The Last Bass Outpost

This is hard to look at, but also hard not to look. Being a Realtor has taken me into the "hard times" sections of Chicago, but nothing like this. Along with the demise of Detroit go the fortunes of many small towns where suppliers churned out bearings and components but may have lacked to capital to transform manufacturing methods or even find an offshore partner. 

On the flip side, there must be cities that have found new used for old architecture, alongside newer buildings. Milwaukee comes to mind.

tabla machine...that's rich.   

Deja vous, John...didn't you post a similar thread last year?

It's amazing how many shootings there are in a city that restricts gun ownership.
Maybe we need more laws, and more cameras on poles with blue lights on top.
Yes, that should do it.

I agree that it was more fun ten years ago.  I've bought and sold internationally with some great experiences where we traded items of interest after the initial deal.  It felt like Facebook then - making friends in a new marketplace - versus today where stuff just gets shipped using automated tools.  Since there seem to be more scams now, I've stopped selling outside the U.S. - just because it would be more difficult to rectify a problem if something went wrong.

That reminds me - I should wear my Trans Am Club of Sweden T-shirt more often. A Swedish drag racer sent me that along with Swedish Hot Rod magazines, after I sold him Indianapolis 500 memorabilia from the year his Turbo Trans Am was the pace car.  I returned the favor by sending some other items for his collection.  It was friends trading for fun, not commerce, at that point.

At least Ebay and craiglist have been useful for making my hobbies sustainable.

We have quite a few Stax tunes in our sets also. I'm using a well-worn set of DR Black Beauties on a DS'd P-bass with good effect. Maybe that's what Duck was using?  According to Ed Friedland's 'R&B Masters" book, Duck used a slightly brighter tone than his contemporaries.

Had a weird incident with my Dark Star P-bass where the tone pot (CTS) or .047 cap seems to have blown out. Was playing with moderate aggression, heard a loud noise, then the bass lost volume so I quickly shut things down. The amp is fine since I carried on using another bass. Testing later at home, I have a working Vol pot but no tone attenuation. A quick visual looks like all connections are normal.

I'm assuming a Dark Star doesn't put out enough energy to blow out a pot or cap, but I'd appreciate hearing if anyone thinks this could be component failure. I'll double check solder connections for now.

Good job with the forensics.  The tape shot is very cool.

Dang, that's nice. Looks like an ebony board.