binky_bass Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 I've had a fair few guitars/basses/amps go through my hands in the last 15 years, some bought to 'try' and then moved on when I'm bored, some bought to bring some life back into, then released back into the wild (and to practice repairs etc. on!) with only the ones I absolutely fall in love with staying with me. Through the course of that I've been lucky enough to have some particularly good deals! Curious to know what 'best ever' deals other have had over the years, which a picture or two if possible for us to perv (I mean muse) over! For me, my 'best deal ever' was definitely my Conklin 8 string USA. Bought for £300 with some definite condition issues and being told the truss rod was dead, the pre-amp was dead, the neck was warped, as well as a blown battery that contaminated the cavity as the bass had been left in a VERY damp case for a LONG time. After stripping the bass down and leaving it to air out for a week, (it stunk of damp!) I reassembled it, put in a new battery connector and was amazed to find it worked 100%. This bass will NEVER leave me as it is almost exactly what I would order if I had a spare $12,000 to order a Conklin of this spec. That's my deal of a lifetime, what's yours? 8 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burns-bass Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 I once bought a near mint condition Hiwatt DR103 which I then sold for £1,500, which is the best real return I’ve ever made on a piece of music gear. In terms of the best deal, I got a 66 candy apple red jazz that I love with all my heart and have played for 17 years for £3,000. It was expensive at the time and took me years to save for and I still consider it my best musical friend. I used it record a few albums and gig all over Europe. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
binky_bass Posted May 30, 2020 Author Share Posted May 30, 2020 @Burns-bass - if I were a Fender man, that's the kind of Fender I'd want! Lovely bass mate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newfoundfreedom Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 1 hour ago, binky_bass said: I've had a fair few guitars/basses/amps go through my hands in the last 15 years, some bought to 'try' and then moved on when I'm bored, some bought to bring some life back into, then released back into the wild (and to practice repairs etc. on!) with only the ones I absolutely fall in love with staying with me. Through the course of that I've been lucky enough to have some particularly good deals! Curious to know what 'best ever' deals other have had over the years, which a picture or two if possible for us to perv (I mean muse) over! For me, my 'best deal ever' was definitely my Conklin 8 string USA. Bought for £300 with some definite condition issues and being told the truss rod was dead, the pre-amp was dead, the neck was warped, as well as a blown battery that contaminated the cavity as the bass had been left in a VERY damp case for a LONG time. After stripping the bass down and leaving it to air out for a week, (it stunk of damp!) I reassembled it, put in a new battery connector and was amazed to find it worked 100%. This bass will NEVER leave me as it is almost exactly what I would order if I had a spare $12,000 to order a Conklin of this spec. That's my deal of a lifetime, what's yours? Mine is when you sell me that Conklin for £350. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammybee Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Original Roland TR-808 in fully working condition for £75 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubit Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 The best deal I got was a good few years ago I got talking to an American woman online. She seemed nice enough but started getting a bit full on. I mentioned that I played bass and my dream bass was an American standard P bass. She only went and bought me one and sent it over. I was embarrassed as hell and offered to pay for it. She wouldn't hear of it. Then I got a message from her husband calling me for everything. I had no idea she was married! I cut off all contact after saying I will pay for the bass. Again she said not to. So now I have an American standard that was completely free and she most likely has a broken marriage 😕 1 22 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
binky_bass Posted May 30, 2020 Author Share Posted May 30, 2020 Hahaha, that's awesome/ridiculous 😂 Great story @ubit 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubit Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 1 minute ago, binky_bass said: Hahaha, that's awesome/ridiculous 😂 Great story @ubit She was very intense. I mean who buys someone you have never met an expensive bass guitar? I was thinking this is out of my depth. I only wanted someone to chat to online. Now that the dust has long settled, I enjoy playing that bass. None of my band mates would believe me. They said I had bought it myself. I know it sounds too ridiculous to believe myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger2611 Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Two in two weeks for me, many years ago I was at a car boot sale and a chap was selling what