The Last Bass Outpost

Those are indeed very nice to play and sound good. I had a single-coil sunburst one for a while in the 1990s. Wish I still had it.  I mangled mine into a sort of homemade baritone by converting it (badly and cheaply) into a six-string instrument. I don't know where that instrument ended up.

Very cool stuff. Definitely of its time visually.
Btw that first link is missing the "l" at the end, it came up as 404 but then I noticed it ended in ".htm" instead of ".html".  That would fix it.
This works:
https://flatericbassandguitar.blogspot.com/2023/06/peter-cook-axis-bass-another-one-found.html

I think it's fun, but I would only want something like that for myself if it were an Epiphone at Epiphone prices.

I like the look of them too. They used to make Talmans at several price points... doesn't look like they do anymore, but the TMB2000 was pricey, around $1500 if I recall. 

It also sounds/looks like he's palm muting a lot. Unusual to see that with fingerstyle, I think I would find it difficult. Clearly he's a good player.
I also love the middy roar of a bird with roundwounds, but they do sound nice with darker tones like rolling off the tone control.

RIP Tina. A legendary performer. Powerful, charismatic, beautiful. She was larger than life and I just assumed she'd live forever.

I used to have that "my amp is essential" feeling, but sometime in the past decade or so it totally shifted.

What happened was, I started playing Gibson-style basses that have a big growly midrange and a subdued high end.  First I got the Greco bird clone, then I got the LPB-1 which is still my favorite sound of the bunch, though lately I'm playing the single-pickup DC tribute junior a lot. 
All of these, especially the LP, give me a direct sound that I like, even with no EQ. In fact, it's almost hard for an engineer to screw it up, even if I dislike their EQ choices.

I used to hate going direct, because I was playing through 12" drivers that had the typical huge presence peak and no treble above about 5k, like a guitar amp; and I was playing an Ibanez with Alembic active pickups to get the brightness I wanted, which meant that if I went direct there was suddenly a lot of very obnoxious sizzle in the top octave and it just sounded awful. I hated bass cabs with tweeters, especially because so many of them frankly had terrible tweeters so they weren't even good full-range speakers.

So I relied on the speakers as a big part of my EQ, and would always beg the FOH guy to mic my amp, and if they refused (which they often did in the low-end clubs I played; those guys are paid almost nothing and they just don't want anything that adds hassle to their night) ... then I would have to warn them about the distortion pedal and beg them to turn down the treble, which just sounded bad.

Life is so much easier now and I like my sound better.

My current preamp (Genz-benz shuttle) adds a little growly saturation, which is like the icing on top - I love it, but I can get by fine without it, and there are lots of other amps and/or plugins and DIs  that work well too.  I'm thinking of trying to find a pedal that does something similar for me when I go direct or use a house amp.

Jawohl Herrn Gibsonobergruppenführer! 

I guess adding the extra fret can be done.
I'll send a PM.