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

[damo200sx]

[attachment=20207:n5338921...925_3849.jpg]
This is the first proper bass I played. It belonged to Martin Tyson and I used it in 4721 Archer. It was a Fendar Jazz refinished in white. It was heavy as hell but sounded great. It was just before I bought my Aria SB1000.

[SisterAbdullahX]

[quote name='damo200sx' post='397122' date='Feb 1 2009, 07:21 PM']Mine was a Hobbs Music 4 string bass I traded it for a cheap Columbus Les Paul copy in 1990. I believe they were for the Hobbs music shop in Lancaster but could be wrong. It looked like a Matsumoku made bass with precision pickups, stained finish through neck. It was quite nice as I remember. Started playing because the bigger boys were better guitar players and I wanted to be in a band![/quote]


Jedson Telecaster, shortscale. Bloody awful. Rangemaster all valve combo. Both bought second hand for my 10th birthday. I wanted a camera but my older brother convinced me that I wanted to be a bass player!

Traded the Jedson in for a Hondo II Rickenbacker 4001 copy when I was in my Geddy Lee phase. This lasted me a good few years, then this was traded in for a Westone Thunder 1A, then this made way for my first "proper" bass, an ESP Jazz, which some twat stole off me.

Edited February 25, 2009 by SisterAbdullahX

[SisterAbdullahX]

[quote name='bottomfeed' post='405919' date='Feb 11 2009, 01:21 AM']a Jedson bass at 13.... it was sh*te!....looked like this:

...followed by an [b]Audition bass[/b] from Woolies!... it was 'shop soiled' (string missing & ding in scratchplate) so I managed to haggle with the shopkeep from £26 to a tenner!....was well chuffed! ... anyone have a pic of an Audition bass?[/quote]

Heh-heh!! This was my first bass as well. Mine was white. My was also sh*te!

[BigRedX]

I still own my first bass - a 1962 Burns Sonic



Much modified when I bought it in 1981 and even more modified by me to keep it playable since then.

For me the affordable alternatives at the time were Columbus or Grant P and J copies, when what I really wanted was an Ibanez or an Aria ProII. There was something about this bass that just said "buy me" and it's quirks and peculiarities shaped my bass playing for next couple of years, and laid the foundations for my current 'style'.

[KERMITNT]

Ibanez sr1000 still have it awsome bass because i liked the sound of bass from the first time..

[bootleg]

[quote name='bottomfeed' post='405919' date='Feb 11 2009, 01:21 AM']a Jedson bass at 13.... it was sh*te!....looked like this:

...followed by an [b]Audition bass[/b] from Woolies!... it was 'shop soiled' (string missing & ding in scratchplate) so I managed to haggle with the shopkeep from £26 to a tenner!....was well chuffed! ... anyone have a pic of an Audition bass?[/quote]

That's the same as my first one, aged 15. With flatwounds on. It just went thud thud thud. It's a wonder I persevered. It looks kinda cool though, no wonder I got it.

[josh3184]

quite like the look of that oddly enough!

[bottomfeed]

[quote name='SisterAbdullahX' post='419705' date='Feb 25 2009, 11:06 PM']Heh-heh!! This was my first bass as well. Mine was white. My was also sh*te![/quote]


Oddly enough.... I was rehearsing at SoundBase studios in Wellington & what did I see?..... One of these [b]Jedsons[/b] in cream!!.... bizarre! ...it was soo small!.... could hardly get my fat fingers to fit the frets!.... took me back a bit!

it had them black tape wound strings on it.... weren't they called [b][i]tru-bass[/i][/b]?

Edited March 5, 2009 by bottomfeed

[kiat]

[quote name='[al]' post='403282' date='Feb 8 2009, 11:37 AM']
Another one here !
Started playing bass in the music room cupboard (!) at school, they had a light, a DX7 keyboard, a carlsbro amp, and a and black and white P copy in there, I used to sneak in there and play for hours while there were classes going on outside.
That got me hooked and I used to borrow the bass to rehearse with my first ever band (with whom I played a reunion gig at christmas - 15 years since we'd played together the last time!), then a year or two later I found a Thunder 1A in a pawn shop and my parents bought it for me for my birthday, this was some 20 years ago now, and that bass is sat right behind me - still love it to bits and play it pretty much every day [/quote]

Mine was a (glossy black) Westone Thunder 1A too!

