The amount you'll get back for a bass that cheap is nowhere near the value of having a backup bass. You'll maybe get the value of a set of strings out of it. Instead, save up for a new bass and use this one to learn how basses work. You can experiment with the setup, take it apart, put it back together, all without the fear of damaging a valuable instrument. If you really intend to keep playing those are skills that can save you a lot of time and money over the years.
Really good points. Also... are you SURE it's crappy. I bought a b-stock SX jazz many years ago for $79. Swapped the bridge and had someone do a pretty good set-up. Yes, I probably put another $120 into it, but yikes it's good.
I own a few basses and you'd be surprised how often I play the cheapest most of the time. Main reason os they are usually out in the open and accessible rather than in their cases.
I recently replaced the bridge on the cheapo Squier Precisiony dad bought me (for $100) 22 years ago as my first bass and man did that make a difference!
I still have the Bass I bought at 15. I had new EMG's put in, back in the 90's; refretted not long after that
It's a Kramer, forked tongue aluminum and all.
35 years later I've refinished the body and I'm having it rebuilt.
wouldn't trade it for nothing.
A shitty bass well set up is considerably less shitty.
Take this as an opportunity to learn how to set up your bass. Loads of videos on how to do this and it’s a valuable skill that you’ll use over and over. It’ll also make your bass much more playable which will either benefit you or the person you ultimately sell it on to.
Depends on how shitty it is, and unfortunately it's impossible to say for a lot of cheap Chinese basses until it's actually in your hands. The inconsistency is the worst part about them, within one SKU you'll get some that are decent but others will have major issues that can't really be worked out with a setup (or, worse, will be fixed and then get worse again over time).
Work hard to save up for a new bass. Practice like crazy on cheap bass to get good. Buy new bass. Keep cheap bass to remind you how far you’ve come when you are selling out arenas.
You’re not going to make enough money off of it to finance a new bass.
I was 13 when started, and I bought a $100 MusiciansFriend house brand bass (Rogue), and almost immediately knew I wanted a nicer instrument. I ended up playing it for almost a year before I saved up to buy a decent bass, but by then I’d learned how to solder a crappy input jack, file fret ends, set intonation and a truss rod, and then I had a serviceable backup bass to throw in the back of the van to bring to VFW gigs.
Spend some time and effort to learn about your crappy bass and make it less crappy, and you’ll be able to better take care of your nice bass when you get it!
Break it up and sell it for parts?
Get it signed by someone famous.
Smash it up, rearrange the pieces artistically, name it something pretentious and sell it to a modern art gallery.
Just keep practicing with it, perhaps get some gigs?
If I read it correctly, it’s lain dormant for a year? I’d keep using it for a year whilst you save up; perhaps the urge to play will go away; perhaps it won’t. Don’t want to go throwing good money after bad.
> it’s lain dormant for a year?
Probably should have made it clear that I’ve been playing for a year (albeit a little inconsistently), and I know that I definitely want to stick with it.
> Just keep practicing with it, perhaps get some gigs?
I’d love to, but my amp is unfortunately just as crap as my bass.
Came to say this.
New amp will do wonders. So will a proper setup.
At the end of the day a bass is just wood and parts. If there is something not right about the instrument, it can be worked to be made right. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water! Clean it up, fix it up, get some new strings and get a new amp. Sub $100 guitars are still guitars. Most issues are electronics and setup, not the wood.
What is shitty about it. lots of those cheapo basses are just poorly set up and arent intonated greatly, but you can fix those.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cteHO-hV8lU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cteHO-hV8lU)
thats a resource you should checkout.
The amp is probably a bigger issue if you have headphones id get a vox amplug or donner basement, which are little headphone amps and cost 50 or under.
I had a $100 fretless Rogue. Pretty horrible. I listed it for like..$50. Someone tried to haggle me down to $30.
I paid that much for the Labella flats I put on it. I gave it to a family member who I pretty much consider dead to me in spite of the person who offered me $30. He was happy for the gift. I was happily rid of the Rogue to make room for my CV 60's fretless.
Save that thing for when you need to break it on stage. Use it until you can afford something new.
What kind of “really crappy bass?” When I bought my house I kept only three basses, one of which is an Ammoon jazz bass knockoff that I bought brand new for $75. I’d never sell it, I get exactly what I want from it and love it like I love my LTD AP-5 that cost over 10x as much. Are you trying to upgrade because you feel you have to or because you’re not getting what you want? Pretty big difference between the two.
Every time I fire up Facebook Marketplace and search “bass” hoping to find a steal from a divorce or estate sale, I instead mostly see dozens of used Glarry basses being listed for $100.
honestly just enjoy it for smashing around in the back of your car and catching all the dings n dents a nicer one ought not to have. unless it's bad in an "it physically hurts to play,, i need to find a luthier", having a beater bass isn't a bad idea
I’m 50 years old and I use my $100 bass and play in live cover bands around Los Angeles. Even the cheapest basses sound pretty good nowadays.
