Your Budget #1

[Baloney Balderdash]

Show us your cheap budget #1 main bass and tell us a bit about it.

 

 

Here comes mine.

 

A just 28.6" scale length Ibanez GSRM20 neck + GSRM20B body Mikro Bass, that I named "Dud Bottomfeeder".

 

I have it strung with Elixir Nanoweb coated hex core nickel roundwound guitar strings of the gauges .068 - .052 - .038 - .028, which gives a very close to perfectly balanced tension across the strings, in tenor bass, A# standard, tuning (that is as 1 half step above the 4 upper strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning).

 

Obviously it is not good for filling out a traditional bass role in this tuning, but I feel that this is the tuning where it really shines, and it is great for solo/melodic work, as well as it can be used for chords, making it very suited to be treated like sort of hybrid between a guitar and a bass in terms on what and how you play on it (left fretting hand wise that is, right hand I mainly use traditional 2 finger, index + middle finger, bas plucking technique, however, rather the striking or pulling the strings, I more so stroke the strings, in a slightly inwards slapping motion, with the outmost tip on my fingers/nails, sometimes combined with 1 or 3 finger plucking technique, flamenco guitar style, index and/or middle, finger flicking technique, traditional classical acoustic guitar finger picking technique, as well as double thumbing. Rarely use picks, which though I don't either do when playing guitar, but when I do I prefer a .60mm Dunlop Tortex or a 3.1mm Wedgie Soft rubber pick, depending).   .

 

I have had it strung up with regular bass strings and tuned to regular 4 string E standard tuning before though, and used it as my main bass in couple of projects, in a band context, and honestly it sounded great for that too.

 

I have pulled out both the stock pickups, but just replaced its reverse P pickup, for an EMG Geezer Butler P, wired directly to the output jack socket, with the stock jack socket also having been pulled out and replaced for a front mounted regular jack socket.

 

You wouldn't think it was anything special playing it acoustically, it doesn't sound bad, but I suppose kind of boring and dry with no exceptional resonance going on or anything, but combined with the EMG Geezer Butler P, which is vintage voiced, but with an extraordinary articulate and well defined dynamically responsiveness and clarity to it, it just sounds absolutely amazing amplified, and for some reason it react exceptionally well to having it's tone manipulated by outboard effects, which makes it perfect for the "amp-less" setup that I prefer using.

 

It got a very no bullshit immediate quality to its tone that I love, but not in the dry or boring sense, rather in the sense of having a very clear and harmonically balanced tone, but at the same time with a certain depth and complexity, and still having a nice snap and punch, to it.

 

It just seems that whenever I try any other bass I always relatively quickly come back to this one, like the other basses color the tone too much already at the output of the basses themself, but with this one it is really hard to make it sound bloated and overprocessed, always retain this immediate clarity to its tone, where some other basses already sound bloated and overprocessed right from the start coming straight from their output jack socket.

 

And then it is just an absolute joy to play.

 

 

Anyway, enough with the babble here it is, Dud Bottomfeeder (though the knob closest to the neck is red now): 

 

 

I do ponder on, and likely will at some point, installing the J pickup from the P/J EMG Geezer Butler set where the current P pickup is from, wired to a  separate jack output socket, for parallel active off-board mixing of the two pickups, via a Boss LS-2 or similar, as well as installing single mono rail bridge pieces, milled from solid brass, and in the same instance reduce the string spacing from the current standard 19mm to 17mm.

 

Edited March 5 by Baloney Balderdash

[Newfoundfreedom]

My main player is a Traben Neo LTD.

34" scale. Seymour Duncan Bassline pickups and preamp. Grover tuners including drop D. Brass adjusta-nut and the highest of high mass bridges. 

 

Picked it up on eBay about 4 or 5 years ago under £300.

 

It plays and sounds absolutely superb. 

 

I've thought about moving it on and buying something a little more "grown up", but I've never played anything that sounds or feels anywhere near as good. Certainly not in the price range I could afford. 

 

 

[Baloney Balderdash]

5 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

My main player is a Traben Neo LTD.

34" scale. Seymour Duncan Bassline pickups and preamp. Grover tuners including drop D. Brass adjusta-nut and the highest of high mass bridges. 