Got it because I had to sell my beloved tenor sax ("naked lady" Conn Conqueror) and the guy in the shop where I sold it (Macari's in London), realised how sad I was about having to do it, took pity on me and thought I should keep musical and offered this bass with a Traynor Bloc80 bass combo for a cut down price. I still have the combo but the bass went missing at some point - am looking forward to having a go on [al]s 1A at some point since I know he has one!

[Bilbo]

Hondo II Precision copy. Black.

Lived in a musical desert and had a piece of junk guitar but noone to show me how to play it. But I could hear the bass lines and played the basslines on the lower strings of this half-arsed guitar thing until I started work at 17. It was the day I started work that I ordered the Hondo bass and a Carlsboro Cobra bass combo from a catalogue of some kind, can't remember which. Then got an Aria SB700 and a Sound City amp when I first joined a band which I soon upgraded to a Frunt amp and a Wal (1986).

[Bassman Sam]

[quote name='bottomfeed' post='426576' date='Mar 5 2009, 07:02 PM']Oddly enough.... I was rehearsing at SoundBase studios in Wellington & what did I see?..... One of these [b]Jedsons[/b] in cream!!.... bizarre! ...it was soo small!.... could hardly get my fat fingers to fit the frets!.... took me back a bit!

it had them black tape wound strings on it.... weren't they called [b][i]tru-bass[/i][/b]?[/quote]


That was my first bass to. Played a lot of gigs with it before getting a Ricky fretless. What a contrast.

[Machines]

My first bass was a red Squier Bronco from Express Music in Shirley, Solihull. It cost me £120.

I started playing as I already played guitar, but heard parts to songs on bass and wanted to play those too. If anything - the bass solo on Metallica's Cunning Stunts made me buy one.

[mcnach]

[quote name='Machines' post='1147343' date='Mar 2 2011, 04:54 PM']... the bass solo on Metallica's Cunning Stunts...[/quote]


I misread that as "Metallica's Stunning C..."

Edited March 2, 2011 by mcnach

[Mlucas]

I had an Ashton AB-2 starter pack thingy, set me back 140 odd quid, did me well ...until the bridge broke and the tuning pegs rusted up that is!

[hillbilly deluxe]

Hagstrom H1B,in cherry red bought in 1977 for £35 from Jeavons,Percy Street,Newcastle,as a 16th birthday present.And with my birthday money i bought a FAL phase 50,and an 18" speaker,and built a cab from the instructions in Beat Instrumental magazine.

Same as this.

[mcnach]

I started twice... and a half.

First time was because I had bought my first multitrack recorder, a 4-track tape Tascam 424 I had lusted for for years, and was recording bits of guitar and drum machine... so I figured a bass would be useful to add something to the recordings.
I paid £90 for a Lyon by Washburn plywood P-bass type:



I never liked it, never persevered, and the thing just was there looking sad in a corner. Eventually I sold it to some RAF guy who was about to leave for Kuwait and wanted to take a cheap bass with him.

Fast forward a few years.
I then bought another bass. Same reasons. This time it was a Squier P/J. Much nicer bass. Again, I must have played it for about a month (so two months bass experience now ) and forgot about it.



The buyer actually sent me a few pictures after he modified it (including a Fender decal):




And there I was. I thought I was done with bass. It just wasn't for me.

But fast forward to 2005. Mid April.
Work related thing, including a jam session. I had brought my guitar and amp. There was one bass player. He played for 10min and disappeared. Nobody seemed interested. I took the bass and someone else took my guitar. I wasn't exactly great, but it worked. I knew the drummer, we used to play together (me on guitar), so we sort of understood eachother... and realised it was a lot of fun to play bass like that. Aha!
Full bar, people dancing... I realised the Power of The Bass, and I thought that was it.
A month later I bought a Jazzbass copy by Vintage.

originally:


with black metal pickguard:


And for about 18 months I played it at least once a month

Then I said: "right, playing bass by myself is not as much fun as I remembered... I need to join a band".
In June 2007 I joined the first of many bands that followed... and things just got busier and more interesting. First gig on bass in May 2009 with a funk/rap/blues fusion type of band, followed by another gig the week after with a second band (The Richt Hoat Chillis), and until today.