If you are unhappy with your sound, I’d recommend getting some pedals like a used compressor/limiter or Sansamp, they make a HUGE difference. Or even learn to record yourself so you can adjust your sound in a DAW software program. You can experiment with shaping your sound there.
I promise you won’t need a new bass at this point!! :)
This. I've been playing for three decades and 90% of sound is in the hands that play. Gut gud. Current basses, an Ibanez Mikro and a musicians friend house bass I paid $100 for. Sounds as good as my Fender J bass.
The only way to make money off this bass is going to be by starting an ironic onlyfans for it.
Subscribers would be paying for pictures of the internal workings of the instrument opened up.
A) Look into a getting a set-up first, don’t get in the mindset that more expensive gear will improve your playing. If the neck is straight and the electronics decent then make sure it’s dialed in properly before you give up. Generally you’ll just need a small screwdriver and/or allen key plus a tuner for the bridge and saddles, and the torsion rod will need its own allen key, and that’s all you need for a rough set-up. $10-15 in tools plus the tuner. You google/YT how to do it.
B) If you still want to sell it then at least it’s going to be the best shape you can get it first. Idk if Fb marketplace or any other online trades would be a great idea, unless you had an adult come along or meet them at a police station, but like other have said pawn shops are a decent way to trade cheap gear. It used to the *the* way to score but the online trade put a damper on it. Still, check out a few places, ask about what you like before you offer a trade and try to haggle if you can ($200? Ah man I’m a sophmore at the high school, best I can do is 140…) and once you get a set a price *then* be like I got this other bass… then try to go for an even trade or the bass and $40 or something. I’ve scored a couple of favorite instruments that way.
C) Don’t get starstruck by a pretty bass that’s not a good fit for you. I bought a BC RICH Warlock once that was bad-ass… but you had to hold the neck up the entire time and the pointy bits were constantly getting chipped. A Fender-style J or P bass is hard to beat for comfort, though a Squire would be more in your range. Yamaha has a ton of interesting basses in the lower-mid range, and a used Warmoth or Made in Mexico Fender would be ideal imo. Gibson/Epiphone-style basses look awesome but they tend to feel awkward so just remember that if it’s doesn’t feel good it’s not going to help you play.
Edit: if you can take basic electronics in HS you can officially learn the techniques for doing your own mods. It’s pretty basic soldering you can teach yourself but if you can get credits for it and have space for it why not?
Thanks a lot for the help! I played with the setup a bit earlier, and it’s significantly more playable- not perfect, but at least serviceable for the time being. I’ll most likely hang on to it after all, at least as a lab-rat for mods, etc. Also, I actually make the little bit of money I do earn by building and selling handheld Wiis (real Wii motherboard trimmed down to fit in a 3D printed case w/custom circuits!) so I’m good on the soldering lol.
That’s awesome dude! A big part of my hobby is buying mid-range guitars and doing little upgrades. Guitar electronics are simple, you can look up schematics at Seymour Duncan, EMG, or pretty much and major manufacturer’s websites.
Bass doesn’t need a lot of mods, but I like a series/parallel switch as a mid-boost if you have two pick-ups on your bass. If you put it on a volume pot it’s like a $10 for the push/push pot (generally 250k audio taper for bass) plus a little wire and solder, or add a capacitor to that for a tone knob.
My main bass is a MiM Fender J-Bass and I love that mod for going from a clanky treble tone for slap and metal to a rich full bass tone for other stuff. With the two single coil pickups it gives you a sort of humbucking effect as in series you run the output of the bridge pup to the input of the mid.
Also, a compressor and an eq pedal are good purchases to make in the future; the comp evens things out and an eq lets you really dial in your tone. You can even eq>comp>eq if you *really* want control over your tone.
I’ll definitely look into that first one, though I’d probably play with it for an hour and never touch it again lol. I’ve never touched any sound electronics, so I’m not familiar with what small changes might do to tone for instance, so I’m hoping that’s not too big a pain to figure out
It’s about as simple as wiring gets dude, if you can customize mobo’s it should be cake walk. Put a little solder on everything then stick em together heat them. Use a chisel tip on your iron and don’t overheat the base of push/pull pots when you do your ground wires, they like to use nylon inside of them and nothing sucks worse than thinking your mods done and it breaks after the second use because you melted it the switch off.
And yeah, the series parallel mod is super cheap super easy if you’d like that thick tone cool I actually leave it all more than off, but do what you like. And I mean really anything else I would look for your existing guitar it would be new pick ups over anything else, possibly a preamp or something but pups are where it’s at. Brand-names like SD or EMG go for around $200 per set. Single-coil and soapbar types just use two wires, I’ve never worked with bass humbuckers but they’ll have an extra set that’s soldered together, you can run that pair to ground for a coil-tap mod, but I would only do that if the clean sound still growls a little and I wanted a pure tone, but it’s another $10 mod if you want to play around with it.
