul in half and pushed it through a lighting rig. The other guitarist demonstrated a similar level of Pete Townsend frustration. 

I, however, seeing what was going on, twirled my Precision around a few times and then bounced it on the floor a few times whilst kicking it. Don't think rock 'n' roll cool, it was Kevin the teenager! 

The guitarist got the Les Paul repaired for a cheap bottle of whisky. I broke the corner of the nut and wound up having to go to the bank of Mummy and Daddy to bail me out. With the setup, it cost 4 times what the guitarist paid for that whisky. I think it might have been the day I started to grow up. 

[Bassassin]

43 minutes ago, Teebs said:

Hence the forum name then, Bassassin?

Fair question, but despite four decades of trying, I haven't killed a bass.

Yet.

[Monkey Steve]

the odd bass falling off the amp in the days before bringing a stand to the show/studio, but never any serious damage.

However, I've had the "falling off the strap" thing a couple of times, once at a soundcheck (but fortunately not while playing live) due entirely to Warwicks knock off straplocks.  Blatant copies of Dunlop Straplocks, which work brilliantly, but with the cunning difference that rather than snapping into place and requiring quite a lot of attention to remove, each side of the locks are screwed together onto the strap.  You can't screw them absolutely tight, what with there being a bit of spongy material being held in place, and no matter how tightly they have been done up, after a bit of playing the screw starts to loosen, and it's not too long before the strap has escaped and the bass is heading towards the floor. 

First learned to include some pliers to tighten them in my gigbag.  Then learned the much safer option of just getting Dunlop straplocks on all my basses

Edited November 27, 2018 by Monkey Steve