Your right Dave, I admire Fred for bringing that pickup back to life. The Starefire platform was more not to my taste than the pups, much like EB2s. I love mudbuckers an mini buckers but the Eb2 bass itself is not for me.
Thanks for the compliment but I hope you are not confusing the sound of Bi-Sonic or even Dark Star pickups with the Gibson "side-winders".
It's worse than the apple/orange comparison. It's more like salmon and cheeseburgers.
I love them both...but not on the same plate.
The same goes for EB-2s and Starfires. They may
look similar but that's where it ends.
BTW for a good example of the EB-2 sound although it may be a vintage Epi, I don't remember, but do a Youtube search on Chris Solberg's (MARICOPPA) band "the Rave Ups". I think the bass player is playing one of Chris's basses.
Never mind. Here's the search link. Maricoppa is playing guitar:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=the+raveups&search_type=&aq=f