sh*te Basses - Discuss

[JTUK]

The bass I hated the most was a 75 or 77 Jazz.
What made it worse was that I sold it for £250 ( ages ago ) and it would go for 6 times that now, probably..
but I think I would feel guilty taking that sort of money for that pile of poo..!!(

[Pembo]

My worst was a Squier Affinity P bass, bought around 1998. It was like every fret had a dead spot. No tone or resonance throughout the whole thing. God knows what it would have sounded like with flatwounds.

[mcnach]

[quote name='ialma' timestamp='1364786654' post='2030879']
My first bass, Arirang korean jazz bass clone with refinished body and (discovered later) misplaced guitar pickups.
No need to mention the low action, let's say first time I unbolted the neck, the truss rod fell off the neck
[/quote]

My first guitar was an Arirang!!!!!

This one:




horrible thing!

[Jimryan]

The relay bass.

[bertbass]

Ah, The Avon EB0 bass copy and Vox Clubman basses, yes they were both crap but not as crap as the Egmond and Top Twenty basses I used to own in about 1967.

[patrikmarky]

I've got through over 33 bass's in the last 5 years looking for that perfect guitar!..worst has to be the hagstrom...I traded it at pmt in Norwich 5 years ago..and it's still there awfull muddy sound weighs a tonne...

[dazza14]

Worst bass i've ever played was a Fender Jazz - it's the one with the one piece pickguard that houses the control knobs, instead of the smaller pickguard and seperate control plate - the thing was horrible, poorly setup, no oomph in the pickups, the neck was twisted and curved and... oh it was horrible.

[tauzero]

Worst bass was also first bass:



The green sunburst version of this, the Rosetti Bass 7. Body made of papier-mache, everything on it was sh*t.

The other poor bass I've owned (not utter sh*t, though) was a Squier 5-string P with J pickups - the Squier Precision Special V. Rather clunky neck, the last fretted 5-string I bought before finding my ideal one and it got sold on quite rapidly.

I have narrowly avoided buying a sh*t bass - a Hofner violin bass, approximately 60s vintage. Horrible to play but it would have been worth buying and sticking under the bed.

The worst set-up bass I've encountered was a Fender Jazz (probably MIM) that was kept in the recording studio at a Birmingham recording and rehearsal studio for people to use if they wanted to. I say "encountered" as I didn't want to risk damaging my fingers just before a recording session by trying to fret a string. The action at the 12th fret was between 1 and 2cm high.

[Twigman]

My Kay P-bass was easily THE WORST bass in the world - bought new in 79/80 I think.

It looked a bit like a 57 Fender insofar as it was sort of precision shaped with a 2 tone sunburst finish, a maple neckewith a white scratchplate.

It weighed a ton and was impossible to setup - the action was always stupidly high and it suffered fret rattles and buzzes and deadspots all over.

Did I say that it weighed a ton+ ? I think it was designed for Geoff Capes.

Was sold as a 'beginner's bass' - I wonder how many beginners were put off by the impossibility of playing this heap of sh*t?

Edited April 8, 2013 by Twigman

[Twigman]

[quote name='fumps' timestamp='1359993614' post='1963145']
Wow I have literally only owned 5 basses (three electric, one acoustic & one upright) since I began playing which is about 13 years (And that include the three Basses I own now)
[/quote]

I have owned a total of 4 basses in the 33 years I have been playing.
I still own 3 of those.

[W11ATO]

By a country mile the worst bass I've owned was a 2005 Warwick corvette $$

[Jono Bolton]

As far as I can remember, I've never owned a bad bass. My first bass, a Peavey Foundation, was nice to begin with but being young and foolish as I was back then, it was a bit of a dog when I got rid of it (50 quid, to my brother's mate )

I had a Squier Duo Sonic guitar that was utterly terrible, badly made, cheap parts including a horrible 3-saddle bridge which I took to a "guitar tech" to have it filed at an angle to sort the intonation. I should have known that said "tech" wasn't that reputable when I was asked to meet him in a pub in Prestwick to drop off the guitar. After about 3 weeks I got the guitar back, only to discover he'd put the guitar behind his passenger seat when I'd dropped it off with him and he drove his mate home from the pub who got in the passenger seat and immediately moved the seat back as far as it would go, not knowing about the guitar in the back, resulting in a 3 inch gouge out of the front of the body.

[rumour6]

A Dan Armstrong sliding pickup medium scale bass... from purchase to return as trade-in: 6hrs (including one each way on the bus...). Don't know why I ever took it out the shop never mind parting with cash...

[skej21]

Status streamline. Never owned it but borrowed it from a friend as a true emergency bass for three gigs and it was a horrid experience. Couldn't get a tone I liked from it, aesthetics were way off what I'm used to and it drew far too much attention for my liking... They're obviously great instruments but so far away from my pigeon-holed Jazz bass comfort zone that i spent most of those gigs wishing I was somewhere else... I still have flashbacks!