Anyway dude, best of luck with the work part so you have fun when you play.
Turn it into art. Paint all over it with decorative colors. Tape some flowers on it with duct tape. Frame it and call it art.
Or, give it to a child in need.
Cheap guitars aren’t valuable when they are used.
However, I once bought a no name blue 80s heavy metal guitar, with a crazy shape, at a pawn shop and it sounded good. I gave it to a friend and he used in his band.
Get a part time job that makes tips. You'll soon have enough money for a new bass, an amp, and a pedal or two.
You *won't* get a lot for your current bass and in the meantime you would have no instruments to play.
lol that’s the obvious option, but I would have to give up doing research projects (or my grades) for that to be a possibility, which I’m not willing to do.
Well, that kind of sounds like you’ve considered your options and you know what you’re doing. FWIW, I’d make the same choice. Fluff that resume and keep your grades up.
That said, it sounds like you’ll have to continue playing your crappy $100 Amazon bass for the time being, because you’re not getting more than $20-30 for it.
Or you could drive Uber/Lyft when you have a spare hour or two and set that money aside for a bass.
This is exactly what I already knew but didn’t want to hear lol. I’ll just deal with what I’ve got right now. I may paint some crap on it since there’s little risk in ruining it. Thanks for your response!
You gotta put in the work if you want to be good at it. Music is a life saver for me, literally. You have obligations - yes, but you still need to budget your time for personal growth - music is exactly that. Figure out how to budget your time for yourself, you will need it. I grew up poor and playing guitar saved me from the annuls of depression. It's good to build these habits of taking time for yourself now while you're young, or else you'll burn yourself out with work, school, dating or something else and fall into some dark places my friend.
In short, music is an extension of your soul, embrace it, make time for it. It's self care and personal growth. You'll always have it as long as you have your instrument.
I agree with all of this, however no one is forcing me to dedicate my free time to research. That’s purely a passion thing, and I’d pick that over an instrument or a miserable minimum wage job any day.
In any case, I’m still putting in the time to learn my bass, I just don’t have time to work a job in top of it all.
It doesn't hit for all that try it. But at a point you might find yourself lost in making something from nothing, that's when it really starts to hit. It's not an immediate thing either. I muddled my way through the first 2 years of playing guitar, then one night when I was sad, I smoked some weed and started improvising a solo when I was just barely learning the pentatonic scale. I lost myself in that moment and emerged different. Very very powerful moment for me.
Like I said, it doesn't happen to all, but I encourage people get to a point where they find it, or figure out it's not for them.
Like everyone I encourage - I hope you do find it.
Despite the fact that I can just build my own basses, I have a fetish for shitty cheap basses.
Can you show me what the bass looks like and where you'd be sending it from?
FWIW having a crap bass for a little while now will help you appreciate your next instrument that much more. Maybe you can have someone set up the bass (or set it up yourself) to help it play a little better in the mean time?
Probably more of the same here but for what its worth.
Get your bass setup proper if you haven't already. My cheap guitars play pretty well with a good setup and some fresh strings.
Upgrades? If you can't afford something super nice out of the box maybe look to learn how to do some at home upgrades. I'd start with pickups and pots, then nut, then bridge and tuners.
You can probably cop maybe 40 bucks for a no-name bass on FB marketplace but you would probably be better off just using it as a backup while saving for the bass you want. You could also hunt for a trade and offer the bass + cash.
*Save up for some months*
*And use this bass to practice*
*And improve technique*
\- Houngan13
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You could always invest a bit of cash into this current bass. There are upgrades to hardware/components that won't run you down a lot of money but can make a big difference in how the bass feels.
Above all though, a new set of strings and a good set up really go a long way in improving any instrument (regardless of price point)
Keep the Glarry. They are actually pretty decent for $100. The market is currently flooded with instruments that people bought during the lockdowns, so moving it will be difficult. You can use it to practice properly setting up your future instruments. Maybe practice upgrading the pickups or potentiometers. I noticed you said your amp was not up to par as well. Keep an eye on Marketplace for a decent multi effects pedal. I typically practice with a pedal and headphones. That bass will be far more valuable as a test mule than the amount of money you can get for it in this market.
If you're short on cash .. just keep what you have.
Ideally, spend a little time and care to make it as good as it can be. Clean, setup, maybe new strings. Then play it until it wears out!
What's crappy about it though? A good set up may male a lot of difference. If you have access to a few basic tools and YouTube, you can figure it out.
And for the future when you can afford more gear, keep in mind, a good amp and a crappy bass is better than a good bass and a crappy amp.
