Pictures (everybody loves pictures)

[daan]

Reading the "your crappy first basses" thread made me want to go find the pix of mine (80's "Global" brand plywood POS that someone had changed the bridge and tuners for decent ones) The pickups sounded REALLY good, especially thru the "Tube Driver" pedal my friend had.

I had that thing for a couple years, but had "headstock envy" and had to trade it for a "real" bass, which of course didn't sound or play as nice as my first one. (Mexican "Squier series" P bass that didn't stick around long) It just sounded like a generic bass, and wouldn't stay in tune real well. Now I would have tried to fix it but at the time (pre-internet) I thought it was a dud bass so it got traded for somehting else(which is also gone) Along with most of my hair   

My sister liked playing my first bass, she was really good too but was only fooling around with it. She picked it up a million times faster than I ever did, but never kept up with it unfortunately.

I had to ambush her "paparazzi style" to get these pix, and she really did try to hit me with the bass in the last pic. One of her friends actually hit her boyfriend with the bass "El Kabong" style later, other than scratches I could never find anything wrong with it. His head, OTOH probably didn't fare as well... Ah the wonders of plywood. I missed that thing as soon as I sold it (don't we all?) I found one on Ebay years later but the guy wanted almost $500 for it, and there's no way it was worth that much. I think I paid just over $100 for mine brand new.
I found a couple more pix, but my scanner stopped talking to my computer so that's it for now.

[uwe]

Domestic violence continues to be an issue even here ... 

[Highlander]

Sneak up on your sister with a camera whilst she's armed with a WMB and you get what yo deserve...

[mc2NY]

Not actually MY first bass and guitar....but two interesting ones I keep to make me appreciate what I do have.

The old guitar on the left came from a prison in Mississippi...all hand carved by a prisoner and very crude. Always makes me think of how badly someone must have missed playing to put in the effort to make this.

The "bass" on the right I got from my friend's antique store. He found it in the attic of an old house he bought the contents of in an estate sale. The resonator section is an old tin box. You will notice the cast horn on top, probably from an old phonograph or radio. There are actually turnbuckles at the bridge end on each string, so this was a functioning bass. The body is plywood with a broomstick running behind it as the sound post, thru the reso-box. It always makes me think of ingenuity and originality of builders/inventors and I wonder if whoever built it later ended up as a real instrument builder.

[daan]

The hand-carved one is interesting. Can you play it, or is it a "guitar-shaped object"?