And I thought all my exes lived in Texas.
THAT is indeed the BigRedBass. It found a new home in Pensacola FL, and is being sold by that local music store, Blues Angel Music, and they're good guys, the kind of great local music store that's getting harder and harder to find.
The scuff on the point of the Crown head I did when I found the handling shortcomings of playing a l-o-n-g instrument in a room with relatively low ceilings !
They got it mostly right:
It IS right around 9 pounds, very light relatively speaking. It has a very slim neck profile thickness wise (back of the neck vertically to the fingerboard), and that bass is rock solid, I quit adjusting it for several years as the relief and action simply never changed, the only bass I ever owned like that. Having lived in the Gulf humidity for the last 10-odd years may require an adjustment period if it winds up elsewhere, but if it didn't, I would not be surprised.
Not walnut stringers, but the Alembic deluxe laminations for a five-string, with the three stripes being purpleheart. It's their classic fingerboard profile for a five, 2" nut by 2.5" width at the 24th fret, sitting under the standard 1/4" ebony board.
He did change to ultralight style keys in a futile attempt to thwart geometry, the Series shape in long scale is always going to be a bit neck-heavy, and so is this one. Not a big problem like some Thunderbirds, but you do learn to keep your picking hand forearm in tight on the body, usually enough, you won't need to hold it up with your fret hand. The included original keys were Gotoh GB's, but marked 'Gotoh' and not the monogrammed 'A'. This is a big axe: I'm 6'1" and wear a 44 long coat, and the reach to first position is all I could reach, but with that body style, playing anywhere way up the neck is a breeze.
It's running FatBoys in both pickup positions. It had AXY's when I originally got it, and they were fine, but a bit dry. The FatBoys are reminiscent of a MusicMan pickup, more meat on the bones, and for me an improvement. An analogy would be that AXY's sound like expensive studio monitors, utterly pristine and uncolored, where the FB's sound more like really good, voiced home hi-fi speakers. Martin-Logans vs big Advents, if you will. Under the hood, it has the dual blue box preamps to really set the blend to taste on the BOTH pickup setting on the rotary selector.
That's the matching red leather Levy's strap with the Schaller attachments for the strap locks, and the case, big enough for a German Shepherd to sleep on. No wonder it's local pickup or call about shipping that beast.
It was/is a great bass, I always loved the color and the sound of it, and it was essentially zero maintenance once I had it where I wanted it setup wise.
I haven't seen it in over 10 years, but it looks like it did when I shipped it, so I hope wherever it finds a home, it's still the well-behaved-boy it was for me.