I sold that Vintage Jazz bass sometime in 2008, as I was planning to move abroad and needed to reduce the amount of material possessions.... but ended up staying, and I still miss that bass, my first real bass.

A few months ago I met the guy who bought it. There were three bands playing. I was in one and he was in another. He played the Jazz. Sounded great.
I wish I could have it back, if only for sentimental reasons.
(It turns out he's a BCer too, I wonder if he reads this and feels all sentimental and decides to sell it back to me )

[mojobass]

i was 14, my first bass was a Marlin sidewinder - metalic silver p/j pups. i initialy started with guitar but got sick of trying to get my fingers into chord shapes quick enoiugh etc, so i thought 'the bass has to be easier its only got 4 strings!!!' so thats how it all began!!!

[Blademan_98]

My first bass (stolen from my daughter!) was this Wesley P/J thing.

It weights a ton and is really chunky.

I then stole my daughters Ibanez SRX700 because I needed to do a gig and didn't have a bass that would be suitable.

She then sold the Ibanez so I had to buy my own

..... so I bought the fretless

[MikanHannille]

I believe I started with this one 8 years ago:
[url="http://img576.imageshack.us/i/image103m.jpg/"][/url]

It was my uncle's, he lend it to me for more than a year since he's not using it. (even now he's not touching it)

Why did I start playing? Just out of interest.

Edited March 2, 2011 by MikanHannille

[Pete Academy]

My brother started to learn guitar and bought an acoustic. I used to play on it and learned some chords from Bert Weedon's 'Play In A Day' book. Brother bought an electric guitar. One day he turned up with a Vox bass he'd bought for a tenner. I started playing it and we used to jam together.

[Cat Burrito]

My MIJ Precision which I still have from the late 80s. I started playing because my friends and I were massively into music and we decided to form a band. Happy days! Band was pants mind you!

[chrismuzz]

I started on guitar at the age of 14, but had always been fascinated by bass, especially aftwer discovering Cliff Burton era Metallica! I just never got to give it a proper bash until a friend of mine was looking for a bassist in his band and practically begged me to make the switch I'd been waiting for an excuse to make

My first bass was 8 years ago when my uncle lent me his 1981 Ibanez Musician! To this day i don't know how he trusted a teenager with it but I'll never forget it. That thing was huge, with an even bigger sound!

The first bass I actually owned was a Peavey Dynabass. It belonged to my ex-girlfriend, who after a while ended up with a mate of mine (nice eh?) Well she screwed him over, so as 'compensation' he decided to forget to give it back, and ended up selling it to me for a very reasonable £50 I've still got it too! It's a bit knackered now thoughh, due to me attempting to recreate the Billy Sheehan neck bending trick

[Wylie]

Squier Bronco bass, quite cheap, and not bad at all.

The trio I was in was turning toward jazz and I couldn't play anything like jazz on my guitar, but they could play whatever they wanted to play.

Got the bass and worked out 'Take Five' and some other tunes. I've since had two other basses.

I still play guitar with the trio on some songs -- we do two distinctly different sets -- but the guitar doesn't interest me much anymore. Only the sound of the bass, and exploring its harmonic possibilities, interests me.

Edited March 3, 2011 by tedgilley

[Ghost_Bass]

My first bass was this:



Early 90's Maison P-copy
I still have it and will keep it because i'm a sentimental fool! I've spent more than it's worth modding it but it sonds amazing (modded pics soon)!

I sarted playing bass because there were too many guitar players betwen me and my friends and somebody had to go to the bass in my first band. Never looked back since! I love playing bass and will be doing it as long as i can!

Edited March 3, 2011 by Ghost_Bass

[PVTele]

Vox Bassmaster - red plywood short-scale 2-pickup thing. 1965. Bought brand new in Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells. Very nearly put me off playing bass altogether.