I noticed in one of the ads that there is a comment about finish blemishes to varying degrees on each bass. They're probably B-stock from a bad run being sold off for charity as a double write-off.
I do have an early TP12, the discontinued 34" scale version. As a 12'er, it is by far the nicest octave-string bass I have ever had in my mitts, and the basic 4-string sound without the octave strings is a big part of that. It has some of the most neutral and balanced sounding soapbars I have ever heard. They manage to pull off neutrality in a way that doesn't instantly sound neutered or over-bassy like most import soapbars. They respond to playing dynamics without overloading and going nasal or hollow sounding and have a good amount of output without being too hot: imagine the TB+, but more polite in the upper mids with slightly less output. They look like the same pickups in the "Skelly" line; I can't comment as to the tone of their Fender-type copies.
The construction on mine is flawless, but according to Gruhn's, where I purchased it, it was an evaluation model made for Tom himself that he felt had too much neck tension and weight, so it is possible that mine is better than a "stock" model. They didn't tell me it had belonged to him until after I bought it, and when A/B'ed against an identical model, but new bass in a different color, my greenie was definitely the superior in sound. I liked the look of mine better than the other as well, so I didn't pay much attention to construction in general, but both seemed comparable in that area.
