The Last Bass Outpost

Gibson Announces the More Paul

 

That hardware looks much darker in person, and all joking aside, would you consider some kind of Gibson smoked chrome a fair compromise? I don't recall seeing it on anything but Fender Aerodynes, but a modern T-Bird seems to be practically begging for it.

That's a nice crack on the back of the headstock at the neck.

The worst part is that GC isn't suffering for its own bad retail business practices.  The interest payment it can't make is on leveraged debt forced on them by Bain Captial when it bought them out in 2007. They unloaded GC in 2014 on Ares Management. It's just like Toys R Us had a bad, but profitable business model until Bain leveraged them and killed them too. I don't see GC getting out of this without some serious outside capital.

This is a new one on me, but I have played a Phil Jones Suitcase which is an earlier combo with a similar configuration and was very underwhelmed. Be interesting to hear that new cab with a real power amp run through it because it seemed like the Suitcase's shortcomings were mostly the amp.

Hot like loud and more lows/mids than highs?
I see this thing has a series/parallel/split switch, does it make a big difference?

G&L MFD pickups just have ungodly output overall. It's an even tone. If I had to describe it to someone who plays but had never played a G&L I would say that they sound like an early active Precision from the 80's. The Magnetic Field Design pickups don't roll off the high end like a Gibby mudbucker.  Most G&L's with the MFD humbuckers have an onboard preamp, but all it does is brighten the tone a bit. I've never noticed much difference in level when I toggle it in. The switch for it is passive/active/active with treble boost. The difference between active and active with treble boost is noticeable, but not as much as you might think. "Plain" active adds almost as much high end. (Note that this will vary TREMENDOUSLY depending on your amp's input stage. I use tube amps with high input impedance that is naturally brighter overall and more sensitive in general.) Parallel switched mode tames the volume and tone somewhat. Series is fatter and louder. My G&L's don't have a split switch; it's just series or parallel.

I don't know what's happening on the legal front between Gibson and Dean over the Flying V, but this seems to indicate that Dean thinks Gibson can suck it.

Wow, sorry to hear that. Generally speaking, how do you feel?

That's the frustrating part: I'll have a couple of days where I think I'm finally recovering for real, and then the bottom drops out again. In general, the symptoms are much easier to deal with now than they were when I feel like the virus was still active (what I have now is allegedly post-viral fatigue); there were days then that I would get so dizzy I fell off the couch just sitting and my cough scared people- over the phone. Things generally feel like the flu crossed with VERY bad walking pneumonia with all attendant symptoms of both. The worst thing I deal with now is intermittent shortness of breath and random severe fatigue, but I also still have random severe headaches, insomnia, and back pain and a cough that comes and goes. X-ray says my lungs are clear. Have not had a CT, but I've had enough good days where breathing was not an issue at all to be confident that I dodged major lung damage.