Love how the Bisonic is crooked.
They tilted the pickup so it would match the strings. You guys need to do an internet search on 'tractor bass berry oakley'.
They tilted the pickup so it would match the strings. You guys need to do an internet search on 'tractor bass berry oakley'.
What's interesting/confusing to me about this is that a tilted pickup to match string spacing would mean that the pickup poles were farther apart than the strings... so that means Berry's original Bisonic must not have come out of a Starfire, as Starfire pole and string spacing is significantly tighter than Fender's string spacing (even with the skinnier jazz bass neck). Furthermore, I don't know of any other Bisonic pickups that were around back then with wider spacing... I think that wasn't a thing until remakes/reissues of the Bisonic started being made.
This would lead me to think that the pickup was tilted for a different reason or that it really was just a case of whatever-I'm-not-worried-about-crooked-pickups. Of course that's not to say that seemingly reliable sources may have claimed the crookedness to be intentional for string spacing, I just don't understand the physics behind it or how they would have come across a Bisonic with wider spacing back then?
i thought I read a while back the Bisonics made for a Hagstrom bass back then had different pole spacing than those for a Guild bass (becuase the string spacing was different on Hagstrom and Guild basses). But, I sometimes remember things that never happened...Hans?
That would make sense (provided there was a Hagstrom model back then that didn't use the same Hagstrom/Guild bridge)?
Berry had a SF II bass. He stopped using it when he got his '66 Jazz. After a while, he missed the BiSonic sound and pulled a pickup off of the SF II and mounted it in his Jazz. They called that bass Tractor. They now call basses that have been modded like that 'Tractors'. Now you know what I know.
Again, just Google. This time Google 'Guild Starfire Berry Oakley' or 'guild bass berry oakley'. Two pics will come up in images that show Berry with the SF Bass.
Berry had a SF II bass. He stopped using it when he got his '66 Jazz. After a while, he missed the BiSonic sound and pulled a pickup off of the SF II and mounted it in his Jazz. They called that bass Tractor. They now call basses that have been modded like that 'Tractors'. Now you know what I know.
Again, just Google. This time Google 'Guild Starfire Berry Oakley' or 'guild bass berry oakley'. Two pics will come up in images that show Berry with the SF Bass.
Need a soundtrack to go with that pic, one of the alltime great bass intros::