Sheehan always interests me. He is a well spoken and measured musician, who clearly puts a lot of thought into what he plays. It is good that he pushes for bass basics; learn other people's material and don't overthink your gear. Great stuff, but because he is such a flashy player it is quite easy to get drawn into the speed and shredding side of his playing. On top of that a player with such a bespoke, idiosyncratic rig telling us not to focus too much on the neck and pickups when both are custom appointments on his bass? Dream on! He built his rig from the ground up around dual outputs and obscure preamps, with a Frankenbass driving the whole thing.
I tried an Attitude in Paris. An interesting bass, short on aesthetics but definitely engineered with precision (no pun intended) where it counts. It seemed a bit bland really, or more like a blank canvas. A more overtly Fender bass inspires a certain style of playing, a T-bird another, a Rickenbacker another. The thing had a great P-bass tone, though I'm not sure the pickups interact very well in mono mode. A simple buffered circuit would have probably not gone a miss, and the inclusion of the choke circuit seemed unnecessary. The satin finish on the neck felt like a far cheaper instrument and the action was surprisingly high. I didn't have a problem with the chunky neck, but I imagine some would.
In short, Sheehan prefers all these bespoke appointments but the Attitude is hardly a Swiss Army bass. The heart of it is a great aggressive P bass, but only have the additional features seem practical. How many of us can honestly say we've encountered sound engineers who would entertain the notion of a bassist running a stereo rig? Great if you are the headline act, or you know the sound engineer well.
On top of that, some of the videos I've seen of him with the Winery Dogs suggest he uses an inappropriately driven, chorus'd tone for even slow ballads and he has a tendency to feverishly overplay on slower songs. He also relies a bit heavily on compression for my tastes. Perhaps the snobs on Talkbass have a point?