The Last Bass Outpost

Maybe. The pattern continues over the binding. It is like it impacted something with that texture, such as un-tinned copper wire. None of the finish is loose in the area.

I've overpainted the area with a few coats of black nail polish now. I will level this and then use a UV-cure clear coat (nail polish again!) with a UV lamp. Way more trustworthy finish from this system than using an air-cure nail polish, especially in a clammy apartment/flat in central Scotland.

I wonder what the origins of this instrument actually are. The bass side had a bigger neck pickup at some point. The sparkle finish and speed knobs are more of an '80s thing, but the quality of the machine heads and general clunkiness suggests '60s Japanese. Fundamentally it looks like total junk, but I'm still curious as to where, when and how it became the thing it is now.

Semi-clever. Superglue fumes seeped out the f-hole overnight and clouded up the finish. When I removed the clouding with acetone the numbers came off the poker chip under the impedance switch... but...

The poker chip didn't match the pickguard and pickup and was bothering me anyway. I removed it, and the bass looks better as a result. Just a black chicken head knob sitting in a sea of black.

He's realized finally that buying crap '80s Ferraris wasn't the investment he thought it would be.

How can you tell where a Jack Casady bass was made? My new one has a serial starting either 'R04I' or 'R041' followed by four numbers.

The four pole/three way rotary switch is simply to replace the defective switch in the bass at the moment. Four pole is overkill, but this configuration of rotary switch is far more commonly available than the two pole/three way switch the circuit requires.

Thanks for the answers! It looks like the Casady basses uses 2.5 k ohm pots, which aren't as commonly available as 250 k or 500 k pots.

That Mud 8 string is a faker. I can't think of the name, but I think it's a British make. Jaydee? Peter Cook??? I've seen 4 string versions - maple board, multiple pole pieces on the pups...

John Birch!



I've played one once, and it sat somewhere between weirdly boutique and weirdly crude. The six knobs were pretty unnecessary. It sounded nothing like a Rickenbacker at least.

A lot of guys used John Birch stuff in the '70s including...




Hahahaha! The old LastBassOutpost switcheroo!

He was probably done with the trio concept - lots of people (Clapton, Sting) find that tiring/one-dimensional after a while.

I wonder if the technology of the day didn't really help. I have a few Hendrix bootlegs and live releases, and the music does tend to be at one volume. Hendrix was a dynamic player, but sometimes you can hear Noel playing at one volume, with one tone, for most of a set. Had Hendrix been around now, with small amps and pedalboards and baffles and isolation booths and things, maybe he would have a better time of it? Or perhaps he would have done Miles Davis in reverse, produced a sort of anti-Bitches Brew, stop catering to an overlapping rock audience and make more conservatively jazz or Chicago Blues albums with big horn parts and mostly clean guitar work?

I think The Police ultimately ran out of ideas given their formula. The early stuff stacks up well, as it has the reggae cross-time stuff going on with a punk attitude. I'm not sure that formula would work for ever, and it seems that the egos grew dangerously massive in that band.