I'm not clear about what happened there, as I was never too interested in new basses in general and new east-Asian basses in particular, nor have I understood the hype around the Darkstar other than it being a very attractive looking pickup in a P/J-dominated bass world.
The tort they used is really horrifying. If I owned this bass I'd have a Gibsonesque 5-ply b/w/b/w/b pickguard made for it.
The Darkstar was hugely overhyped. "It's a wide range pickup." Big deal, so are EMGs. I want a pickup that sounds good to me, regardless of how its range looks on paper. I liked the original Guild Bisonics well enough, but the Darkstar was a much modified version that Casady and Lesh used in the late 60s - early 70s... and then abandoned. They moved on quickly. If it was such a fantastic pickup, why?
It got so bad at the Dudepit for awhile that every old cheap husk on eBay was posted as "Darkstar candidate?" Ridiculous! Those basses did retain some value for awhile, but only because the same group of people were buying them from each other.
Still, if you like the tone, fine with me. But my clear impression was that a lot of guys liked it because they were told to, swallowed the hype and jumped on the bandwagon.
