I just bought my first bass in March of this year. I’d played guitar off and on for nearly twenty years – more off than on, and I didn’t touch it for nearly six years at one point. When I played with friends occasionally in college, I usually ended up on bass, as I was always the worst guitar player of the bunch. I started playing again last fall and decided that I missed playing bass, so I bought one.
One of the first things to figure out in shopping for basses is whether you’re going to go short-scale or full-scale. Your standard Rickenbacker/Fender Precision/Fender Jazz bass is a full-scale bass. Short-scale basses, as the name implies, have a shorter neck, with a shorter distance between the nut and the bridge and consequently more closely spaced frets. Probably the best-known short-scale basses are the Fender Mustang/Musicmaster and the Danelectro Longhorn. Full-scale basses have a fuller, bassier tone, while short-scale basses can be punchier. Short-scale basses are often preferred by guitar players moonlighting as bassists since the fret spacing is closer to what they’re used to on guitar, and they’re also good for people with very small hands.
I really expected to be more comfortable with a short-scale bass, particularly since that’s what I’d used most often in the past. The old Fenders have risen astronomically in price, however, and I wasn’t thrilled with any of the other alternatives I tried. Then I saw a Danelectro Rumor bass in a local music store. The Mosrite-ish body shape, long scale, and built-in chorus had all put me off of them before, but I decided to pick it up and try it. Love at first pluck. Before I started playing it i was worried about the extremely light weight of the thing, and the neck, which is extremely thin for a full-scale bass. Even before I plugged it in, however, I could tell it had tone to spare. I bought one a few days later, and couldn’t be happier especially given that it only set me back $159. I’m not sure I’d want to gig with it, since it is lightweight and might not survive the rigors of the road, but it seems very well made for the price, and I like the sound of it as well or better than the Mexican-made Fender Standard P- and J-basses that’re a couple hundred more. The built-in chorus is neither here nor there for me, but it might appeal to some. I could do without the sparkle finish, but it has a certain cheesy charm. I heartily recommend the Rumor to anyone just starting out – especially since it’s such an inexpensive option. If you hate it, or give up bass, you aren’t out much (particularly since you can probably sell it for at least 2/3 of what you paid).
As for amps, if you pick up a really cheap bass or are willing to bust your budget a little bit, you could do much, much worse than the newer Fender Bassman 25. The problem with the little 15-watt jobs in the value packages that Fender and Ibanez and Hartke and others sell is that they tend to have small, wimpy drivers: 6.5" or at most 8" drivers that don’t give you anything like an honest bass tone – might as well just put thick flatwounds on your guitar and pluck. The Bassman 25 has great tone, enough volume to drive your family out of the room, and several features that make it a great practice amp for someone just starting out: auxiliary line inputs to connect a CD or tape player to it for playing along, a headphone jack for late-night practicing, a mute switch that leaves the signal to the tuner-out jack unaffected, effects loop, 3-band eq with an “enhance” button, etc. The wedge-shaped cabinet is extremely cool as well when you have to sit right on top of the amp when you’re playing – you can tilt it back so that the driver is angled up toward your ears instead of down at your ankles. And it’s a 10" driver in a ported enclosure, which gives a much fuller, bassier sound than the smaller practice amps. It’s also built like a tank. The only downside is the cost. I paid $269 for mine, after much searching for the best deal. I didn’t mind the splurge, since I also use it as a guitar amp, and since the Bassman 25 was the only small practice amp that received almost uniformly positive, even rave, reviews from both print and online sources – all of the other, less expensive, options had a significant number of detractors.