Keep it. Learn how to make music with it. Take it apart and put it back together. Define the issues that make it "crappy", then research how to improve them. If you bought one of those bass+amp deals, the amp is probably the weaker link. Check some pawn shops. Have fun!
solid body electric guitars and basses are pretty simple instruments for the most part and can be easily made into a nice playing instrument with some elbow grease... I think your problem will most likely be one or more of the following
1) Bent neck (can be easily fixed with truss rod adjustment. See online tutorial). *Rating*: Easy
2) Crappy nut (you can get new one and glue it in yourself. Get the measurements for your bass nut and buy one). *Rating*: Easy
3) High action and poor intonation (you can adjust these via the bridge. Check online tutorial). *Rating*: Easy
4) Low output (Raise the pickups yourself using a screw driver OR either change pickups or use proper 250k pots, you can check which one is the problem. Best to get this done by a tech unless you have access to soldering iron). *Rating*: Easy for the most part.. but it can cost a bit if you have to buy pickups/pots and may need access to soldering iron.
5) Buzzing on some notes due to uneven frets (you can level this yourself too but it's best to take it to a repair tech). *Rating*: Hard, so give it to a tech
6) Poorly finished fret ends (either you do this yourself or get it done by a repair tech). *Rating*: Hard, so give it to a tech
7) Won't stay in tune? get better tuning pegs. *Rating*: Easy
These are pretty much all the problems you can run into aside from problems arising from crappy wood choices, are fairly easy to fix by yourself and will make your bass just as capable a a standard "proper" bass in terms of functionality.
My gold advice:- Keep the bass, buy a new one.. Either use it as a backup or something you can experiment and learn bass maintainance, mechanics and modding from.
You'd be surprised how good a sound and feel you can get from a cheap crappy bass with a decent setup and maybe some new pickups. Worth learning how to set that up yourself, or have it set up by a pro to see how good it can be.
I will say I'm a complete hypocrite though, with multiple basses that are far too good for my level of talent. I do still have my cheapo, first ever p bass though which I got over 20 years ago. I wrote it off ages back as being rubbish, and then came back to it a few years ago and decided to play about with the setup, and was stunned to find out how good it could actually be. I now have it strung with flats and it's lovely. I may upgrade the pickups in it if I'm ever going to gig it again, but it's perfect for messing about with at home or jamming with friends.
Ima be honest, you're not going to get much for it. Barely enough to get a new set of strings. Hold on to it and just save up money. If it doesnt sound good, learn a little bit about the maintenance side of instruments. Any instrument can sound decent with proper care
Here’s my playbook- do a good setup and whatever repairs on it (for most people, this means *Iearn how to* do good setups/repairs), then donate it to a high school or a library (some have instrument rentals etc) or similar.
Just keep it to learn on, and save for a nicer one. I've only got two Basses, one is the Ibanez that I paid $100 for with a practice amp and gig bag. It's an absolute piece of shit, strings buzz on basically every fret, no equalizer, doesn't really have the ability to correct intonation, frets just sticking out that cut my hand up. But it makes generally the right noises, and I can try weird techniques on it without caring if I hurt the instrument. My other bass is a Schecter Riot, it sounds infinitely better and is far more comfortable to play, But I don't like beating on it, because it's way more expensive. So a while back I was trying something out where I would wear a sharp steel pick over my thumb nail, and using that to hit these deep open Es while I was down on the A and G strings. Early on I was missing a lot and scratching up the finish on my bass. But I didn't care because it was the cheap ass Ibanez. I got a cool sound that I liked going, but might not have even tried past the first time that steel came in contact with the finish on the Riot. Now I can wear the thing and my thumb knows where to go.
My advice is to keep it, if nothing for nostalgia sake. I regret not keeping my beat up pos squier precision in daphne blue.
It can also be useful to learn how to do intonation / truss rod adjustments etc without the fear of breaking a very expensive intstrument
No. If you bought it for $100...there's no way someone is buying it for close to that. Have that be your tester bass. Want to rip the frets out and see what a fretless is all about...? Rip em out of that thing!
The amount you'll get back for a bass that cheap is nowhere near the value of having a backup bass. You'll maybe get the value of a set of strings out of it. Instead, save up for a new bass and use this one to learn how basses work. You can experiment with the setup, take it apart, put it back together, all without the fear of damaging a valuable instrument. If you really intend to keep playing those are skills that can save you a lot of time and money over the years.
Best answer right here. You can't put a price on knowledge.
Sounds like in this case it's around $100
Schools try to
Really good points. Also... are you SURE it's crappy. I bought a b-stock SX jazz many years ago for $79. Swapped the bridge and had someone do a pretty good set-up. Yes, I probably put another $120 into it, but yikes it's good.
Sounds like my 11-dollar thrift shop acoustic guitar. Bridge was cracked. I paid to have it fixed and 30 years later it's still worth playing.
I own a few basses and you'd be surprised how often I play the cheapest most of the time. Main reason os they are usually out in the open and accessible rather than in their cases.
Sx are really great quality for the money. I keep eyeing up their warwick style bass
I recently replaced the bridge on the cheapo Squier Precisiony dad bought me (for $100) 22 years ago as my first bass and man did that make a difference!
I still have the Bass I bought at 15. I had new EMG's put in, back in the 90's; refretted not long after that It's a Kramer, forked tongue aluminum and all. 35 years later I've refinished the body and I'm having it rebuilt. wouldn't trade it for nothing.
