"Gibson had designed a very modern and original bass with the RD series."
Did they? When the Standard came out in 1977 it had meat and potatoes electroncis and a look most people identified with the Thunderbird from 15 years before or even the Explorer from 20 years before. A maple bass with two JB look pups, vol, vol, tone, a bridge from 1973 and an offset look almost traditional with some of Gibson's models. Even in 1977 none of this was modern. The electronics were actually a step back from the G 3 and its very original Bill Lawrence set up. If you are stretching things you might have called the stacked humbucker mock JB pups the most 'modern" or at least current characteristic on them.
The RD Artist came out in '77, and that's what I was referring to. The Standard was just the lower priced version, and didn't even stay in the line as long.
It did not have two JB pickups, where do you get that idea? They aren't Jazz bass pickups. What bass had stacked humbuckers in 1977? What bass came with active electronics in 1977 besides Alembics?
The RD series was designed to have a brighter tone. You might say it sounded like a Fender, but it could also have sounded like a Ric or Alembic too. The point was Gibson was not previously selling all that many basses because they were too dark sounding.
I'm not talking about the looks of the bass, but even then, it wasn't as safe looking as the Victory bass, or even the Lawrence designs like the Grabber, G3 and Ripper. But Lawrence also said that Norlin wouldn't totally fund his projects, so he had to make compromises. But the difference now is that Gibson won't even design some original pickups, and are going with after market copies of pickups designed by Leo Fender.
And what was Fender doing in 1977? Making 40+ year old bass designs. At least Gibson came out with a new bass design. It's OK that it looks like a Thunderbird, and used existing Gibson parts. The fact that it was not a design from the 50s (Fender) or 60s (EB series) made it a modern bass.
It was only with the introduction of the Moog electronics a year later that the RD became the Artist and therefore modern. But sticking the Norlin electronics into the RD shape was more of an afterthought than anything else, it was just Gibson's most recent model they equipped with the active electronics, but the RD wasn't initially designed to hold the Moog board. If anything , the RD was the concept of an off-set body Grabber or a gently modernised, cheaper to produce and less break-prone Thunderbird.
It wasn't a year later. The Artist and standard were introduced in 1977. The RD was designed to use the Bob Moog designed electronics because Norlin also owned Moog. The first ads I saw for the RD series was for the Artist line and pushed the advanced electronics. The first RDs I saw in music stores were the Artist line. I never even saw a Standard in person, but had played a lot of Artists, both in guitar and bass form.
The Gibson Product development director at the time was Bruce Bolen. in this 1978 interview he explains the vision behind the RD artist.
One of the particular musical qualities that I personally was looking for in one of the models, was a similar effect to that of a steel player - this being the reduction of the intitial attack and the swell of the note after the initial attack had been made. A steel player of course uses a volume pedal to accomplish this but it was still something missing. Bob designed a special circuit that would achieve this as well as an expansion circuit unlike any other that had been designed to date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_RDhttp://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/RD.phpDon't forget, RD stands for "Research and Development" so that was the mindset with these instruments. The active versions were the original versions of the RDs.
Do we know whether those SDs on the RD Reissue are real single coils? If so, I'd be surprised, but in a good way, I like single coils on a bass, early fifties P, JBs and Ric 4001/4003 are all sounds I like.
Edit: No they're not, but they seem to be good rock pups:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/bass/pickups-for-jaz/4string/stkj2_hot_for_j/
Seymour Duncan Hot Stack STK-J2
Hot stacks. I don't mind the pickups, but I don't like the way they look on that bass.
