The Last Bass Outpost

Who wrote the storyline for this video? The same person responsible for AC/DC's fly on the wall videos?

Amptech: Only the ('orrible) Gibson 80ies Explorers were medium scale, the fine reissue from a few years ago was long scale (maple with maho body) as are the Epi Explorer basses (some kind of mock "mahogany korina" wood for both neck and body, it is very dent prone and almost white, but sounds lovely blurry and is comparatively light). And both much better (than the medium scale Exies) for it, too.

Thanks for the info. I think I'll start looking for a short scale maho neck project, and perhaps an epi korina body and see where it goes.
But it will be single mud

Uwe edit: Ooops, I meant of course korina, not maho. My luthier said that it was some sort of polynesian limba offshoot, too soft for an expensive instrument, but acoustically laudable enough.

Just when life seemed dull and meaningless....
I am stunned by the looks of it.. I saved a couple of pics of this some time ago, just because.

Would be fun to build one. But I guess rebuilding an existing 80's explorer will not put you in the park.
Are all explorers (except this '58) medium scale? And neck/body is not mahogany/limba but maple/mahogany?

The mud comes from the extreme overwinding. There's nothing muddy about the sidewinder design.

I did put that overwound sidewinder concept into a minihumbucker size build, and was blown away by the result. I did this because I was unhappy with the EB3 minihumbucker sound, and overwinding the stock pickup with thinner wire only made it slightly louder and it lost treble. Just an unplesant honk. A stonger magnet helped, but still poor sound (in my ears). And routing for a bigger pickup is out of the question. So I scaled down the mudbucker design and squeezed it into a minihumbucker cover. I aimed at 30K dcr but at just over 28K there wasn't room for more wire. I used two small alnico 5 bars (from mini humbuckers) and the only drawback was a 5mm gap between the base and the cover bottom. But the result was a very high output, high sensitivity pickup with lots of punch. It is the first pickup I have found louder than the mudbucker, although less bassy. It has decent brightness too. I'd say it would be a good business idea, if it didn't take five days to build I am still puzzled by it's relative brightness, it is definitely in the extreme overwound category.

I rewind pickups at $50 per coil. I am located in Norway and shipping might cost a bit, so you are probably better off if you find someone near you. I've done a few mud rewinds, both 'downscaling' and vintage spec. At this very moment I'm winding one I will try to match with a classic P bass in neck position.

FWIW, most humbucker-equipped Gibsons have used 300K linear volume pots since about 1973 (tone pots are still 500K audio taper). Some aftermarket electronics sites say otherwise, but they're mistaken.

As early as that? My '78 les paul guitar had all 500K log in a standard 2 humbucker wiring.

Amsterdam has some nice shops, some you have to know where they are..

Like bierköenig:-)
I recall walking around in Amsterdam a sunny day in 2004, with my wife. I had tried to order some hardware from a part supplier, but they had no distributor in Norway. They did have one in amsterdam, so I thought that it was a good excuse for me to check out a nice guitarshop while on vacation.

The shop was Muziek de Plug, a small store outside the city centre. What a nice little shop, lots of oddball old instruments. I ended up buying a les paul flattop from '78 (guitar) at a really good price. He had a nice 50's junior that he brought out for me to check out, since I liked gibsons. I did not expect such a nice atmosphere in such a big city..

But when I told him I wanted to order parts from the supplier that claimed he was the main distributor in Holland, he just smiled and said he didn't recall but I was probably right

I do not bother contacting sellers I won´t be buying from, normally. On the odd occasion I have contacted sellers to help, like if they list  60´s gibsons for sale when they are from the 70´s. Their responding is anything from gratefulness to hateful threats, though.