Getting down with the bassics

Back in the spring of 2005 I was asked to play bass guitar for an upcoming missions trip. I had never played bass guitar before, so my only request in being o.k. with this is that our worship leader be patient with me during whatever learning curve I had to go through. He was. I never took a bass guitar lesson, so I just sort of figured it out on my own, bas(s)ed on the fact that I had been playing guitar so long. I knew the four strings were the same as the top four on a guitar, just two octaves lower, and that the strings were as thick as the utility cable outside my house, but actually beginning to play a bass was pretty different. Different scale, different feel, just different.

Once that trip was over and I returned the Sky Blue Jazz Bass that I had borrowed from a friend, I thought that would be the end of my bass playing days, but then I started getting called a lot to play bass at church, and agreed to serve in this way. Over time, something interesting started to happen. I began to enjoy playing bass, so much that I wanted to buy my own instead of always borrowing someone else’s to play.

I decided a range of what I wanted to spend, then went out and started playing various brands of basses in that price range all over town. I played several models by Ibanez, Warwick (Rock Bass), Yamaha, and after going through all of them, I really liked a particular Ibanez the most. Until that is, one day when I went into Guitar Center here to see what they had.

When I told my price range to the bass dude du jour, he directed me toward the Fender Quilt Top Jazz Bass 24, which he said for the money, was the best bass on the market. Alrighty, I’ll take that with a grain of salt “Mr. Rocked too hard in the 60’s and 70’s” man. I never liked the look of Jazz basses that much for my own silly aesthetic reasons, but hey—I am all about doing or not doing things for silly aesthetic reasons. To me, I was completely justified in my position on the stupid little chrome piece down by the knobs that looked like a mistake where the rest of the big white “strat-like” pickguard should go. That being said and off my chest, the first thing I noticed about this particular Jazz Bass was that it didn’t have a pickguard and the typical Ash or Alder body had a nice Quilt Maple top with a Tobacco Sunburst finish. Two thumbs up immediately!

I also noticed that it had active electronics and great pickups, so I thought I would give it a try. I liked it right off—so much that I sat there and played it for about a half hour. I didn’t buy it that day, but it became the front runner, and for the rest of my search, I never found one I liked better in my price range. When I went back to GC to buy it, the bass was gone. Bassically, it had sold the day after I was in there playing it. Since my new bass dude du jour had no clue as to when another one would be coming, I decided to try Musician’s Friend. I had never bought an instrument online before and was very skeptical about it, but with all the guarantees etc., I figured the worst thing that could happen is that I do not like it or there is an issue and I send it back for a refund. Well, there were no problems and it arrived in perfect condition.

I still remember the UPS guy bringing it to my doorstep, and I still remember my first Sunday playing it at church. The following year, I took it on my 2nd missions trip, thus no longer needing to borrow my friends blue Jazz bass, but I couldn’t have anyway since some “genius” stole it out of our church. To this day, I still have a hard time believing someone would do that.

So now you have the low down on a bassic necessity of mine, and one I enjoy playing every time I pick it up.