Baz Cooper Custom Futura 8

[hieronymous]

If I had extra cash I would consider investing in this venture. Have you considered crowdfunding?

[Bionic-Joe]

NOT a bad Idea....I'll think further..I'm trying to deal with UPS and My Sample product.....Guy I sold my Futura to shipped it back to me...I traded a 69 tele bass to get it back....but he shipped it UPS instead of FEDEX...NOW it may sit on a truck until Monday...It sucks..I've been on hold with several differnt reps tody trying to pick it up...It's in Chicago...but I DON'T want it sitting on the truck!!!!
But Crowdfunding..is that where a bunch of folks donate cash to help me start up???

[hieronymous]

Yeah, I've never done it myself (crowdfunding) but I've seen it done, once to fund a movie, another time a friend had cancer and received help paying for treatments. Sometimes they offer something if you donate a certain amount of money. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it could be an interesting option if you need capital to get started.

[mc2NY]

Aluminum is for sure too heavy. But Lucite????Anybody hear anything on Lucite basses or guitars??? Are there good qualities? or bad???

Lucite weighs almost as much as aluminum. The old Ampeg 60s Dan Armstrong lucite basses weighed a ton.

The only lightweight basses with a body that I can think of were the Parkers.

[Highlander]

Lucite is pretty far removed from the expression "tone woods", and that includes tone...
Aussie Mark has a re-issue... Uwe has (at least) one of everything... Jon, you've had access, if not owned an original...
Playability compared to (shiver me) timbers of quality, any of you...?

Got to admit to always wanting an original and nearly ended up with one as a third instrument... went for the RD instead when I couldn't get HP on an early T'bird in the same shop...

[nofi]

those dan armstrongs seemed 'extra short' to me. could never get on with it.

[Dave W]

The original Ampeg Dan Armstrong lucites must have weighed as much as those heavy ash 70s Fenders. No idea about the reissues.

[mc2NY]

Yeah, I owned one of the original Dan Armstrongs ages ago, after my 63 EBO.

It was sort of like a very heavy, see thru EBO.....except my Dan Armstrong happened to be fretless and had an original black pickguard...none of the fake brown wood grain on it. All original though.
I recall not really liking the sound. Not at all warm like an EBO. had all the warmth of lucite It was ages ago but for some reason I recall the neck being kind of like if Ibanez made a Gibson EBO copy.
I'm not purist...have owned aluminum neck Kramers and liked them and also a metal upright...but the lucite looked much better than the bass sounded or played.

For the life of me, I cannot recall how I got that bass. Probably in a trade, since I would not have bought a fretless back then. Back then I didn't realize how rare the non-brown woodgrain Dan Armstrongs were or else I might have held onto it. Used it briefly with my progrock band back then because the violin player also had a clear violin and a matching Dan Armstrong 6-string.

Even stranger was how I got rid of it.....traded it to a local bassist in one of the bigger local bands when I was in college. I advertised it in a local classified....and he showed up in his van, which he was LIVING IN!!  he didn't have any cash but traded me a SUNN 2000S head for the Ampeg....and that head became my amp for the next 10 years!! Sold it briefly because of the weight and then bought another because I couldn't get my sound with the lighter solid state A.M.P. And SWR heads I tried.

Many know that SUNN 2000S bottoms are VERY rare. Well, this same bass player had the matching 2000S bottom in his van and, despite being broke and living in the van, absolutely would not sell me that bottom. Pretty funny, looking back on it.

[uwe]

I played - besides the Dan Armstrongs which I think are ok but hardly breathtaking - a lucite Ibanez once, the one that looked all modernistic, was hyphed at market entry but then only had a very short shelf life. The one I played had the deadest E string (or was it B?) I've ever played. No idea whether it was a string issue, but it turned me off from investigating further.

As alternative-to-wood materials go, I believe my Status Stealth II 5er is pretty much unbeaten, the sound of that bass is both meancing (aided and abetted by the 36" scale no doubt) and absolutely even and jumping right at you across the (aircraft carrier wide) fret"board" (in fact it's no "board" at all, the whole bass, body, neck and "board" is one single piece of graphite). The sound is not sterile at all, but so incredibly upfront and lively it grates after a while. You have no chance to hide with this bass, every note you play is - "wham" - there at once and then has endless sustain. It's the kind of instrument that needs to be played by the player all the time so he/she adjusts his/her playing to it. As such I'm not really the right owner for it (it would probably do a good job in a Dream Theater tribute band though), but I applaud the design and material purity of it.

My Parker Fly is similar, but not quite as extreme.

[Bionic-Joe]

How did my post about the Korina Futura 8 string bass get Hijacked with Lucite Dan armstrong basses/?

[Highlander]

Curiously enough, something you asked in 2011 and Jon replied and none of us noticed... the risk of resurrecting old threads is that sometimes old info gets mixed up with the new...

[uwe]

How did my post about the Korina Futura 8 string bass get Hijacked with Lucite Dan armstrong basses/?

Hey, I like korina! Not much of a looker, but nice sonic qualities, maho brightened up a little. I'm the world's only Gibson korina TBird owner!!!

Sometimes it feels good to brag. 

All threads get hijacked here, it's tried and trusted tradition. Worthy subjects return eventually! 

[Bionic-Joe]

Well...congrats on owning the ONLY Korina Bird....
    As for MY bragging rights....I  happen to own the ONLY Hamer Thunderbird 8 string bass with the arrow head headstock....considering the only other Hamer Thunderbirds ever made both having the traditional Hamer v headstock.....3  thunderbird 8 strings made. Period.....

[nofi]

i expect much more bragging once the hamer guy from long island sees this.

[Bionic-Joe]

He owns one of the 3 ONLY ever made Hamer Thunderbird 8 string basses...In fact...He owns the Last one ever made!!!