The Last Bass Outpost

Frankly, the 250 and 500 settings do nothing for me, but Jack doesn't use them either. They might be interesting for people that want to drive their extreme effects with a beefed up signal, other than that it is hard to see what there is to like about sounds that take all the nuances out of this nuanced bass.

I've been messing around with mine for a bit now, and I'm leaning towards the 250 setting. The 500 setting is almost too nasal and pressure-cooked. It is nice to have the 50 to roll back to, and the 500 setting to boost to. This will work for me live, as I don't like having to dance through effects pedals for different gain settings. If nothing else the design is useful, even if unwittingly so. Rather than just being three volume settings the EQ changes for each setting. The 50 has a nice wide bandwidth, almost scooped in the mids. The 250 setting is fuller and more present in the mids. The 500 setting has that honk to it. Oddly enough I sound like Jack Casady when I play this bass.

I'm quite pleased that mine is a Peerless example. It doesn't have that plastic feel I associate, perhaps unfairly, with Chinese instruments. The rosewood of the fretboard is a nice piece, the finish came back from the dead very nicely and the frets are level and hard! I had to do a subtle leveling of them to remove some roundwound wear on the lowest two frets, and the frets were otherwise level up the neck. They were a joy to work on.

This is mine now:



No 'E' on the pickguard and no poker chip under the 3-way switch.

I'm mildly tempted to put a Strat output jack plate on the bass just to strengthen the output jack area and to get the cable up and away from the top of the bass as quickly as possible. Blasphemy, of course, but I did the same to my much modified Aria TAB-66:



On the Casady the jack would be pointing up the way, rather than down. I've also since de-fretted this Aria, and clearly need to learn to leave stuff alone.

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.