I play the bass. I have been playing for a few years now. I have been thinking about getting a new bass guitar for a long time, but I have had other financial priorities. Finally, my old Ibanez bass broke ( I got it used to start off with, it has taken quite a beating :) I need a new one anyway). I found this deal online, does anyone on this forum have experience with different bass guitars?

Here is the deal: http://www.guitartrader.com/itempg.icl?orderidentifier=ID108412137325860396F3D 703055&secid=1020&subsecid=1165&catid=0&itmid=2974&dirpage=dir2&eflag=0&curitempos=5&numitems=19

I am an avid bass player, but I have not been looking around too much at what the market and best basses are. Maybe you can give me advice about if this is a good deal. DO you think that it is too much for beginners or is it a killer deal?

Please check out this link...

http://www.itzalist.com/art/used-bass-guitars.html

Go to second link at the site and see what you find.

Thanks for the link. I didn't find anything better than what I had, but I got to see more of what was out there.

Never buy a musical instrument without trying it out first. Each one is unique and there will be variations in feel, action, sound and weight. Would you find a marriage partner online or through the post without trying them out first? As a bass player, you must know what I mean.

PS: Go for a better quality instrument,even if you have to buy used.

I have already felt the instrument at the store where I buy a lot of by bass gear. It felt good, balanced, light. I like the feel. I would go with a higher quality instrument, but I somply can't afford one. I have been precticing on the school bass, it is a beast from the 80s that I can hardly play. I need one NOW. I went to the used guitar store and checked out what they had.

Have you ever heard of the company GK? It said that on the neck of the guitar. They have a couple GK guitars for $250. They appear to be in good shape, and I tried one out. It plays well. I looked up their site on the internet just to see where it is coming from. Here is the link: http://gkguitar.com/gkaboutus.html

SO, after seeing that, I thought that it looks like a couple of guys in a garage that make guitars for fun. This will either be the BEST or WORST guitar I ever buy if I get it. Honestly, I don't even know how a couple GK guitars got to Northern Ontario. I am seriously considering buying one of those used guitars.

I ended up contacting the company that is selling the original guitar that I wanted. THe shipping is $70 USD which translated into anout $100 CAD. THat is half of the value of the guitar itself!! I may be crazy but I am not stupid.

So, I am guitarless, lonely, broke and confused. Do you think that the GK guitars are high quality? I have no idea how the hell they got here, but it looks like a viable option.

Are you saying you actually tried out one of these GK's at your local store? I presume it's used and costs less than $250. You say you like it, so why don't you buy it?

PS: Unsurprisingly, I've neverr heard of them before but there are hundreds of makes that I've never heard of either and I'm sure some are great.

I went to the store again today. I talked to the "Bass specialist" who wasn't there last time. He really knew what he was talking about, he said that the GK basses are cheap Chinese basses, and he was right when I looked at the fine points on the quitar. He showed me a guitar that he built out of parts, mainly Yamaha and other Japanese parts. I payed it and it felt really good. The guitar was kind of sitting in the corner behind of the other basses. THe guitar is scratched a bit but I tried it out and it plays well. I wanted a new amp too, so I negotiated a deal, $200 for the guitar and $150 for the amp (this is canadian money so multiply it by about 3/4 to get USD). After the tax, it was $400 CAD. It was not a bad deal. I played it for a while, it still feels good.

Looks like you did OK. Those are good prices. One of the most important things on a bass is the bridge. If there's a separate adjustable saddle for each string, you will minimize your chance of intonation problems. If you ever change the brand or gauge of your strings, you can find that the intonation is suddenly slightly off.

As for age, I have a Ventures souvenir model Mos-Rite from the early 1960s. Remember "Walk Don't Run"? I don't play funk, even if I had the axe I just ain't got the funk so it wouldn't matter. For everything else it's just fine. Short scale, which theoretically doesn't provide as crisp a sound because you have to either leave the strings looser or use thicker gauge to get the same pitch. But nobody's ever complained about the sound and the long-scale basses are just too long and unwieldy for my taste.

Oh yeah, to get back to my point, it didn't have an adjustable saddle and the intonation problems were annoying. I had a BadAss bridge installed with individual adjustable saddles, and now the intonation is perfect.

How many watts does your amp produce? Even twenty years ago, just to play a club you were expected to arrive with a bass amp the size of a Volvo. You've probably got a good rehearsal amp but you may need something bigger to go on stage. Especially these days, everybody's going for that "Korn" sound, which I call "infrared noise" because it's heavy at the lower threshold of hearing. It takes a lot of power to produce.

Squier are Asian made Fenders. They play well but require a lot of maintenece. If you played it and it sounds good so why not.

My small practice amp is 15 watts, I usually play with my awesome earphones so that I don't disturb anyone else. One of my buddies has a 400 watt amp and a drum set so I will sometimes go to his house to play. He recently gave up the bass, so I might buy his amp off of him. I am not really in a band right now, but I am moving away soon anyway. After I move away, I will try to hook up with some musicians. I play more for my own enjoyment than for other people. I have taken the stage a couple times, usually for small stuff. I am young, so I have a lot of time to get really good and hook up. I really like the bass I bought. It is a little heavy, but it plays well.

Twenty-five years ago every band was looking for a bassist because it wasn't a glamorous job and there weren't a lot of us around. I don't know if that's still true today. The fact that young people like you are starting off playing bass instead of waiting until you're thirty and haven't made it as a guitar player indicates that times have changed.

Music has changed too, guitars don't rule like they used to and that "infrared noise" sound of the Korn/Limp Bizkit school draws more limelight to the bass player. Which undoubtedly draws more kids to the bass when they're young enough to become virtuosos.

Whatever the particulars of today's world, as your elder I strongly advise you to jump into whatever you want to do with both feet and get moving. The clock is ticking. Nobody really has "a lot of time." Get "really good" as fast as you can and "hook up" soon. Music is a young person's game.

If the bass isn't really what's in your heart then by all means keep doing it as a hobby and go be a computer guru or a nurse or a history professor or whatever is in your heart. But whatever it is, do it now. Don't be one of those people who looks back on the thing they didn't do and now it's too late.

The kids in Evanescence wrote all those songs when they were thirteen or fourteen and have been practicing all these years, waiting for the chance to record them with the professional instruments and the live chorus and produce the works that until now they had only heard in their heads. That's the kind of talent, dedication, and ambition that you're up against.

There is still a shortage of bassists, not as bad as it was before though. I really love playing the bass. I love the sound, the feel. I'n just not counting on being famous or anything. I will try, and in the next two years, I will try to hook up. I still got a lot of young life left in me :) I have been writing some of my own songs to a bass beat. Once I get better at the guitar, I will add chords to the melody. I play my bass every day. I am dedicated to my music. I am counting on meeting up with other musicians at University though. I am considering applying to the music program in university. My parents said that If I can get a record deal, they will take out a loan to get my band started off. I don't want to look to far ahead though. I will just be the best that I can be as a musician.