Beatles Bass

When I got my Beatles bass, it was about a year into the pandemic. It struck me that we couldn’t finish the band without a bass. Sure we had five guitars and electric drum kit, tambourines and keys, but without a bass it felt like a bone was missing. I started searching the piece of musical equipment in all the normal outlets: guitar center had the usual stock of authentic replicas and less authentic knock offs and provided a baseline for my valuation of the market. I didn’t have the chops for it to really matter whether the instrument was really built to the same standards as an original, Beatles bass—or whether it was handmade in Germany, or China was of little importance to me compared to “value”, or what you could just say is “finding a good deal”. That being the case, this seemed more of a local-for-sale-ad kind of investment. I opened craigslist after a few days of researching what exactly I was looking for, not expecting much I did a search for Beatle Bass. Besides a few pieces of that work priced close to a new model there was one ad which caught my eye. That was because not only did the price tag promise a value a great value, but also it appeared to be in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the city.
This took away many fears related to fraud, and also I noted one difference between this ad and the others upon expanding that description. I noticed that the base was left-handed at first I shook my head and asked out, but when I realized the nature of what I was doing, it seemed all the more appropriate that this could in fact be the base I was looking for. Most people know that an original Beatles bass as played by Paul McCartney has a violin style body, which allows it to be flipped conveniently and played on either hand. The southpaw McCartney purchased a standard model, and cheaply flipped the strings to set it up to his requirements. Of course this being 60 some odd years ago on the streets of postwar Germany–I think the story is that Sir Paul paid something like $30 for his bass–so if you factored in inflation, the hundred dollar price tag I had found was in fact even more economical than his, comparatively. This had been my ultimate understanding of the value I was looking to purchase and after checking with the Mrs. I decided to make the move and respond to the ad.
It didn’t take long for the Beatles bass’s former owner to get back to me to the affirmative that as long as I was willing to pay the full price in cash I could have the instrument. I told him I would come by to take a look and decide there. My wife and I got into our beat up old hatchback with the off-color hood, and took a drive along the pleasant shores of the sound to a nice neighborhood in the rising topography that overlooks that great body of water, we came upon a frank and austere manor with perfectly kept landscape and impeccable cleanliness. I knocked on the door and was greeted by the owner, I tall lanky gentleman looking just a past retirement. He told us to pull around the back so I got back in the car and made our way to the alley next to his house. There was a garage door off the alley that opened up to reveal a decent looking tube amp with a cable, and a second later, the owner came out with the beautiful violinesque Beatles bass in his hand. He said, you know I’ve been trying to learn the guitar ever since I retired and for a while, I thought maybe I would be more of a bass player but after I bought it, I’ve only maybe played it once or twice and it’s only been sitting there so I thought, well if someone else could get use out of it, I might as well sell it. I chimed in and praised him for learning the guitar, encouraged him to stick with it, all the while eyeing the bass for obvious imperfections or more subtle damage. He handed it over and I told him, it’s funny because I know it’s a left-hand base but I’m a righty so what I think I’ll do for this to work for me is flip everything around so that the bass can be played in the right hand.

He laughed, Well that would be something else. Truly a Beatles bass would have to be converted in order for it to really be true to form. I agreed and couldn’t help but grin at the irony, knowing it was a risk in as I could easily damage or alter beyond repair the instrument in some way. To test it out I simply played it righthanded using the upside down standard tuning. This impressed the owner quite a bit. I think he was satisfied with the deal, and I knew I certainly was even without having set the instrument up to play properly to my liking.