What's here?

Here the plan... I want to focus this open discussion on all things, in my humble opinion, effecting the tone of your bass.

A bit of background.

I picked up the bass guitar back in the early nineties when I was just finishing high school. My musical experience prior to bass guitar included some unenthusiastic participation in early high school band playing the alto sax. At that time I doubt I could even distinguish the sound of the bass in a band. I learned to read music and do some sight reading - which got me a minimal passing grade in music class. It never felt like a creative activity for me.

It's difficult for me to remember exactly what struck me about the bass. This may have something to do with the fact I was smoking doobies every night of the week and taking hallucinogens almost every Friday. I suspect this kind of abuse may have heightened certain auditory sensitivities for me, namely in lower sound frequencies. I do remember hearing the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the Uplift Mofo Party Plan album. For the first time I could hear this thing called the bass. And what an awesome sounding beast.

I bought a bass for $80 and starting making noises. It was a p-bass knockoff. It was a japenese make. The previous owner had sanded down the body and put a clear finish. He did a horrible job. You could see the orbital sander swirling marks pushing their way through the varnish. I didn't have an amp so I wired it to this cheap-assed stereo system. I kept my poor neighbours up all night just hitting the E string and just listeneing to the awesomeness of that 40Hz vibrating around my small room. I wish I still had that bass. It had the most amazing maple neck, cream covered Dimarzio pickups and some beefy clover style tuning heads.

I sold that bass and upgraded (so I thought) to a green, very modern looking samick. I think I paid like $290 dollars for it. What a piece of dogshit that was. The amp I was playing through at the time was an old 50 watt traynor sold state bass head and a 15 inch peavy cab. I was really into Primus, fishbone and hendrix and was learning completely by ear.

Time went on and I owned yet another samick - this time a 5 string. It still sounded like shit! I later bought a yamaha which was a huge improvement over the samicks. I eventually got tired of buying shitty sounding basses. I spent a whole summer working at this toxic paint shop and saved enough to buy myself an Ernie Ball Sting Ray. I was not satisfied with the sound of the bass I had. I got rid of the traynor amp and purchased a fender 200 watt solid state bass amp. Finally I was getting some decent sounds.

Jesus, I wasted alot of money on awful sounding gear. I've become somewhat ill when it comes to bass tone. I've spent the last few years really honing down and refining my sound. I hope to share some of these lessoned learned.