Here’s my latest flea market bass guitar, a Behringer 4-string p-bass clone from maybe the early oughts, but near new.
Paid $75 USD after hard bargaining with my Afgan used instrument dealer at Denio’s flea market in Roseville, CA. It’s not the first bass he has sold me.

Behringer amps are all around but you never see any bass guitars from them.

I gather it was a student bass sold in Europe as a kit, with one of Behringer’s student amps, case and other material-mostly as an attempt to sell amps, it seems.

 

 

 

 

It needed tightening of every single component, as is usual with old bass guitars. They must set up a lot of low frequency vibration. Here I am peeling off the PG’s protective plastic film. After all these years.
This example is a very lightly played almost exact clone of a Fender Precision Bass from about 1957. Well, it plays like a P-bass, but it sounds like a Behringer.

Single split pickup, tone and volume knobs, rosewood fretboard, nice smooth maple neck, like new frets.
G string was missing so he threw in a mismatched one, which doesn’t sound much different from the three strings left in the set.

And that sound is hollow and boomy, with a certain not unpleasant rasp added. From the nice looks, red silks and the echo-chamber-in-a-blimp-hanger tone, I suspect them to be GHS Boomer strings.

The neck has about the right relief but intonation was bad til I fixed it. Bit of buzz on the D string but I’ll fix that too. It plays and looks nicer than it sounds right now but I’m pretty confident a set of new D’Addario Pro Steel rounds will mostly fix the sound.

If I feel like it I’ll swap out the pickup too, for an upgrade. I love a new project. Now I’ll have to drive out to Guitar Center for new strings. And to play all the basses on the walls of the Thump Room. Bummer.

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