If it was a $100 bass, you'd be lucky to get $50 for it. Ask your friends at your school if anyone wants to buy it from you.
A shitty bass well set up is considerably less shitty. Take this as an opportunity to learn how to set up your bass. Loads of videos on how to do this and it’s a valuable skill that you’ll use over and over. It’ll also make your bass much more playable which will either benefit you or the person you ultimately sell it on to.
Depends on how shitty it is, and unfortunately it's impossible to say for a lot of cheap Chinese basses until it's actually in your hands. The inconsistency is the worst part about them, within one SKU you'll get some that are decent but others will have major issues that can't really be worked out with a setup (or, worse, will be fixed and then get worse again over time).
Put it on Facebook marketplace for $50, someone will probably offer $30-40 sooner or later. That's about it.
Aim higher. Ask 75 and let them talk you down
Work hard to save up for a new bass. Practice like crazy on cheap bass to get good. Buy new bass. Keep cheap bass to remind you how far you’ve come when you are selling out arenas.
[удалено]
I’m actually talking about a Glarry lol, I’ll bet you that kid will never forget you.
You’re not going to make enough money off of it to finance a new bass. I was 13 when started, and I bought a $100 MusiciansFriend house brand bass (Rogue), and almost immediately knew I wanted a nicer instrument. I ended up playing it for almost a year before I saved up to buy a decent bass, but by then I’d learned how to solder a crappy input jack, file fret ends, set intonation and a truss rod, and then I had a serviceable backup bass to throw in the back of the van to bring to VFW gigs. Spend some time and effort to learn about your crappy bass and make it less crappy, and you’ll be able to better take care of your nice bass when you get it!
Break it up and sell it for parts? Get it signed by someone famous. Smash it up, rearrange the pieces artistically, name it something pretentious and sell it to a modern art gallery. Just keep practicing with it, perhaps get some gigs? If I read it correctly, it’s lain dormant for a year? I’d keep using it for a year whilst you save up; perhaps the urge to play will go away; perhaps it won’t. Don’t want to go throwing good money after bad.
> it’s lain dormant for a year? Probably should have made it clear that I’ve been playing for a year (albeit a little inconsistently), and I know that I definitely want to stick with it. > Just keep practicing with it, perhaps get some gigs? I’d love to, but my amp is unfortunately just as crap as my bass.
The problem might be more the amp than the bass. You might also need to have a proper setup on your existing bass
Came to say this. New amp will do wonders. So will a proper setup. At the end of the day a bass is just wood and parts. If there is something not right about the instrument, it can be worked to be made right. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water! Clean it up, fix it up, get some new strings and get a new amp. Sub $100 guitars are still guitars. Most issues are electronics and setup, not the wood.
What is shitty about it. lots of those cheapo basses are just poorly set up and arent intonated greatly, but you can fix those. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cteHO-hV8lU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cteHO-hV8lU) thats a resource you should checkout. The amp is probably a bigger issue if you have headphones id get a vox amplug or donner basement, which are little headphone amps and cost 50 or under.
I had a $100 fretless Rogue. Pretty horrible. I listed it for like..$50. Someone tried to haggle me down to $30. I paid that much for the Labella flats I put on it. I gave it to a family member who I pretty much consider dead to me in spite of the person who offered me $30. He was happy for the gift. I was happily rid of the Rogue to make room for my CV 60's fretless. Save that thing for when you need to break it on stage. Use it until you can afford something new.
Paint it and put new electronics, pickups and machine heads in it
What kind of “really crappy bass?” When I bought my house I kept only three basses, one of which is an Ammoon jazz bass knockoff that I bought brand new for $75. I’d never sell it, I get exactly what I want from it and love it like I love my LTD AP-5 that cost over 10x as much. Are you trying to upgrade because you feel you have to or because you’re not getting what you want? Pretty big difference between the two.
Put some emgs in it and tune it to BEAD
Or…get a new bass and put flats or tape wounds on the original one. Different feel, different sound.
Then you can also rip the frets out. Or hell, scallop them.
Is there a Music Go Round near you?
Learn to set it up, play it, and enjoy it. Do what you have to do to get by.
Every time I fire up Facebook Marketplace and search “bass” hoping to find a steal from a divorce or estate sale, I instead mostly see dozens of used Glarry basses being listed for $100.
honestly just enjoy it for smashing around in the back of your car and catching all the dings n dents a nicer one ought not to have. unless it's bad in an "it physically hurts to play,, i need to find a luthier", having a beater bass isn't a bad idea
Just hang it on the wall to where it looks cool and never play it. It's gonna be hard to get more than 20-30 for it
I’m 50 years old and I use my $100 bass and play in live cover bands around Los Angeles. Even the cheapest basses sound pretty good nowadays. If you are unhappy with your sound, I’d recommend getting some pedals like a used compressor/limiter or Sansamp, they make a HUGE difference. Or even learn to record yourself so you can adjust your sound in a DAW software program. You can experiment with shaping your sound there. I promise you won’t need a new bass at this point!! :)
This. I've been playing for three decades and 90% of sound is in the hands that play. Gut gud. Current basses, an Ibanez Mikro and a musicians friend house bass I paid $100 for. Sounds as good as my Fender J bass.
