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


damo200sx
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A 70's 'style' mn precision, blonde with black guard which I was given. It was noodling about on this that got me into playing.

It was possibly some sort of warmoth/mighty mite combination with a dimarzio model p pickup. It's actually one of the best sounding and playing precisions I've ever played and really regret selling it. Had a great Sid Vicious vibe to it as well.

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Yamaha RBX260 - awesome bass for £160

Started playing because i was a teenager and hoped being in band would make girls kiss me. It doesnt work but i fell in love with bass and was the only bass player in my school amongst god knows how many guitar players....bonus! i also thought bass would be easy, it wasnt.....

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I told my dad i wanted a guitar one day sometime in 2007. A few weeks later he came home with a battered 1994 Fender Squier Affinity Jazz Bass and a 40w keyboard amp. That bass had the worst action ever, absolutely battered, grounding problems, covered in rust, etc... but i loved it, in the process of rebuilding it at the moment. I started playing for no reason at all, i just wanted to play a guitar of some sort.

Liam

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Listening to music or watching a band, I always latched on to the bassline. The thought then struck me "I could do that!", so I acquired a Tanglewood [i]Lone Wolf [/i]P-copy, and promptly found that I couldn't.

Umpteen years and several basses later, I'm still trying... :)

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First bass was a white Squier Standard P-bass at the age of about 13.

Didn't have a clue how to set up and look after a bass back then so the action was awful. Got into playing bass after trying piano, violin, trumpet, trombone and euphonium at school. Didn't like any of them, but playing the Euphonium did make me realise that I liked the bass parts, so I started playing bass.

A year or two later, a mate gave me a load of Metallica tapes and that was it - I was out gigging around the town in a metal covers band at the age of 15!

Hated the white colour, so re-sprayed it metallic purple, which I did a fairly poor job of.

Kept the bass for a while before saving hard from paper round, Saturday job, Birthday money, Christmas money, etc, etc. and bought a 5-string Warwick Thumb and a Trace stack!!! Bit of a jump from the squier P.......

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I started playing at age 13 in 2003. I asked my mum and dad for a drumkit for Christmas after having played a bit of g**tar and knowing I wasn't really made out for it. They had issues over the size of a drumkit, where I'd keep it, bla bla bla ... So my dad took me to look at bass guitars and after going round a few Glasgow City Centre music shops, we purchased a Westfield P Bass. I thought it was the bees knees and sounded awesome ... Until I heard my teacher's Musicman Stingray. Needless to say, I now play a Stingray.

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  • 3 weeks later...

My first bass was a hideous sparkly cricket bat. I got a Marlin Sidewinder in midnight blue sparkle.

You might think I wanted to join the Village People with that bass, but actually just wanted to be like John Taylor in Duran. The Arias were out of my dad's price range as he thought it would just be another fad and I'd grow out of it all in a few weeks...

Now 22 years later I'm still craving the SB1000... just gotta find one in good nick for sale.

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Slade were the first band that got me into music and Jimmy Lea was my favourite member so naturally i
wanted a Bass...got an acoustic guitar for my 13th birthday but soon took the top two strings off for a makeshift Bass.

Finally got a Bass for my 16th birthday in 1976,brought off a Bass playing school mate,and just about the same time a couple of other schoolmates were looking for a Bassist to start a band.It was a Sunburst Avon Fender Jazz copy...it was lovely Bass,just cant remember what happened to it.

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I'd always wanted to be in a band, but never had the confidence to go out and learn to play let alone get up on stage. And bass wasn't really my first choice, it wasn't even my second choice really falling as it did behind singing and keyboards. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I was thoroughly convinced I'd never do anything musical and had resigned myself to it. That changed when (at the age of 30) and after a conversation about music my then house-mate leant me this no-name guitar he had lying around, so I picked it up and messed around with it for a few days before deciding that it really wasn't for me, but that a bass probably would be. I think I'd probably been subconsciously influenced by more bassists than guitarists anyway that it felt like the right path to take.
At that point though, I still had no intention of being in a band as I was still convinced I was too old, but that I could at least learn to play a few songs at home. That changed dramatically even before I'd gotten around to buying my first bass; a friend of mine came bounding up to me after a gig at Christmas 2006 asking me to form a band with her - caught up in the moment I agreed. No, I wasn't drunk (except perhaps on adrenalin).

Now of course, bass is my first choice. I still have the occassional urge to learn keyboards or to sing, but I love bass too much to swap.

My first bass was a Yamaha BB614L
My current bass is a Cort Artisan B4LH
And my dream bass is a Shuker

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[quote name='Rodders' post='397547' date='Feb 2 2009, 10:16 AM']Started playing bass because my hands were to big for guitar[/quote]

Our guitarist has hands second only to Chris Squire and he's never had much trouble. Hendrix had big hands too, as have numerous other guitar luminaries.

My first bass was a brand-new-at-the-time 1980 Rick 4001 (no surprise there then); I was 17. I started playing bass because we didn't have a bassist. As a huge Lizzy fan at the time I really wanted to play lead, which probably shows in my playing :) . However my dad said if I played bass I'd get more work and, far more importantly, he'd help me get a decent instrument, for which I was/am eternally grateful.

I chose a Ric due to a combination of factors; a probable subliminal McCartney influence (I think possibly the first bass I ever noticed was his Ric circ Magical Mystery Tour), my dad's bassist Martin Roach having a lovely early 70s 4001 and my love of Prog and 70s Heavy Rock making it sonically and visually the most desireable bass for me. Also they had one hanging in a local guitar shop and I thought it looked glorious.

The finisher was (a) Lemmy, otherwise known at that time as God :) and (:lol: a pic of Gaye Advert playing an Azure 4001. Ironically I didn't listen to Chris Squire until I found out he played Rics rather than the other way round, which was a few years later. Can't quite work out as a Prog fan how I missed Yes but somehow I did....

FWIW I'd originally wanted to be a drummer, my boyhood heroes being first Buddy Rich and later also Phil Collins, but my older brother had asked for drums with no success.

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Yamaha BB300 - Jap Precision copy, £99 in Sound Control Salford. Was in 1997.

The reason I started on bass was Mate and Brothe both had guitars, mum and dad wouldn't get me a drum kit and i couldn't sing.

'You can be the bass player...'

'What's a bass?'

Yeah, things have changed in my life in 14 years.

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