One of the guitarists I jam with brought in this old Hagstrom bass that he has owned since childhood. It looks exactly like this one:
He's had it since around 1970, and never really played it much. I don't know much about Hagstrom, but I suspect the bass is from around 1966, give or take. It think the model is HIIB.
The strings were about an inch off the board when I took it out of the case, so I gave it a quick setup for him (best I could with the dead flats - also from around '70!). I got it playing nice, and boy is that a fun little bass! It had some of that deep fundamental that I like in my EB-0, but also a nice bit of tic-tac-like presence. It was hard to get a good gauge on the tone, since the strings were so shot, but I liked what I heard of it. Has a lot of switches on it, but always seemed to emit the same tone no matter what settings were employed.
I had a blast playing it! I would not mind getting one of these at some point. I saw that there were several styles of this bass throughout its evolution. Does anyone have any experiences or preferences with the different variations?