[rednose200]

My 1970 P Bass. Load of crap. Couldn't wait to be rid and that was 40 years ago. Suppose whoever has it now cherishes this piece of s*** as a good investment. Bullshit all this sentimental stuff about old Fenders. If you got a good one back then you were lucky.

[Left Foot]

I have you all beaten... with the [size=4]smell[/size] of my Ibenez ergodyne EDC700! In the corner of the bed room its fine, no body has ever smelt it nor have I ever noticed it, but once you open up the hardcase for practice (its like exhuming the dead or something), wwhooooouuuuww, smells like theres a tyre fire in the room. The ennoying things is how I always forget to anticipate a smell and react in a surprised 'WOW sh*t stinks' kinda way and then feel stupid about it.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Left Foot

[EMG456]

[quote name='fireblademalc' timestamp='1359992440' post='1963111']
Worst bass I ever owned was a 1964 Hofner Violin Bass, complete sh*te.
I actually own an early Encore Precision, which plays and sounds every bit as good as a Fender, and a Hohner Rockbass copy of a Precision which sounds an plays BETTER than a Fender!! I had a 1972 Jazz I bought new in '72 and thought was the dogs danglies for 25 years, then I discovered active basses - wow!
Having said that, I have an Attila Balough Odessy with 2 Di Marzio p.b. sets which is awesome, but I have graduated to 6 string basses now so it doesn't get played so much.
[/quote]

Just reading through this entertaining thread now...

On topic - my worst and really the only bad bass I've ever owned was my first - the apparently popular Avon EB0 copy. I thought my misery was solitary but now find that many shared my woes! Don't know what happened to that bass now but I do recall that when I got my first decent bass the Avon was the subject of my first bass butchery experiment and had the frets taken out. Unfortunately, this revealed that the nice dark ebony looking fingerboard was in fact black painted maple! That then meant the neck had to be stripped, revealing a multi- laminate maple construction kind of like a poor man's Kubicki X-Factor! Strange but true.

Off topic - Fireblademalc - I'd love to see that Odyssey! I used to work in a music shop in the early eighties and we sold a couple of Odysseys. The ones we had had Bartolini humbuckers and the deluxe model had chequered binding like the early Rick 4001s. I should have bought one at the time but didn't have the cash - same old same old!

Cheers

Ed

[Norris]

My first ever bass was a Kay SG copy in translucent red plywood. The action could be measured in inches and every bit of chrome was pitted and flaking. I can't remember what it sounded like as it was so long ago.

And ... (riot gear on) ... I really disliked the feel of an early Musicman that a friend bought and have I never touched one since.

[Norris]

[quote name='Looper' timestamp='1360140167' post='1965299']
My first bass, a Franconia jazz copy. Being my first I had no idea how bad it was until someone gave me a Hohner p-copy which played like a real bass. Still, I wouldn't mind getting it back now, just for sentimental reasons, we had some good times together.
[/quote]
My Franconia Jazz was actually quite a reasonable bass, certainly streets ahead of the Kay SG plank that preceeded it.

[Stacker]

[quote name='EMG456' timestamp='1366111873' post='2048382']

Off topic - Fireblademalc - I'd love to see that Odyssey! I used to work in a music shop in the early eighties and we sold a couple of Odysseys. The ones we had had Bartolini humbuckers and the deluxe model had chequered binding like the early Rick 4001s. I should have bought one at the time but didn't have the cash - same old same old!

Cheers

Ed
[/quote]
Which shop did you work in?

[waynepunkdude]

I had a Spector, it looked sh*t, it sounded sh*t, it played sh*t, they are sh*t.

[EliasMooseblaster]

Those Epiphones really aren't popular, are they? I feel like I should just stick up for them before I go on to name and shame my worst experiences: my main bass right now is an Epi EB-3. That neck mudbucker's become of a feature of the band's sound - of the 11 tracks on our upcoming album, I think I used it on 7 of them. I can appreciate that they're an acquired taste, though - I bought mine expressly for "that" sound, and bought a thicker strap to deal with the neck dive.

Worst bass I've played? I once borrowed a little active short-scale - I think it was a Cort - at a jam night. It didn't help that the house amp was also dire, but this thing just felt like somebody had put strings on a Guitar Hero controller.

I have also wrestled with an Encore P-bass in the past. Again, not mine: the guy whose gig I'd been called in for let me borrow his bass. The setup was ok, but I think it suffered from a combination of some really cheap (and possibly really old) strings and that budget pickup. It just feels a bit unfair to kick these, when I know they're cheap, entry-level basses. A decent pickup might have made that into a passable instrument.

[EMG456]

[quote name='Stacker' timestamp='1366713286' post='2056230']
Which shop did you work in?
[/quote]

Jimmy Grant's in Edinburgh and then Glasgow - I was there probably about '81 - '85-ish.

If I insulted you or chucked you out for timewasting, I apologise!

Ed

[gareth]

1983 white ric 4003 - utter crap

[W11ATO]

a black warwick $$ 4 string........woeful