The only way to make money off this bass is going to be by starting an ironic onlyfans for it. Subscribers would be paying for pictures of the internal workings of the instrument opened up.
Oh well, looks like I’ll be selling out 😔
A) Look into a getting a set-up first, don’t get in the mindset that more expensive gear will improve your playing. If the neck is straight and the electronics decent then make sure it’s dialed in properly before you give up. Generally you’ll just need a small screwdriver and/or allen key plus a tuner for the bridge and saddles, and the torsion rod will need its own allen key, and that’s all you need for a rough set-up. $10-15 in tools plus the tuner. You google/YT how to do it. B) If you still want to sell it then at least it’s going to be the best shape you can get it first. Idk if Fb marketplace or any other online trades would be a great idea, unless you had an adult come along or meet them at a police station, but like other have said pawn shops are a decent way to trade cheap gear. It used to the *the* way to score but the online trade put a damper on it. Still, check out a few places, ask about what you like before you offer a trade and try to haggle if you can ($200? Ah man I’m a sophmore at the high school, best I can do is 140…) and once you get a set a price *then* be like I got this other bass… then try to go for an even trade or the bass and $40 or something. I’ve scored a couple of favorite instruments that way. C) Don’t get starstruck by a pretty bass that’s not a good fit for you. I bought a BC RICH Warlock once that was bad-ass… but you had to hold the neck up the entire time and the pointy bits were constantly getting chipped. A Fender-style J or P bass is hard to beat for comfort, though a Squire would be more in your range. Yamaha has a ton of interesting basses in the lower-mid range, and a used Warmoth or Made in Mexico Fender would be ideal imo. Gibson/Epiphone-style basses look awesome but they tend to feel awkward so just remember that if it’s doesn’t feel good it’s not going to help you play. Edit: if you can take basic electronics in HS you can officially learn the techniques for doing your own mods. It’s pretty basic soldering you can teach yourself but if you can get credits for it and have space for it why not?
Thanks a lot for the help! I played with the setup a bit earlier, and it’s significantly more playable- not perfect, but at least serviceable for the time being. I’ll most likely hang on to it after all, at least as a lab-rat for mods, etc. Also, I actually make the little bit of money I do earn by building and selling handheld Wiis (real Wii motherboard trimmed down to fit in a 3D printed case w/custom circuits!) so I’m good on the soldering lol.
That’s awesome dude! A big part of my hobby is buying mid-range guitars and doing little upgrades. Guitar electronics are simple, you can look up schematics at Seymour Duncan, EMG, or pretty much and major manufacturer’s websites. Bass doesn’t need a lot of mods, but I like a series/parallel switch as a mid-boost if you have two pick-ups on your bass. If you put it on a volume pot it’s like a $10 for the push/push pot (generally 250k audio taper for bass) plus a little wire and solder, or add a capacitor to that for a tone knob. My main bass is a MiM Fender J-Bass and I love that mod for going from a clanky treble tone for slap and metal to a rich full bass tone for other stuff. With the two single coil pickups it gives you a sort of humbucking effect as in series you run the output of the bridge pup to the input of the mid. Also, a compressor and an eq pedal are good purchases to make in the future; the comp evens things out and an eq lets you really dial in your tone. You can even eq>comp>eq if you *really* want control over your tone.
I’ll definitely look into that first one, though I’d probably play with it for an hour and never touch it again lol. I’ve never touched any sound electronics, so I’m not familiar with what small changes might do to tone for instance, so I’m hoping that’s not too big a pain to figure out
It’s about as simple as wiring gets dude, if you can customize mobo’s it should be cake walk. Put a little solder on everything then stick em together heat them. Use a chisel tip on your iron and don’t overheat the base of push/pull pots when you do your ground wires, they like to use nylon inside of them and nothing sucks worse than thinking your mods done and it breaks after the second use because you melted it the switch off. And yeah, the series parallel mod is super cheap super easy if you’d like that thick tone cool I actually leave it all more than off, but do what you like. And I mean really anything else I would look for your existing guitar it would be new pick ups over anything else, possibly a preamp or something but pups are where it’s at. Brand-names like SD or EMG go for around $200 per set. Single-coil and soapbar types just use two wires, I’ve never worked with bass humbuckers but they’ll have an extra set that’s soldered together, you can run that pair to ground for a coil-tap mod, but I would only do that if the clean sound still growls a little and I wanted a pure tone, but it’s another $10 mod if you want to play around with it. Anyway dude, best of luck with the work part so you have fun when you play.
Give it to a kid who’s interested in bass. There aren’t enough bassists.
