You guys are a bickering bunch!!! Your inability to be pleased with something shows how at ease you are with your more feminine side.
For nearly a decade you drool in this forum about the Non Rev being reissued. Now it has happened and we have a nit picking contest!
"Don't like this, don't like that, wasn't that different back then, couldn't they, shouldn't they have done it that way ...". Can't imagine you would have been quite as choosy with your nose flattened against a window of a music shop offering these exactly in today's shape and form in 1968!
"No, sir, I really don't want that black hardware, it's too futuristic for me, we still have the age of Chromagnon men you know? What would Lyndon B. Johnson think of it ..." Reissuing a no hope minority model (even in its heyday) for the converted few at an absolutely affordable price is nowadays called "underserving bassists". You live and learn. And while we're at it: Name me one other guitar firm that reissued (many for the first time) as many legendary past sixties, seventies and eighties models as Gibson has in the last two to three years? Grabber, Ripper, G-3, RD, Explorer, Flying V, EB-0 Junior, Non Rev, Midnight ...
Anything but the most slavish copy (which still doesn't make it an original, duh!) is not good enough for you. Ungrateful sods!
The 1987 reissue TBird has now been in production consecutively for 25 years, the original lasted three years (five if you count in the Non Revs who did to Ray Dietrich's design and concept what we did to Poland in 1939!), the Bicentennials two. What on earth makes you guys so sure that they are more worthy Birds than what has been produced now for a quarter of a century??? The Bicentennial didn't even bother with a body contour (not original, cost-saving, how could they ignore the wishes of the bass players, tsk, tsk, tsk), its pups are farther removed from the sixties ones than the TB Plus are ...
I'm obviously undiscerning, but I do not feel "underserved" by Gibson's more recent bass reissue policy, overwhelmed more likely!!!