Guitar Collection: Bass

My dad was a professional bass player before I came along. He played for the band Crowbar, based in the Windsor/Detroit area back in the late 60's/early 70's.
Bass was always a part of our family. Three of the four of us brothers are bass players, two of us have even played bass in bands and performed live. Bass guitar has always been the basis on which we all learned how to play music. While all of my high school buddies were learning to shred on guitar, I always reverted back to rhythmic structures on guitar.
My first bass was some used blue thing dad bought from the classifieds with a rosewood fretboard, a silver pickguard, and both P and J pickups. It cost $300 and came with a Sonax 550-B bass amp - aparently they were made by Gretsch starting in 1972. It was very heavy and had a pretty unique body - sort of like a Warmoth Musiclander guitar body.
When I played bass in a metal band right after high school, I used a first generation Ibanez SDGR 5-String bass. I hated the pearl red colour, and the knobs were impossible to use when you were sweating on stage, but I loved the wizard-like Ibanez neck. Best memory of that band was playing at the University of Calgary, all of us wearing the guitar player's dad's Calgary Police officer shirts.
After years of not having a bass in my possession, I finally cracked one day, and bought a used Fender MIM Precision Bass in black with a rosewood fretboard. I paid $150. The only thing wrong with it, was the kid who owned it before me put an ill-fitting black pickguard on it. He probably thought the white pickguard didn't look goth enough. I brought it back to original with a vintage-tinted white pickguard. It's a fantastic guitar, all it took was some truss rod and action adjustment. My word of advice on bass guitars, your first bass should be a Fender Precision Bass. It is the simplest most natural sounding bass, and historically has been the mainstay of nearly every type of modern music made in the past 50 years.

For my second bass, I wanted something different. Something that really catered to my love of playing slap'n'pop and funk. Another one of those visits to Guitar Center in Detroit ended up in an unplanned purchase. In the used/blemished area they had an Ibanez Soundgear SR305M. This is a  5-String Bass in Starlight Blue with a maple fretboard. It was brand new with only a chip on the back to relegate it to the used pile. I noticed it immediately because of the maple fretboard, a rarity on these bass guitars - and of course, the ridiculously low price of $170. It was in dire need of a setup, the truss rod was so tight that the action had to be set really high to avoid the strings buzzing on 3rd to 7th frets. It has active pickups and a really wide tonal range with the onboard EQ.
Between these two basses, I really feel I can play anything and come up with any sound I want. The only problem I had now was that SWR LA12 bass amp couldn't handle the the 5th string and tone capabilities of the Ibanez. Time for a new bass amp..... read that in another story.