 

Picked it up on eBay about 4 or 5 years ago under £300.

 

It plays and sounds absolutely superb. 

 

I've thought about moving it on and buying something a little more "grown up", but I've never played anything that sounds or feels anywhere near as good. Certainly not in the price range I could afford. 

 

 

That's an amazing looking bass too!

[dub_junkie]

Dakota red Harley Benton JB62 bought nearly six months ago. Basses have come and basses have gone and some have even come and gone in the time I've had this 😁 

 

It arrived with what must have been some blunt shock damage. Chip out the face of the headstock and strap pin at the end of the body has been pushed further into the body and is now at an angle with some paint missing. Was going to start a claim/return process with it but there was no damage to the boxes etc so I thought to myself how that one was going to pan out as they were asking for pics of damage to the shipping boxes etc.

 

Anyway decided to keep it and have it as my noodling bass in the spare room. Unlike my other basses it doesn't live in a case or a bag and sits on a 3 guitar stand by my amp. Strung it with flats and set it up and  to my mind it's  a pretty cool bass. I've taken it as back up to a couple of pub gigs the last couple of months and it doesn't really ever factor in any of my selling plans. 

 

Colour looks a lot better in the flesh so to speak. Does everything I need it to and for £125 it's a keeper! 

 

 

[Franticsmurf]

The longest serving bass in the ranks of my small collection, this Spirit XQ2 headless has been with me for more than 20 years since I first spotted it going for next to nothing on Ebay. It's battered and bruised from my attempts to fit a Roland GK3B pick-up, I hadn't changed the strings for about 3 years until a couple of months ago when I picked up a bass string adapter and put four newish single ball end strings on it. It's gigged, recorded, acted as a spare and been the talking point for many a drunken punter ("Hey mate, your head's fallen off!" "Yeah, I know, all your mates have already told me"). When I got my Sterling 34HH and later, my Precision, it sat patiently in the corner knowing I would return. And when I depped with a mate's band last year, it performed admirably as I knew it would. It's currently resting as I renew another old friendship with a Hohner Jack.

 

Edit: It has a great drop D bridge tuner for those 'Brick in the Wall'/'Dead or Alive' moments.

 

It's light and feels great to wear and play. The sound is growly straight into the amp but it's a passive beast. It's probably not worth much to anyone but me and it will be the last bass to leave the collective should I need to sell up.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by Franticsmurf

[Bleat]

My 1993 Washburn B200 LP bass. I have had it just under 3 years and it cost me about £200 from eBay. It will always be my #1. Looks great, sounds great, plays great, it's pretty much all I need. 😎

[Greg Edwards69]

Struggling to find a decent picure of my current No.1. This one will have to do.

 

 

It's a G&L Tribute JB2. Maple and block fretboard and sunburst finish. I'd been watching it for a while It came up in a Black Friday sale a couple of years ago for £299, down from £399, so I had to.

 

My Yamaha Attitude LTD2 had been my main player for ages until I threw my back out after the first gig out of lockdown. So I decided I needed a lighter-weight, inexpensive, main-gigging bass. Even though I bought quite a lightweight Squier 50s as a backup at the start of lockdown, my band's repertoire had diversified enough that I also needed something more versatile. I've had aspirations for a 70's style "black and blocks" jazzes with maple fretboards, black block inlays and black bodies and had previously had half an eye on those black and blocks Harley Benton 70s jazzes, as well as looking at Sire but I wasn't keen on going back to active.

 

In the meantime, I had replaced the tunes on the Attitude with hipshot Ultralites (3x licenced, and a D-tuner ) which helped a little, and resigned myself to not being able to find a proper black and blocks jazz that was the right price and lightweight, until this cropped up on a lightweight basses round-up article on Bass Direct's website. It ain't black and I've never been one for sunburst, but something about it really appealed to me, and the article mentioned they were a little over 8lbs. It also had a P bass-sized body and a chunkier than usual shaped neck for a jazz, which suits me fine. So I thought about it, thought about it some more and decided to wait for Black Friday, and I clicked "buy". (Sure it wasn't expensive to start with, but what with my wife being off work at the time with COVID-related health issues, we had to be a little more careful with money).