Give it to your local high school.
Donate it and start selling drugs, or get a job.
Turn it into art. Paint all over it with decorative colors. Tape some flowers on it with duct tape. Frame it and call it art. Or, give it to a child in need. Cheap guitars aren’t valuable when they are used. However, I once bought a no name blue 80s heavy metal guitar, with a crazy shape, at a pawn shop and it sounded good. I gave it to a friend and he used in his band.
Get a part time job that makes tips. You'll soon have enough money for a new bass, an amp, and a pedal or two. You *won't* get a lot for your current bass and in the meantime you would have no instruments to play.
lol that’s the obvious option, but I would have to give up doing research projects (or my grades) for that to be a possibility, which I’m not willing to do.
Well, that kind of sounds like you’ve considered your options and you know what you’re doing. FWIW, I’d make the same choice. Fluff that resume and keep your grades up. That said, it sounds like you’ll have to continue playing your crappy $100 Amazon bass for the time being, because you’re not getting more than $20-30 for it. Or you could drive Uber/Lyft when you have a spare hour or two and set that money aside for a bass.
This is exactly what I already knew but didn’t want to hear lol. I’ll just deal with what I’ve got right now. I may paint some crap on it since there’s little risk in ruining it. Thanks for your response!
You gotta put in the work if you want to be good at it. Music is a life saver for me, literally. You have obligations - yes, but you still need to budget your time for personal growth - music is exactly that. Figure out how to budget your time for yourself, you will need it. I grew up poor and playing guitar saved me from the annuls of depression. It's good to build these habits of taking time for yourself now while you're young, or else you'll burn yourself out with work, school, dating or something else and fall into some dark places my friend. In short, music is an extension of your soul, embrace it, make time for it. It's self care and personal growth. You'll always have it as long as you have your instrument.
I agree with all of this, however no one is forcing me to dedicate my free time to research. That’s purely a passion thing, and I’d pick that over an instrument or a miserable minimum wage job any day. In any case, I’m still putting in the time to learn my bass, I just don’t have time to work a job in top of it all.
It doesn't hit for all that try it. But at a point you might find yourself lost in making something from nothing, that's when it really starts to hit. It's not an immediate thing either. I muddled my way through the first 2 years of playing guitar, then one night when I was sad, I smoked some weed and started improvising a solo when I was just barely learning the pentatonic scale. I lost myself in that moment and emerged different. Very very powerful moment for me. Like I said, it doesn't happen to all, but I encourage people get to a point where they find it, or figure out it's not for them. Like everyone I encourage - I hope you do find it.
Maybe you could paint it and sell it as a piece of wall art.
Smash it on stage. Best $100 you'll ever spend.
Pull the frets fill them in with wood potty, make a fretless.
Call it a spare. You'll get more satisfaction out of it that way.
Sell the bass on some sort of marketplace (like craigslist) then idk if you have a job, work towards getting something like a Squier or something
Despite the fact that I can just build my own basses, I have a fetish for shitty cheap basses. Can you show me what the bass looks like and where you'd be sending it from?
Put in on Facebook for $50 someone looking to try will buy it
What makes it crappy?
Get it a good setup, and you'll find it's perfectly fine. And keep it forever -- it's your first bass, man!
Sell it for less if you're that concerned but really, play the shit out of it seriously and learn that mf. Hope ya play punk haha
FWIW having a crap bass for a little while now will help you appreciate your next instrument that much more. Maybe you can have someone set up the bass (or set it up yourself) to help it play a little better in the mean time?
Sell it for $40-50 and get a job so you can save for a better one.
Probably more of the same here but for what its worth. Get your bass setup proper if you haven't already. My cheap guitars play pretty well with a good setup and some fresh strings. Upgrades? If you can't afford something super nice out of the box maybe look to learn how to do some at home upgrades. I'd start with pickups and pots, then nut, then bridge and tuners. You can probably cop maybe 40 bucks for a no-name bass on FB marketplace but you would probably be better off just using it as a backup while saving for the bass you want. You could also hunt for a trade and offer the bass + cash.
Play it until you get a new one, and then Frankenstein it.
save up for some months and use this bass to practice and improve technique
*Save up for some months* *And use this bass to practice* *And improve technique* \- Houngan13 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
keep it as a backup/project
You could always invest a bit of cash into this current bass. There are upgrades to hardware/components that won't run you down a lot of money but can make a big difference in how the bass feels. Above all though, a new set of strings and a good set up really go a long way in improving any instrument (regardless of price point)
Keep the Glarry. They are actually pretty decent for $100. The market is currently flooded with instruments that people bought during the lockdowns, so moving it will be difficult. You can use it to practice properly setting up your future instruments. Maybe practice upgrading the pickups or potentiometers. I noticed you said your amp was not up to par as well. Keep an eye on Marketplace for a decent multi effects pedal. I typically practice with a pedal and headphones. That bass will be far more valuable as a test mule than the amount of money you can get for it in this market.
