New (to me) Lakland Skyline Hollowbody

[ajkula66]

A pretty bass. I've always been intrigued by these but never got a chance to play one.

[Dave W]

Only Lakland I've ever played was a US-line Precision type. Very well made but expensive! I couldn't see them selling well enough at that price to sustain the brand, and sure enough, along came the Skyline series. Then Dan Lakin lost control of the company.

[Alanko]

The same bass, now with some improvements.

I've replaced the stock bridge with a Badass II. The factory bridge was about 2 mm misaligned to the right.

I've rewired the bass with braided shield cabling, including the pickups. I've also added ground lugs to the pickup bases.

I've replaced the pickup screws sure longer versions as the pickups need to sit low on this bass to avoid the strings clattering into them. This seems like an unavoidable consequence of pairing a Fender-style bolt on neck with Gibson-style pickup rings and mounts.

I've not yet sorted one final problem. The pickup rings are metal and literally ring out periodically if I play over the bridge pickup. They must be ferrous metal as the pickup detects the ringing, despite the pickups not being microphonic.

[BTL]

That looks great, nice work!

[Alanko]

That looks great, nice work!

Thanks! A bit of a challenge and some silliness in the design that shouldn't have left the drawing board.

I guess there is an imagined Goldilocks bass design that captures all the mojo and cool points of a vintage hollow body bass with the more straight forward turnkey practicality of a Fender. Lakland were shooting for this design ideal here, but didn't quite hit the mark squarely.

[steveonbass]

I have one of the earliest Skyline HB bass and it has none of these issues.  It has Bartolinis with zero noise issues and the neck bridge allignment are dead on.  Of all the long scale HBs I've played, its easily my favorite. The Barts are deep and woody and i love the neck.