looked like a good condition 4x12 Hiwatt guitar cab and an unnamed 1x15 bass cab, I only wanted the bass cab but the guy said you can have both for £20.00! I sold the Hiwatt cab for £800.00 a couple of weeks later, it turned out it was a mint and totally original late 60s cab! Two weeks later at another car boot sale I spotted an interesting looking record deck, it was an elderly gentleman selling it, he apologised for asking £15.00 for it but that was what he had just spent getting it serviced, I brought it because it looked cool, it wasn't until the advent of eBay many years later that I found out it was a Rega turntable but mine was nothing like the ones on sale on eBay, I contacted Rega and quoted the serial number and what I had brought for £15.00 was a prototype Rega Planet record deck, still not sure, or really bothered what it is worth to this day as it will never be for sale whilst I am still breathing but I would expect it would fetch a wee bit more than the £15.00 I gave for it! 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NancyJohnson Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 I woke up early one Sunday and started trawling through eBay for basses, saw a Hamer FBIV on sale for £350 as a Buy-It-Now thing. Did a little panic; aside from Nikki Sixx, I'd never seen one in the flesh and as they're so rare, there was nothing online to compare it to. Eventually found a photo of Mr Sixx somewhere; configuration was a little different, more knobs on the eBay one, headstock a bit different, stadium logo. Went back to the computer and bought it. Unbeknownst to me, the Hamer Fan Club forum had a thread going on it already. It arrived a few days later; no case, heavily wrapped in about six inches of bubblewrap. I was offered around £3,500 for it from someone on the Hamer Fan Club group. Porno shot: 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iacopo San Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 I love these stories! Keep them coming! Personally, I received two presents from two different family friends when I was in Italy because they knew I was a musician. One turned out to be an amazing Juno 60 synthetizer which was great fun. The other was a crazy looking Fiesta Red bass from one of those Italian manufacturers popular in the 60s. I can't remember exactly the shape now but I think it was one of those irregular pentagon sort of shape, and it had flatwound strings probably still on from the 60s or 70s. Unfortunately both benefactors asked for the instruments back after a few years 😪 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hooky_lowdown Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Around 13 years ago I got a Squier JV p bass for £50 on an auction site, the seller even delivered it to me. I sold it a few years later for a little bit more. 😉 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammybee Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 47 minutes ago, ubit said: The best deal I got was a good few years ago I got talking to an American woman online. She seemed nice enough but started getting a bit full on. I mentioned that I played bass and my dream bass was an American standard P bass. She only went and bought me one and sent it over. I was embarrassed as hell and offered to pay for it. She wouldn't hear of it. Then I got a message from her husband calling me for everything. I had no idea she was married! I cut off all contact after saying I will pay for the bass. Again she said not to. So now I have an American standard that was completely free and she most likely has a broken marriage 😕 Have you got her phone number? (asking for a friend) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubit Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 17 minutes ago, sammybee said: Have you got her phone number? (asking for a friend) You are welcome mate. Talk about bunny boiler! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4000 Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 My main bass, my Fireglo ‘72 Rick. Sometime in ‘92 I went with my then girlfriend to Manchester, and as usual We went in A1 Music for a browse. They had an old-looking Rick in, crushed pearl inlays, chequered binding, neck toaster, walnut headstock wings, no skunk stripe etc. At the time I knew a lot less about them than I do now - pre-internet! - and I thought it was maybe a late ‘60s one (it’s actually Feb ‘72). Obviously I love Rics; my first bass was a Ric, and the bass I was playing at the time was an Azure ‘76. So I picked it up and plugged it in and my head exploded. I loved the neck, which felt wider and flatter than all the others I’d owned/played, and the sound was unreal, everything I’d heard in my head. It was, by a vast margin, my favourite bass that I’d ever played. It was on the wall for £680. Unfortunately I didn’t have any money at the time so went away thinking “well that was the best bass I’m ever likely to play, what a shame I’ll never own it”. A year later I’d been saving up for a new amp and took a trip to A1 with a friend, this time bringing my ‘76 along for testing the amps. I walked in and the ‘72 was still on the wall, rather incredibly on sale for £490. I plugged it in next to my ‘76, expecting my previous experience to have all been in my head. Nope. It was absolute night and day, so I put the deposit on it there and then and went back a week later to pick it up. I still have it, it’s still my favourite bass that I’ve ever played (many thousands of basses later), and it’s worth a rather large amount more than I paid. But I wouldn’t swap it for a genuine ‘59 Les Paul. It’s more like one of my limbs than a bass guitar. I later sold my ‘76 and subsequently spent 17 or so years tracking down a ‘72 in Azure, the other bass in the picture. