The Last Bass Outpost

Quote from: 4stringer77 on March 31, 2025, 10:29:16 AMOther than Germany, I would have said the UK pertaining to european countries that are most hostile toward free speech.

...according to Breitbart and Fox News.

I'm ceaselessly amazed at how confidently Americans can make such poorly researched, unnuanced statements. Aren't you lot knocking back folk at airports for saying mean things about your new King for Life in text messages? Much freedom. At least the folk in North Korea probably understand that they are living in a totalitarian hellscape.

Now that I've had this bass a couple of weeks I've drawn up a list of improvements.

- Replace the electronics! It's a rats nest of unshielded wires, crackly pots and a worn out switch of the 'enclosed box' variety. I'm going to rewire it like an SG, but with a 4.7 nF cap acting as an overzealous treble bleed on the bridge volume to get me a sort of comb-filtered vintage Rickenbacker tone when I knock the bridge volume back to '8'.


- Replace pickup wires with braided Gibson-style wire.

- Ground the chassis of the pickups as these are currently floating and a source of noise.

- Replace the bridge. Turns out I don't like the feel of 20 mm string spacing, plus the bridge is slightly offset to the treble side. The neck is solid in the pocket, so I cannot do the standard Fender chiropractic procedure on it. Currently the G is too close to the edge of the fretboard above the 10th fret. 


- Replace rattly pickup springs with surgical tubing.

- Rejuvenate the fretboard, round the edges of it, polish frets, have the top of the nut down or replace if it is soft plastic.

The slow creep of Tobias from boutique brand to budget 'Toby' basses from Epiphone, courtesy of the Gibson buyout, is a bit bizarre. I think Tobias himself cannot use his own name on instruments now, hence MTD basses?

Still, my Lakland Hollowbody was apparently part designed by Michael Tobias, who has apparently consulted on other designs over the years, so presumably everybody is happy!


Thru-necked fancy wood basses with Bartolinis and 18-volt preamps are about the opposite of my taste in basses, but these do look rather nice.

My buddy had a Telecaster out with him yesterday, so I was trying out Wilko's right hand technique. It is brutal! All the muting and phrasing comes from the left hand, which is bloody hard work.

Wilko's schtick of being Mr. Canvey Island polymath geezer was quite endearing. Not sure how well it translated outside the UK!

This is tight! I have full respect for P Bass players who keep the covers on. Sounds like picking nearer the bridge suits his playing style.

Quote from: Basvarken on March 21, 2025, 01:24:40 PMDrummer/producer Wayne Proctor later produced the Scottish band King King of Alan Nimmo.
And he also was behind the drumkit of the band for a while.
Also in the band was Dutch keyboard player Bob Fridzema (who now tours with Glenn Hughes).


Alan Nimmo is a great guitar player, but also an excellent singer. His voice reminds me (a lot) of Paul Rodgers

I know King King's (former?) drummer, not that Scotland is a small place or anything.

From speaking to him, Alan Nimmo puts unbelievable energy and effort into making the band work. It sounds exhausting, but their success is down to endless hard graft. You can make a band like this work in 2025, but you have to put in maximum effort on all fronts; logistics, promotion, finances... just to make your songs heard. Covid, Brexit and all that have just made it exponentially more difficult as well.

All a bit of a shame that it has to be this hard for working artists. There's a BBC documentary on Mike Oldfield and, goodness me, what a precocious and privileged dude he was in the '70s. Definitely the product of a different era. He didn't want to play gigs, he didn't want to do interviews and he wanted to play with model aircraft rather than record albums. Despite all this, he had full support from the record company. Imagine any artist trying to be this gauche and feckless now. No label is going to tolerate that.

It is more the case of hearing Force It-era tracks like Let it Roll. No piano on the studio cut, but multitracked guitars. Some live cuts have an overdriven Wurlitzer piano clanking away, which reduces the Hard Rock element, slightly.

I hear a lot of Leslie West in Herr Schenker's early playing.

UFO! Live at the BBC!

I was surprised to hear a second guitarist on this, seemingly 'Tonka' Chapman. He takes the second half of the guitar solo in a more modal, fusion-y direction than Schenker.


I find live UFO a bit tricksy to listen to. Sometimes you get a nice twin guitar assault, sometimes you get a Wurlitzer piano banging away like an unconvincing rhythm guitar.

A bit like the Sensational Alex Harvey Band live. A second guitarist would have thickened stuff up, but instead you get a Farfisa organ through a wah pedal. Not the same!

Quote from: ilan on March 19, 2025, 02:41:49 AMIs it a "real" hollowbody or a hollowed out solid like a Tele thinline? How it it constructed?

Two hollowed out faces, glued together, at a guess. There is a seam running around the side of the body. I suppose it is constructed like a Rickenbacker 4005, but with two rounded, hollowed out shells glued together.

I believe they are Chi-sonics, but they don't have markings. They are potted with black epoxy, and are subtly over-engineered. The pickup cover and baseplate isn't grounded, however. The bass buzzes if I touch the neck pickup height adjustment screws or bridge pickup cover.

Mallard! Essentially the Magic Band sans Beefheart. Reminds me of the Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Fatso Jetson.

Completely hollow. The bridge sits on a fatter section of the top, but there doesn't appear to be any solid areas. I pulled the neck pickup out earlier, and the inside face of the rear is routed in very precise stair step increments.


Oddly the pickup covers and chassis aren't grounded, and there is no shielding or shielded wires in the bass, so it is a little noisy. Surgery time!

Quote from: Dave W on March 16, 2025, 09:47:31 PMPretty bass! I don't remember much about them.

On the back of the headstock there is an inscription that states that Michael Tobias designed them. Lakland made them as a boutique offering back in the nineties, complete with Bartolini pickups.

Mine is from Indonesia and has chi-sonic pickups. They are either fat P90s or humbuckers. The pickup chassis need grounded, either way, as they are noisy when you touch them.

I've seen photos of one or two with Hammon dark star pickups.

Lakland then made a short scale follow bass (sort of a violin bass meets a Mustang, with a weird pointy cutaway) that phased out this model.

The first time I've ever seen one of these in the flesh, and I had to have it! Sort of equal parts Jazz Bass, Starfire and Ibanez Soundgear, albeit with a chunky neck. An interesting confluence of bass designs. I bought this used a couple of days ago and almost immediately swapped out the knobs. I've also stuck on a fairly junked set of flatwounds, just to see what this bass can do. I remember these being all the rage about 15 years ago, at least on Talkbass.







I think the wiring harness is the weak link? Typical Pacific Rim wiring harness from the nineties or noughties; all overly long red and blue wires flying everywhere, but not outright terrible. The Chi-sonic pickups are quite polite and balanced sounding, though maybe a bit dull on their own.

Bumping an ancient thread, but seemingly Doug Irwin modified this Rickenbacker for a guy called Phillip Saam, per: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BioPqqJ9F/?mibextid=wwXIfr