 

It's a great playing bass. Lighter than the Attitude, balances well and has a good range of tones with the stock pickups. I had to work on the setup as the E string slot in the nut was cut too deep - nothing baking powder and super glue couldn't fix. I do need to get it re-wired, as there's a bit of bleed on one of the volume pots (rolled completely off, there's still a little sound coming through), so I'll get this done in the new year when gigs are more sparse (I am the kind of person who needs to give the authorities not less than a month’s notice before picking up a soldering iron). And I'll likely replace the tuners with Ultralites and D-tuner soon.

 

I really enjoy playing this one for most of the gigs we're currently doing. Inexpensive basses have really come a long way.

 

PS, excuse the shirt. It was a corporate summer festival and our band always wears black and red!

[martthebass]

My budget number one is a Squier Mikey Way Mustang.  I originally picked this up for its subdued colour scheme that fits right in with the glam band I’m currently in.  Not many of these about and found it at a little online seller in Brum. I wasn’t especially looking for a short scale but quickly gained appreciation of its compact dimensions on some of the smaller stages we find ourselves at. It’s not without its limitations, the pickup while being a humbucker is a bit underwhelming compared to my other 2 shorties (fallout clf and a JMJ) but I can dial in a decent thump with my rig. I might get around to changing it for something a bit more punchy at some point. On the other hand it’s easy to play and has withstood the rigours of 300 gigs or so, so not bad for a budget job.

Edited October 31, 2023 by martthebass

[bassbiscuits]

Here’s my budget bass. Yamaha BB604 from 2003, which cost me £200 seven years ago. 
 

It’s alder, maple, rosewood, active 9v circuit. Nicely balanced, weighs 3.8kg, and dead loud. 
 

Was bought as a spare at the time but quickly became my go-to bass. 
 

Edited May 27 by bassbiscuits

[VTypeV4]

Whilst not the bass I play the most, it's the one that's appeard on more sessions at the studio than anything else. The Squier is only an 'Affinity' example but there's just something about it. I've done at least one gig on it too. 👍

 

 

 

[SurroundedByManatees]

Squire Affinity range basses can be very impressive. I've owned one that played and sounded better than some American Standard Fenders. Should have kept it (like many that I've sold in the past).

[VTypeV4]

20 hours ago, SurroundedByManatees said:

...Should have kept it (like many that I've sold in the past).

 

We've all been there!

 

I love all three of the Squier basses I own - I've not had a Fender for many years.. 👍

[Baloney Balderdash]

Back on my 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass, which is just 28.6" scale as well, with a Poplar body and a Maple neck with a Jatoba fretboard, with 16.5mm string spacing.

 

There is something wrong with the stock neck J pickup, so I got the J bridge pickup wired directly to the output jack socket as the only functioning pickup.

 

This gives a somewhat growly, but also somewhat smoother, more polite, less raw, tone than my 4 string Mikro Bass mentioned in my OP.

 

The bass is also far more resonant, and got sustain for days.

 

And the fact that it is a single coil pickup also makes it more dynamically responsive, that is not only the volume, but also the tone changes slightly depending on how and how hard the strings are picked.

 

For a cheap stock pickup it sounds surprisingly great, and for a single coil it is surprisingly quiet, not a lot hum going on at all, which I assume is thanks to Ibanez having started to use shielded wiring, that is the ground running as a braided shield all along the individually isolated hot wire.

 

I do however still plan on swapping out this pickup at some point.

 

The bass is strung with Elixir Nanoweb nickel plated roundwound hex steel core guitar strings of the gauges .080 - .062 - .046 - .036 - .026, and tuned to G standard tuning, that is 3 half steps above the upper 5 strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning.

 

We'll see how long this lasts, it seems like I always at some point returns to my 4 string Mikro Bass, mentioned in the OP, no matter what temporary infatuation I have, be it other basses or guitars, just something about it that feels so at home.

 

In any case here it is, my 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass, which I named "Mr. Growley - The Noodlemancer"  :

 

I will probably at some point replace that big ugly BBOT bridge with individual mono rail bridge pieces milled from solid brass. 

 

Edited May 5 by Baloney Balderdash