The Bass Vault Playlist

A bass collection is a silent thing until you plug in. The Bass Vault Playlist is the audio companion to the Bass Vault. It is not a comprehensive history of bass guitar. It is not a list of the most technically impressive bass performances ever recorded. It is something more specific and more personal: a curated set of tracks that connect to the instruments in my collection through tone, through lineage, or through the kind of musical thinking that made me want to own a particular bass in the first place.

This has ended up as a rather extensive page. Use these links to scroll straight to: The Bass Vault on record, The bass tracks that inspire me (you might be surprised) or Tracks with me on bass

The playlist updates as the collection grows. Press play, shuffle and let it inspire you -> Links below.

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Some pairings are obvious. A Precision Bass track on a song that was recorded on a Precision Bass. Others are oblique. A track that captures a tonal idea I associate with one of my Jazz Basses, even if the original recording was played on something else entirely. A few are personal – tracks that have shaped how I think about specific instruments in the vault regardless of what the original players were holding, and a few tracks include my own playing.

The Bass Vault on record

These pairings are representative, not literal. None of the tracks below were recorded on the exact basses in my vault – and many were recorded years before my specific instruments were built. What the pairings demonstrate is something more useful: each track captures the tonal vocabulary, the era, or the playing approach that defines a particular bass in the collection. A 1974 Jazz Bass is built to do what mid-70’s Jazz Basses did on record. A Rickenbacker 4003 carries the same DNA Chris Squire used in 1971. The connection is not meant literal.

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The bass tracks that inspire me

These are the tracks that shaped me as a bass player. Where the first section connects tracks to specific basses in the vault, this section operates on different logic entirely. These are the songs that put a bass in my hands and kept it there over decades of listening, learning, and playing. Some of them eventually led to specific instruments in the collection. Others simply rewired how I hear music. A few aren’t even bass guitar in the traditional sense – “Stayin’ Alive” runs on a synthesizer, and that hasn’t stopped it from influencing how I think about a bassline. Personal influence doesn’t care about instrument purity.

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Tracks with me on bass

As a bass player I primarily live and work for the live band and concert experience. To me, nothing beats the energy and feel – connecting with the audience during live music. That being said, I also highly value the creative studio atmosphere during recording sessions. Not keeping numbers, I reckon that my bass playing is on 25+ tracks and loads of videos.

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How this playlist was curated

Three principles shaped what made it into the playlist and what didn’t.
The first is tonal authenticity over cultural fame. The most famous bass performances are not always the most representative of what a particular instrument actually sounds like. A more obscure track that captures a tone clearly is more valuable here than a famous one where the bass is buried in the mix.

The second is breadth across the collection. The vault contains Fender Precision and Jazz Basses across multiple decades, Fender Japan reissues from the MIJ and CIJ eras, Gibson Thunderbirds and Grabbers, a Rickenbacker 4003, an Epiphone Jack Casady, signature instruments, and several genuinely rare finds. The playlist aims to give each of those branches some representation – though some branches naturally produce more famous bass tones than others.

The third is honesty about what isn’t here. There are obvious genres and players underrepresented. Classical and orchestral upright bass is essentially absent. Modern slap-driven funk is light. Heavily processed bass tones from contemporary electronic music are largely missing. These omissions are not value judgements. They reflect what I personally listen to and what I personally hear when I think about the basses in the vault. The playlist is a curated personal document, not a definitive guide.

If you find yourself disagreeing with what’s included or excluded, that’s the right kind of reaction. Bass tone is one of the most subjective subjects in the entire instrument world.

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What did I miss?

This is where the playlist gets better!
If there’s a track that should be on this list – one that captures something specific about a particular era of Precision Bass, or that demonstrates what a Jazz Bass can do in a context I haven’t covered, or that just represents the kind of bass thinking the vault is built around – tell me about it.

The playlist exists to be added to. Send suggestions through the contact page, reply to one of my Instagram posts at @bassesinstrangeplaces, or just drop a comment somewhere I’ll see it. The best additions usually come from people who have heard something I haven’t – and the collection is built on the assumption that there is always more to hear.

The Bass Vault is a private collection of public sounds. The playlist is how those sounds find their way back into the world.