Bass Guitar Collection

I have been promising for some time to show pictures of the collection and the time has come. These are the instruments I have collected and played over the years. Some of them have a lot of memories and some are extremely beautiful, all of them are very special for one reason or another. I hope you enjoy seeing them.





This was my first real bass guitar. It is a custom made 4 string Kramer Pioneer Carrera.
All black with ebony finger board, P/J pickup configuration and one of the sweetest playing and sweetest sounding basses I have ever heard. The jazz pickup is actually 2 that have a 3 way switch that allows single coil, humbucker or out of phase settings. This bass will always be my favorite. Purchased 1984.

  

 

This was my first 6 string bass that I got in 1988. It belonged to my good friend and mentor Steve Bailey. This is a custom Laravee (famous for acoustic guitars in Canada). This is a neck through body with ebony fingerboard and EMG active pickups. This bass was pearl white when I got it, another friend of mine wanted to paint a guitar he had that was damaged in an earthquake purple so... well there was a little left over when I finished the other one.

Dean 6 string bolt-on neck ebony fingerboard with EMG passive pickups. This bass is a very pretty transparent blue and I played this bass for quite a while. It was really cool because I got it brand new for $500 and it was totally playable, even for someone as picky as I am about how they are set up. I like this bass because if someone was to steal it at a gig I wouldn't be nearly as upset as I would some of the others (especially the Spector below). Purchased 1997.

This is a sweet bass that I adopted 2nd hand from the guitar center. It is a Tobias 4 string with rosewood fingerboard and a compound radius neck with Bartolini active pickups and concentric tone knobs. I rescued this bass from a life of dust collecting in the store and have become very attached to it because it is so much fun to play. It has a 24 fret fingerboard which gives it a lot of range for playing in the upper register.

Adopted 2006

This beautiful piece of wood is a hand crafted, custom 6 string custom Stuart Spector Design Ltd. U.S.A. fretless with active pickups including the piezo bridge pickup. I got this bass 2nd hand for about 1/4 the price of a new one but it was so well cared for that it was in new condition. I got this in 2007 and it is my first and only fretless bass. I was really surprised at how fast I was able to adapt to playing in tune, even after years of not playing. this is such a wonderful piece of wood, you can feel it's presence in the room when you walk in.

This is my most recent acquisition. This is a Fender 6 string Jazz bass Steve Bailey signature model. The friend that I took a few lessons from many years ago was finally able to get Fender to design his dream bass. He used to show me a 1966 Jazz bass he had that was worth a small fortune and when Fender approached him about a signature model he showed it to them and said make a 6 string just like this. It turned out to be quite the engineering feat by the time they finished it and I am very pleased with it being part of my collection. I got this one in 2009 because it was back ordered for a little over a year but well worth the wait.

This concludes the tour of my bass guitar collection as it stands today. There are some new additions that are in the works but I will keep those under wraps for now. I promise I will start spending more time playing each of them, the issue with the pain I as having in my hands and elbows seems to be gone so now I can return to playing and enjoying them. Thanks for coming by, leave me a comment or ask a question about them. I like to talk about them.