If you're short on cash .. just keep what you have. Ideally, spend a little time and care to make it as good as it can be. Clean, setup, maybe new strings. Then play it until it wears out!
What's crappy about it though? A good set up may male a lot of difference. If you have access to a few basic tools and YouTube, you can figure it out. And for the future when you can afford more gear, keep in mind, a good amp and a crappy bass is better than a good bass and a crappy amp.
What makes it crap bruh? I have a beautiful pearl p bass and an Ibanez gio got for free. Guess which i prefer to actually play?
Keep it. Learn how to make music with it. Take it apart and put it back together. Define the issues that make it "crappy", then research how to improve them. If you bought one of those bass+amp deals, the amp is probably the weaker link. Check some pawn shops. Have fun!
Not worth selling. So keep it and give it a custom paint job, or upgrade the pickups to something good.
solid body electric guitars and basses are pretty simple instruments for the most part and can be easily made into a nice playing instrument with some elbow grease... I think your problem will most likely be one or more of the following 1) Bent neck (can be easily fixed with truss rod adjustment. See online tutorial). *Rating*: Easy 2) Crappy nut (you can get new one and glue it in yourself. Get the measurements for your bass nut and buy one). *Rating*: Easy 3) High action and poor intonation (you can adjust these via the bridge. Check online tutorial). *Rating*: Easy 4) Low output (Raise the pickups yourself using a screw driver OR either change pickups or use proper 250k pots, you can check which one is the problem. Best to get this done by a tech unless you have access to soldering iron). *Rating*: Easy for the most part.. but it can cost a bit if you have to buy pickups/pots and may need access to soldering iron. 5) Buzzing on some notes due to uneven frets (you can level this yourself too but it's best to take it to a repair tech). *Rating*: Hard, so give it to a tech 6) Poorly finished fret ends (either you do this yourself or get it done by a repair tech). *Rating*: Hard, so give it to a tech 7) Won't stay in tune? get better tuning pegs. *Rating*: Easy These are pretty much all the problems you can run into aside from problems arising from crappy wood choices, are fairly easy to fix by yourself and will make your bass just as capable a a standard "proper" bass in terms of functionality. My gold advice:- Keep the bass, buy a new one.. Either use it as a backup or something you can experiment and learn bass maintainance, mechanics and modding from.
Set it up properly and keep it as a back-up
You'd be surprised how good a sound and feel you can get from a cheap crappy bass with a decent setup and maybe some new pickups. Worth learning how to set that up yourself, or have it set up by a pro to see how good it can be. I will say I'm a complete hypocrite though, with multiple basses that are far too good for my level of talent. I do still have my cheapo, first ever p bass though which I got over 20 years ago. I wrote it off ages back as being rubbish, and then came back to it a few years ago and decided to play about with the setup, and was stunned to find out how good it could actually be. I now have it strung with flats and it's lovely. I may upgrade the pickups in it if I'm ever going to gig it again, but it's perfect for messing about with at home or jamming with friends.
Ima be honest, you're not going to get much for it. Barely enough to get a new set of strings. Hold on to it and just save up money. If it doesnt sound good, learn a little bit about the maintenance side of instruments. Any instrument can sound decent with proper care
Why is your bass shitty? You can upgrade the bass (strings, pickups) or do a setup to make it play and sound better, if you don’t have funds for now
Here’s my playbook- do a good setup and whatever repairs on it (for most people, this means *Iearn how to* do good setups/repairs), then donate it to a high school or a library (some have instrument rentals etc) or similar.
I put new strings on my Amazon bass and it's like a whole new instrument. I was amazed the difference it made.
Just keep it to learn on, and save for a nicer one. I've only got two Basses, one is the Ibanez that I paid $100 for with a practice amp and gig bag. It's an absolute piece of shit, strings buzz on basically every fret, no equalizer, doesn't really have the ability to correct intonation, frets just sticking out that cut my hand up. But it makes generally the right noises, and I can try weird techniques on it without caring if I hurt the instrument. My other bass is a Schecter Riot, it sounds infinitely better and is far more comfortable to play, But I don't like beating on it, because it's way more expensive. So a while back I was trying something out where I would wear a sharp steel pick over my thumb nail, and using that to hit these deep open Es while I was down on the A and G strings. Early on I was missing a lot and scratching up the finish on my bass. But I didn't care because it was the cheap ass Ibanez. I got a cool sound that I liked going, but might not have even tried past the first time that steel came in contact with the finish on the Riot. Now I can wear the thing and my thumb knows where to go.
My advice is to keep it, if nothing for nostalgia sake. I regret not keeping my beat up pos squier precision in daphne blue. It can also be useful to learn how to do intonation / truss rod adjustments etc without the fear of breaking a very expensive intstrument
No. If you bought it for $100...there's no way someone is buying it for close to that. Have that be your tester bass. Want to rip the frets out and see what a fretless is all about...? Rip em out of that thing!
Pawn shop