The Last Bass Outpost

Quote from: 4stringer77 on March 28, 2025, 11:22:39 AM...fear of having a knock on their door for expressing views contrary to what their establishment prefers.

Elon's buddy Donald is taking the USA in that exact direction. It's already happening to college students.

Successful change happens in small carefully controlled increments over time. Evolution rather than revolution.
My opinion...yours may vary. I'm uncomfortable with the chainsaw approach.

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.

Quote from: 4stringer77 on March 28, 2025, 10:03:27 AMPersonally, I'm happy to see DOGE trimming down the bloated bureaucracy.

There is no doubt a lot of bloat in government but DOGE is taking a sledgehammer to walls and asking afterwards if they were in fact load-bearing.

Multiple times now DOGE has gone in and fired someone crucial without realizing it leaving them scrambling to try to rehire them. They're basically using an AI to go through and flag things they don't like which has lead to situations like the removal of Jackie Robinson's military records and the Enola Gay from government websites. Musk himself is going into departments he has clear conflicts of interest with and screwing with them like going into the FAA, canceling a contract that they made with Verizon in 2023, and replacing it with a contract with his own company.

There is a way to audit departments and companies for excess. DOGE is not doing that.

Then there are the people he hired to work for DOGE. A guy who has been given direct access to sensitive personal information of Americans was literally fired from a previous job for leaking company information. These people are not vetted. They do not have security clearance. This is a clusterf***.

Quote from: uwe on March 30, 2025, 01:48:06 PMA Dutchman playing with Michael ...

You mean Barend Courbois? He is from Arnhem.
His dad is a well known jazz drummer who (supposedly) invented the double bass pedal.



In the early nineties Barend played in a trio with the brothers Whistler, who are also from Arnhem.
Instrumental rock in the vein of Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.





And while from Chicago Joel Hoekstra must be from Dutch descent, since Hoekstra is a typical Dutch (Frisian to be exact) surname.

Quote from: doombass on March 28, 2025, 02:07:24 AMMark King with an EB-3 is sure a rare sighting.

It most certainly is, although Mark King never hid his admiration for Bruce, including recording "I Feel Free" on his solo album.

Good to see Phil Manzanera as well...one of the few staples of the glorious days of UK music still standing.

Quote from: Dave W on March 30, 2025, 02:18:16 AMI notice that the over-$2K neck throughs all say that they won't be restocked, so maybe these are old stock.

My understanding is that these are some kind of a test run. Test for what exactly, I have no clue but one and done. Not old stock though, evident if you look at the serials which give 2024 as the production year.

Eric is 80 today.