What was your first bass set up?

[monkeybass]

A stagg p-300 bass
An amp called "cruiser by craft" it was about £130 for both and i still have them lying around somewhere.

[gelfin]

A Sumbro EBO copy, an old Hi Fi amp with home made cab, Fane pop 50. £20 all in. Back in 70 something. It all got stolen so was replaced with a Columbus Jazz copy a Carlsbro Stingray head and a locally made 15 cab.

[throwoff]

Im genuinely glad i made this thread now

It's awesome reading where everyone came from

[grumble]

First bass was a borrowed Burns Bison that the owner eventually decided I should either buy or hand back. Handed it back and spent £80 on a Jap crap Les Paul bass and added an HH IC100s top to an unknown 4X12 200W cab. This was back in about 74'ish, the HH is sadly gone and the cab was also sold on but my sweet little LP copy bass is still with me. Do a search in the 'Gear Porn' thread for 'Readers Wives' to see pics.

[chriswilliams666]

I started on 6-string and played that for years. When i started playing bass i bought a Fender Classic 50s Precision In Black (changed the guard to Black as i'd seen Bruce Foxton play) that cost me about £300 of eBay. My amp was a Trace Elliot AH250 through an Ashdown 4x10 and 1x15. I borrowed the Trace off a mate, when he wanted it back i used my old guitar amp a Carlsbro 100CS, an old 100w valve head from '63. Can't remember the price of the Carlsbro, but the Ashdown Cabs cost me £200 for both.

I regret selling the P-Bass as it played better then any basses i've owned, but it had a very large neck which i couldn't get on with.

[snip]

In 1973 we lost our bass player, cant remember why.. Lead guitarist handed me this funny looking bass that he had made and I played it through my AC30 guitar amp... nuff said..!!

Anyway it was a start and I have been a bass player ever since..

[leonshelley01]

Second hand Satellite P Bass copy swapped for a bottle of JD back in 1989. I used to put it through my old tranny Marshall 5210 guitar amp. The amp blew up after a few rehearsals but my sister still has the bass.

[Musicman69]

Around 1982 got my first bass, had Ibanez on the headstock, £28 second-hand.. must have been a copy, long gone now.

First bass amp, '64 Fender Bassman and matching cab £50.. still have the head thankfully. I believe its worth a few quid now.

Here it is..

Edited April 15, 2010 by Musicman69

[Tech]

7 years ago I bought a westfield PJ bass, which came with a calsbro 25 watt combo, for the grand total of £70 together (which took me about a year to save up!). it wasn't a squier like I was hoping I could get, but I played the hell out of it!

(in retrospect that was a really nice bass as it was! i've still got it but I pulled the frets out about 5 years ago and epoxy'd the fretboard, sanded off half the finish, installed a piezo pickup under the bridge, i even installed a switch to change the capacitor on the tone dial! it's a nice fretless, but i'd love to refret it for nostalgia's sake...)

as for the amp - it set on fire. (i kid you not - i usually think people make up stories like this, but it really did - i cacked my pants!!)

[bartelby]

A black Aria Pro II Cardinal deluxe
[attachment=47473:Picture_1.png]
A Laney 30w Linebacker
A Vesta Fire DST

and some kind of flanger.

I traded all but the amp in for my SB Elite, that I still have.

Edited April 16, 2010 by bartelby

[karlfer]

Christmas '73.
Futurama jazz copy, £10. Plank with strings from newspaper round.
Went downstairs for my pressies and Ma and Pa had sold organs to buy me a second hand Marshall 20(yes, twenty) watt valve stack. Well, matching head and 1x15.
Saw one exactly the same on evil bay last year, starting price £2000.
Oops!

[4-string-thing]

A Top Twenty bass, cost £25, which was short scale, vaguely P like with a telecaster head, and a pickup that stopped working after a few weeks. A CMI practice amp that I blew the speaker in after a couple of days, soon to be replaced by a Selmer 50w combo (a select-a-tone, I think) given to me by the guy across the road. It was 1977, the summer of punk!

Wish I still had the Selmer!

[DirkThrust]

My first bass was a Gibson Ripper bought for £180 from Telecoms (now Nevada) in Portsmouth around about 1980/81.

Amp was a Sessionette combo which was IIRC a 100w 1x15. Can't remember what happened to either and I certainly don't reminisce fondly about them.

