The Last Bass Outpost

Sam Ash holds a special place in my heart. I'm sorry that the Huntington, NY store is already gone. It was the best-stocked store in driving distance from the north shore of Long Island where I grew up. As a young geeky aspiring rocker in the 80s, I constantly begged my mom to drive me the hour it took to get there, so I could meekly try to get the staff to let me play various basses.  It was the time period when you might still hear "Stairway" from the guitar area mingling with endless repetitions of "Jump" from the ever-growing keyboard section.

I bought my first instrument there, a terrible Montoya thing that my mom paid $50 for at a used sale, as well as its replacement, the Ibanez Blazer that I still have. Got my first amp and pedals there too.

I hope they don't shut down all the locations. I'll have to go check out the remaining Manhattan store and see what's there.

Wow, that's great! So many great basslines to play in that gig. Congrats to your friend.

Now I'm thinking I should re-listen to that third album. I just looked at the track list and forgot there's some really great tunes on it.

Now I want to check out this documentary on them.  I remember Up With People from when I was younger, but just that it existed.  I don't remember anything about it.

Here's another fun documentary.  We used to go to this in the mid-'80s.  It was nuts.

It was indeed! I went to Action Park many times. Thankfully nobody I know got seriously injured there.

Yeah I don't get it. If you wanted a nicely made 70s japanese J copy, a quick search shows there's a couple of 1970s Greco jazz on reverb right now for $600 to $900 US. I don't suspect this one is much better or different than those. If you wanted the "prince" look, there's even a blond one with maple neck and black inlays that you could drop a custom pickguard on for a fraction of the price.



Or heck, just buy a brand new Squier classic vibe 70s for even less!

I don't hate that LP, but I did more or less the same thing to a $200 bass with about $10 worth of acrylic paint.



(It's been this way since about 1997, and I have both sentimental fondness for this paint job and am quite tired of it)

Great article! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Dave !!

For what it's worth, those look exactly like the tuners from my LPB1 of similar age. Per Rob's bass book they are "Gibson-branded Schaller".
I think Gearhed is right and they are Schaller M4.
Unfortunately, based on a little searching, I've seen brand new tuners called "Schaller M4" as well as vintage ones going back at least to the 70s, and the current ones look very different.  It's also confusing because there are various suffixes meaning I don't know what, but the M4S is completely different.

This one from about 1990 looks right to me, but chrome:
https://reverb.com/item/78037879-schaller-bass-tuner-m-4l-in-line-1990-chrome

This one purportedly from the 1970s looks similar, but the post is a little different. https://reverb.com/item/70648599-bass-side-schaller-m4-bass-tuner-1970-s-gold-m4g-original-vintage