Nevermind... (Ping John Fertig!!!!!!!!!)

[SGD Lutherie]

Great, 'natural' sounding preamp with the Alnico pup IMO.  What are you using in place of the original op amp?

I'm using the original LM4250 op amp. They are great sounding preamps with other pickups too. I use them in my basses with my neo pickups. I think they even sound better than with a MM pickup, which tend to get too edgy sounding.

[dadagoboi]

I'm using the original LM4250 op amp. They are great sounding preamps with other pickups too. I use them in my basses with my neo pickups. I think they even sound better than with a MM pickup, which tend to get too edgy sounding.

NICE!  Something to think about

[uwe]

No, he didn't. His bass was stock. So it fails there as well!

This photo looks like an Artist, and not a Standard. See the larger pickups?

I wasn't aware he played Standards at all until he said so in the recent interview on the Gibson site. And Artists were just more prevalent anyway so he got his hands more on those. But he has also said - and not only in the recent interview, but over the years - that he never liked the electronics on the Artist. So in that way a passive reissue is his signature. My issue with the electronics of the Artist is that I feel that even without compression and expansion mode on, the signal emitted by the bass sounds processed and ever so slightly delayed - for all its abnormal presence it is not really a snappy bass in the sense of being almost "ahead of the note" at all. The G-3 is unbeatable in that respect.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

What bass came with active electronics in 1977 besides Alembics?

Don't forget about this one either.

[patman]

I had an early Ibanez Roadster with that pickup...it was the punchiest bass I've ever had.

[uwe]

Back in the good old days when only a heavy bass was a good bass! I liked those Musicians, have to get one one day, they are a part of bass history.

[hollowbody]

No, he didn't. His bass was stock. So it fails there as well!

I know that I have a DVD around here somewhere that shows Krist with a Jazz equipped RD Standard.  I'll dig around in my collection and find it.

[hollowbody]

I went looking on the internet and found a video showing it via TB.

I bet that Gibson balked at recreating the pups and Novaselic was fine with going the jazz pickup route.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Back in the good old days when only a heavy bass was a good bass! I liked those Musicians, have to get one one day, they are a part of bass history.

None of the Musicians I've ever played, including mine, have been any heavier than normal; they're certainly lighter than most 70's Fenders.

I had an early Ibanez Roadster with that pickup...it was the punchiest bass I've ever had.

The Roadster was the 'downmarket Musician' with a bolt-on neck and a painted body.

[Dave W]

I bet that Gibson balked at recreating the pups and Novaselic was fine with going the jazz pickup route.

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

If he didn't go along, Gibson could always look for some other bassist from a long-disbanded band who once used a Gibson model that was a failure in the marketplace.

[wagdog]

I bet that Gibson balked at recreating the pups and Novaselic was fine with going the jazz pickup route.

So it's not an epic fail after all.  It honestly is an attempt to recreate an artist's instrument.  Still, I find it very curious that Gibson would create a signature bass that didn't feature it's own pickups at all.  That's almost like saying "Hey, our basses are so crappy even we know they have to be modded to be any good".  As someone else mentioned, it's a self defeating attitude.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Travel Channel has a series called "Made in America" that highlights quality products made in the USA. (I promise this is about Gibson somewhere...  ) The episode with Gibson is very telling as to Gibson's priority on basses. In roughly 15 minutes of factory footage at various stages showing literally thousands of guitars in various states of assembly, a single SG bass made it into one shot. There were NO other basses represented in any manner: no necks, bodies, or pickups. Even an optimist's hope for some T-bird bodies would be unrewarded; every "bird" shaped body shown already had the pickup and bridge routes to be Firebirds. After seeing that, I'm surprised that Gibson even bothers to say they make basses.

[Basvarken]

That says more about the camera-man and editor of the documentary than of Gibson's interest in bass guitars.

[Dave W]

That says more about the camera-man and editor of the documentary than of Gibson's interest in bass guitars.

You could be right, though it's possible that there were no other basses to be seen.

When I went to Summer NAMM in 2006 and 2007, Gibson had a huge booth both years and not a single Gibson bass.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

That says more about the camera-man and editor of the documentary than of Gibson's interest in bass guitars.

I'm not referring to set-up shots or the host's interactions, which followed the production of the Les Paul Standard; the background video in the cuts and transistion shots (we call it B-roll) of the factory's various buildings showed what was being produced, period. There was no editing involved to feature anything above anything else. After too many years in TV, I can say with authority that the object of my observations was in no way slanted to present any type of instrument over another.

I was quite surprised at the number of Firebird bodies, (undoubtedly for those legions of Firebird X sales- the episode is new) which were only slightly outnumbered by SG's. Les Paul guitars compromised over half of what I saw, but I'd say the rest was just under 25% each of SG's and Firebirds with a small number of large solid-bodied guitars. The single SG bass was actually referred to by the host; it was on a cart of instruments going to final finishing (setup, not finish application.) Even accounting for duplicate shots, the content of each building was pretty uniform. There looked to be the same model percentages with rough cut bodies, finished bodies, and necks. Since the whole show was most likely shot in a day or two, it's not like Gibson or the show was trying to showcase anything other than just what was there on a normal day-to day basis.

FWIW, every time I've been there, the Gibson outlet in the Opry Mills Mall had hundreds of guitars, but only two T-Birds and three Tobias basses not counting the two Epi's and three or four used basses which were imports.