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krispn Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 I traded an Ibanez SRx700 for a 78' p bass! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iacopo San Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 5 minutes ago, krispn said: I traded an Ibanez SRx700 for a 78' p bass! Now you are just making stuff up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger2611 Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 One that didn't quite come off! Many years ago, I had not been playing long but had just brought my first new guitar a lovely looking Marlin Sidewinder guitar and was busy learning to play Sex Pistols stuff, a young lad I vaguely knew from school came around and asked if I would teach him to play the Pistols stuff, he had this battered tatty old Gibson thing, I taught him everything I knew in about 10 minutes! He wanted a go on my guitar so we swapped over, he loved my guitar and suggested we do a swap, I have to admit I wasn't sure as his was so beaten up and tatty but it played really nicely so we did the swap and away he went.....a couple of hours later he turned up with his dad who said unfortunately we would have to reverse the swap as the 1962 SG he had just traded with me was not actually his to trade it was his dad's guitar which he had lent to him to learn to play on! I lost touch with him after that but bumped into a mate of his quite a few years later, apparently the lad had ended up as a guitar tutor at the London School of Music, I said to his mate, "next time you see him tell him he owes me some guitar lessons!" 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krispn Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Iacopo San said: Now you are just making stuff up! Shite! OK here’s the photographic proof. First pic is the SRX, second the ‘78 and in the third pic a bass I nabbed a few years back off @Dood on this forum (Shuker body/ PB70’s neck now with reverse p pick up) as a nostalgic nod to the band I was in back then when I had the ‘78 - ‘Bloodbath Callaghan and the WarCrimes’. I can assure you it’s not the same bass as the the old BCW bass as it was bought by a guitar shop in Belfast (Guitar Emporium) made to look like one of Philo’s p basses, dipped in bronze and now stands proudly beside him outside the Bruxelles pub on Harry Street in Dublin. Why make sh*t up when the truth is far more interesting! Edited May 30, 2020 by krispn 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul_c2 Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 If I reveal my best deal here, then some years later it comes time to sell, this is still searchable and reveals what I bought it for, right? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scalpy Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 Not really a deal but my G&L ASAT. I was on at the local shop to get one even though I couldn't afford one. Then one month I got overpaid by a whole month, told work about it and they said I wouldn't get paid the next. They forgot. So did I to mention it.....😉 The same week- tax rebate. Walked into the local shop (Head Hands and Feet in Hereford) to by some cymbals for my drummer as a loan and there was she was- at exactly the price I could now afford. The business who overpaid me- still going strong 20 years later BTW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bassbiscuits Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 The 1970 Fender P bass I got for the princely sum of £575 in 1994 (tho I had to sell my pointy Charvel to buy it...) Also a 1994 Fender MIJ Strat I got for £200 in 2002. Still got them both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Browning Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 The cab on the left is a Mesa Boogie 2x18 Road Ready cab. Got it on eBay for £62. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
binky_bass Posted May 30, 2020 Author Share Posted May 30, 2020 (edited) 3 minutes ago, Steve Browning said: The cab on the left is a Mesa Boogie 2x18 Road Ready cab. Got it on eBay for £62. Your Mesa rig looks even more spine destroying than mine! 😂 Speaking of which, that was a good deal... Got my Mesa Strategy Eight:88 and two Mesa Powerhouse cabs brand new in a sale for £2500, the full 'non-sale' price for the whole lot is £6200. Not exactly pennies, but 60% off brand new Mesa gear was fairly decent. Edited May 30, 2020 by binky_bass 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drax Posted May 30, 2020 Share Posted May 30, 2020 5 hours ago, sammybee said: Original Roland TR-808 in fully working condition for £75 Wow when / how did this happen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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