[waynepunkdude]

Encore P-bass £42 for Crack Converters

Park 10 Watt guitar amp

Still have the bass but I can't remember what happened to the amp.

[Bassistclem]

A black Hondo II bass, not great... and a 10w Laney practice amp.
Closely followed by a

Westone Spectrum
Aria Pro II
Peavey TNT130
Ibanez Roadster
Black Musicman Stingray...

Many more since.....

[thepurpleblob]

Yamaha BB-605
Hartke 1x15 cab (don't remember model number)
Gallien Kreuger GK400 head

The bass and the cab where spanky new out of "Academy of Sound" in Glasgow. The head was an Ebay purchase. I think by the time I'd played a gig, I had acquired a Yamaha TRB4ii though (more eBay). I don't have any of it any more and I don't remember what I paid for any of the gear.

Edited April 17, 2010 by thepurpleblob

[JakeBrownBass]

Mine was an Aria IGB40, and an Aria AB30

[goingdownslow]

Purchased in 1971 ish.
Antoria EB-3 copy, £83, from Rushworth and Dreapers on their own finance, £10 deposit and walk out with it the same day.
Sound City B120 plus amp head £85, and Sound City 4x12 cab also £85 from Frank Hessy's, bought with a Provident cheque.

[4000]

Rickenbacker 4001 (£295 brand new in 1980!) and after about 6 months a JHS 50 watt twin channel guitar combo to go with it (with built in tremelo!). Our guitarist and I used to both play through it. No idea what happened to the combo - I may have traded it for the 100W Custom Sound bass combo which followed. The Rick was stolen in Hendon in 1986 - serial number TC915 if anyone has it.

Edited April 17, 2010 by 4000

[The Funk]

[quote name='throwoff' post='805687' date='Apr 14 2010, 08:40 AM']Everyone post their first 'rig' and how much you paid for it![/quote]

Fender Jazz Bass 4 Passive (Black w/ white pickguard - Made in Mexico - new) $300
Manny's Music gig bag $free
Fender practice amp of some sort - tiny (probably 10" speaker, 15W) $can't remember

I still have the bass and gig bag - still a great bass; sounds good through anything. Not sure where the practice amp is. I might have given it to someone at some point. It was pointless anyway. I used to crank every single thing up on it and ended up with a very distorted sound because the speaker was being abused. It also coincided with my Jack Bruce-emulation period.

[bassace]

I started with a Boosey & Hawkes Czech double bass, laminated, new for £45. The only pickups available then (1961) were DiArmond contact mics and they made a crap sound. So I used a Reslo ribbon mic on a stand. I made my own enclosure to Goodmans designs to house an 18" speaker. Enclosure was massive! I had a Leak HiFi main amp and my brother built me a custom one valve preamp. Later my first bass guitar was a Burns (pre-Bison). When I wanted to upgrade, in 64 if I remember correctly, I went up to London and had the choice of a Fender Jazz and an EBO, both under £100 - so I chose the EBO......doh! I thought the sound of the rig was great but an old friend recently told me that it was a bit ropey.

[MacDaddy]

Westone Thunder 1A & the heaviest H/H 1X15 combo in the world. Ever.

Both belonged to the college.

The first time I owned a bass and amp together for the first time - 70's Guild B301 and Traynor 60w valve combo.

Sound = beautiful, unfortunately not loud enough. Would love to have kept them, but had to sell to buy.

[pete.young]

This would have been about 1971 - 1964 Hofner Senator, through a red and white Watkins Westminster combo (with real tremelo!) that my old man bought for his electric mandolin. Just like this one: [url="http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/britamps/watkins/westminster/west2.html"]http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/britamps/wa...ster/west2.html[/url].

[JackLondon]

Mine was,

Hohner P-Bass copy, worth about £60 12 years ago, put me off having anything shaped like a p or j bass for life.
Laboga 15W amp worth about £30 12 years ago, it had a single 10" and farted out at about half of the volume, I've played for 4 years on it.
A strap, gig bag and a cable thrown in for free with the bass, I still use the strap even today, everything else is gone.

[purpleblob]

I started out on a truly awful Kay Rickenbacker 4001 copy and this was played through a Carlsboro 60w bass combo. Sometime later I got an EB3 copy which was a hell of a lot more playable than the Kay but still not great.

All are long gone now.