I bought a '96 Rivoli in 2005, a sunburst one that was mint, except it had a thumb rest installed and a extra screw hole where the previous owner probably installed the same thumb rest but in a different position. Sold it in 2008.
The bass itself was really beautiful, great comfortable neck, intonated properly and action could be set quite low if needed. It was simply a top notch instrument in terms of construction quality. But the sound is a different story.
The mudbucker just didn't had that great hollow mudness, nor the sublow presence expected from a real mudbucker. But that didn't make it necessarily bad, it was a very usable tone, it just didn't sound or felt like a mudbucker.
But the main problem was that it was just damn noisy! I even thought it could've been damaged or something, but that wasn't the case. I tried to shield everything on the bass: the pickup cavity, the output jack, switch and pots. Basically I made individual little shielding boxes out of copper foil for each eletronic component and even wrapped the wires with copper foil, but to no avail. Even though it did reduced the hum considerably, it was still picking up noise out of somewhere and it was just not acceptable for me.
Never had that problem with any other instrument before, not even ones equipped with single coils.
Maybe it was just this one pickup, I don't know.
Anyway, it is a really well built instrument and it's well worth the money if you have a good Mudbucker replacement to drop in.
