The Ghosts of Gear Gone By

Nick LaBate - Bassist, Producer

Former weapons of the arsenal

Here's my first Epiphone Jack Casady bass. It developed an issue and was replaced with an ebony version. That one is much louder anyway.

This Jazz bass may not look special, but it's special to me. It's the second bass I ever owned. It's a 1991 Fender American Standard Jazz bass in gunmetal blue. I traded my first bass, a Squier Precision bass for this one. This bass just had the sound that I was hearing in my head, and it's stayed in my heart for a long time. I hated to part with it, but I just didn't play it anymore, what with a 70's vintage Jazz bass and a 70's reissue Jazz bass at my disposal.

This was my Tobas Toby Pro 6 string. It's from the period after Gibson bought Tobias, and this instrument was made in Korea. It's the 4th 6 string bass I've owned. I bought it with the intent of making it fretless. Much to my delight, Dave at Alto Music in Monsey, NY did a great job in converting this bass from fretted to fretless. He used rosewood dust and some other material to do the job, and it's been great to me. I used this bass on a few recordings, including Programmed Response tracks such as "Uncle Jay's Barbecue" and most notably "The porpoise is in the can". The unfortunate reality was that this bass was laying around doing nothing. Add in the fact that my Musicman Stingray 5 string fretless has been filling that particular need, it seemed time to part ways with this instrument.

This was my Ernie Ball/Musicman Stingray 5 string. This thing looked really sharp and sounded even sharper. I had this bass for about 4 or 5 years, but it started to lay around as I was playing other instruments. So the time came to part with it and move on. Besides, it wasn't really my sound anymore. I think this bass saw a decent ammount of use in the Jeff Gaynor Band, mainly on the track "Candle".

NOT PICTURED

Here are some of the other instruments I've owned that for one reason or another I just don't have anymore.

Squier II Precision Bass - This was my first bass guitar. It was pretty cool for something that only cost a couple of hundred dollars. It had a black body with a maple neck and fingerboard. Probably the coolest thing about it was that it didn't have a pickguard. Kind of odd for a Fender, but a little interesting.

Ibanez Soundgear SR-886 - This was my first experiment with 6 string bass. It proved to be quite a success, as I played 6 string almost exclusively for about 8 years. I learned a lot on this instrument. But alas, it wasn't up to the challenge.

Ibanez Musician 8 String - This was a strange instrument, for sure. It was one of the lower end Musician basses, having a bolt on neck. It also weighed a mother-loving ton! It sounded cool, but became totally impractical to wear on stage, and my pick playing at the time wasn't up to the challenge of playing this beast. I traded this in for an Eden D-210 XLT cabinet.

Modulus Prime 6 - This was my second 6 string bass. My friend Joe affectionately referred to it as "The Gumby" bass, since it was so green. In truth, this was a demo bass from the NAMM show in 1993. It got offered to me by my teacher and friend, Bill Langan of Alto Music in Monsey, NY. It was something of a good deal, so I scrounged up the money to get this bass. It was probably my first boutique instrument and it served me pretty well for some time. However when I got my Zon Sonus 6, this bass became more of a backup than anything else. I eventually traded it in when I bought my two Musicman Stingray 5's.

Samick Fretless - This was my first foray into fretless bass. It wasn't much to look at, and it didn't cost a lot of money. But it was an excellent instrument to learn on. I had it for about 2 years and sold it to a good friend.

Rickenbacker 4001 "Tuxedo" bass - This was an instrument that I scored at New Jersey Guitar and Bass Center. It was very cool, having a white body, as well as white fingerboard and black hardware and accessories. However, I rarely played it and wound up selling it off. That decision was somewhat short-sighted, as my playing style now is much more suited to this bass than it had been at the time. Interestingly enough, the person I sold it to also parted with this particular Rick. It's now owned by my friend Ona, and this bass is so hearty that it even endured Hurricane Katrina's fury in a town just outside of New Orleans.

Ernie Ball/Musicman Stingray fretless - This was my first Stingray. I got this one at the aforementioned New Jersey Guitar and Bass Center. This was a Stingray 4 string fretless with an unlined fingerboard. The cool thing that I didn't realize about this bass is that it had the bridge with string dampers. A very cool feature. I used this bass on some Programmed Response recordings, notably on "Tire Iron Rag" and "X in the sky". I traded this in along with the Modulus Prime 6 when I purchased 2 Musicman 5 strings.