It arrived last week, Mark, thanks. And special thanks for the new Nasty Habits CD I found with it! Great bass sound and give my regards to your keyboarderess, she really enhances the music well, 80ies rule!!! And Frau Steed, while we're at it, I have a stage name for your newish Lou Reed (post-Transformer) lookalike drummer named Wayne Moody, why don't you call him "The Dire Straight"
, sartorial elegance defying as he seems to be?
We wanted to talk about the bass, ja. It plays wonderfully, that offset wing and the better high register access it brings are heaven sent and a really neat idea of improving playability without messing with the look in a noticeable way. Compared to my newish Gibbies, it does sound more vintage though, the presence frequencies, while there, are mellower, hazier, as if covered by a thin veil. Are those Gibson TB Plus pups really the newest generation TB Plus? I have my doubts, but maybe it's the pots which I will have replaced. (Since it is currently at the luthier anyway, for repair of a large ugly chip on its virgin poly fin caused when I, the idiot, eagerly unpacked it at customs to take a look at it, only to have it then slip out of the cardboard case when I carried it to the car - I could still kick myself for that!
)
But it's the best passive approximation of a real Gibson TBird I've heard and that includes the active Epi TB Pro, the Orville Made in USA and the Epi Elitist as well as of course all other Epi TBirds. I'd say it's 90% there, especially the neck-thru construction is really noticeable, it sustains as only a TBird can among the classic bass models that date back to the sixties and fifties. (Even a Ric, neck-thru as it is, doesn't have quite the upper register sustain of a TBird, probably due to its slightly shorter scale and the maple rather than maho construction; of course a Ric has other benifits, namely its snappiness and attack, unusual for a neck-thru.)
