LeftyBassist.com

Howdy!
I'm new to this forum so I thought I'd share my collection as an icebreaker. From left to right we have:

#1. Late 60's Eko hollow body bass. (Okay, so it's not a real lefty but I've got it strung left and I have plans to get it professionally flipped.)

#2. 1979 Kramer DMZ 4000. Aluminum neck, upgraded Hipshot brass bridge, Hipshot D-Tuner and EMG PX pickups. Cuts like a knife and sustains for 17 hours.

#3. 2005-ish MIM Jazz Bass. Upgraded Badass II bridge, perloid pickguard and Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder Basslines pickups. Great "leave it at the rehearsal space" bass.

#4. 2003 Ernie Ball Musicman Stingray 5. Translucent orange, abalone pickguard, rosewood fretboard. I tend to prefer 4 strings these days but this is my go to for some orchestra gigs I do or anything that requires reading music. (So I can be lazy and not change hand positions as often when reading.)

#5. 1976 Ibanez Jazz Bass copy. I've had this a long time. I actually just sold it on eBay. I'm gonna miss it but it makes room for the next toy.

#6. 2010 Frankinstien Thunderbird. This is my fave base right now. I've wanted a T-Bird since I was a kid but Gibson made almost exactly zero of them as lefties ever. Epiphone and Tokai ones are few and far between and - if you can find them - they tend to be overpriced for what you get. I had a local luthier build this one for me to my spec's.

Alder body
Maple set neck with rosewood board and real bone nut. (Made out of an actual Gibson LP bass neck with a re-grafted headstock and ebony overlay. It even had the "made in Kalamazoo" stamp on the heel.)
Bartolini T4CBC "Old" T-Bird pickups w/passive vol/vol/tone electronics
Hipshot Super Tone "for Gibson bass" bridge, brass
Hipshot Ultralight tuners with D-Tuner
Painted "Pelham Blue".

The original build was not - how should I say this - quite right. I wasn't happy with the original luthier's paint job and he really messed up the pickup placement. Way too far towards the neck. And, I wasn't happy with the shape of the LP neck. All in all, pretty upsetting. But then, someone tipped me off to this amazing guitar tech/refinishing guy here in Toronto name Bryan Curry. I took the bass to him and he transformed it.

He completely stripped the original finish, filled in the bad pickup routes and rerouted in the correct placement, shaved some of the excess thickness off of the body and reshaped the neck to a faster profile somewhere between a jazz and original T-Bird. Then he repainted it properly in a gloss nitro Pelham blue and did an AMAZING job. Finally, he relic'd the bass to a perfect 40 year old state - again AMAZING. It went from kinda ugly, hard to play and unfocused sounding to a beautiful player that has that fat bottom and punch that a T-Bird should have. I get more comments and compliments on this bass now than you can imagine.

The cautionary tale here is that no matter how many great things you read on a luthiers website, it pays to do some more homework and find some actual owners to talk to. If I'd done this in the first place I would have gone with someone else for the build. Lesson learned. It cost me about 50% more to have it rebuilt properly but it was well worth it in the end.

Y'all have a great day!

Nice collection of - an eclectic mix of cool bases. Like the story on the T-bird as well.... welcome to the forum!

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

Really interesting collection. The T-Bird turned out fantastic. What's your opinion of the Eko? There was a UK dealer that had a lefty '68 EKO bass listed on ebay for over a year, but I don't see it anymore. (anybody here get it?). Price was over $2000 if I recall.

Hey PJ,
The T-Bird did turn out really well. Thanks.
The Eko has a really classic, plunky sound. I love it for certain things. I don't know what the one that the UK dealer had was like but mine was in pretty rough shape. I've already done quite a bit of work to get it back into playing shape and I'm going to get the guy who worked on the T-bird to get it really up to snuff. It was given to me by a drummer friend of mine who had it in his closet for a couple of decades. I don't know if I would have paid anywhere close to $2000 for it. But if you can find one in good shape it's worth having in a collection.

If you want to hear some sound samples of it you can go here:

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=1014603672/size=grande3/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=222222/transparent=false/#

I used it on the song "The Defiant Ones" in it's entirety and on the second verse of "Last Door Down". It comes in around 1:25 with a sort of disco octave feel. It was PERFECT for these songs. I put brand new LaBella flats on just before the recording.

Welcome, I like this T Bird man! You must have had a lot of fun adjusting the intonation on this EKO! I love the sound of a hollow-body played with a pick.

Hey Man,
Yeah, the intonation was real tricky on the Eko. But once I got it nailed it was surprisingly good. And FYI, those recordings weren't done with a pick. I have sort of adopted a classical guitar fingernail style. (I play six string guitar exclusively finger style so it's not a stretch.) I keep my nails long on my index an middle finger. That's what gives the attack of a pick but the feel of fingers. It's something I've been doing my whole life and it's not as limiting as you'd think. If I need a real finger pad sound I use my thumb and ring finger. So far it hasn't limited my work.
Thanks for checking it out.
J

Your taste in Stingray color choices is absolutley outstanding!

Welcome to the forum, J! Well, I also LOVE the T-Bird, and I especially love the Pelham blue...that would have been my choice for a T-bird finish. I saw a lefty Pelham blue one for sale a few years back... I think I saw it on E-bay...but, well, I can't remember now.
I am a luthier and bass repairman in Reno, Nevada. I have been doing this a long time- in late 1975, or early 1976, I ordered a Bi-Centennial Gibson Thunderbird, left-handed. I put a down payment on it at Manny's in Manhattan. It was ADVERTISED as available left-handed in their catalog.
I wanted one ever since I had seen a guy playin' a REAL, LEFTY Thunderbird IV, circa 1975- in a club in Woodside, Queens, N.Y., where I'm from.
YES, that's right, a real, left handed Gibson Thunderbird bass! I distinctly remember it, because it had an EB- large humbucker installed in the neck position. Imagine- the only genuine Gibson lefty t-bird I've ever seen, and it was butchered.
Gibson sent me a letter, snail mail- way before computers! - saying that the T-bird would not be available. So, I switched my order to a black Ripper bass...a friend had one, and I loved the way it sounded. I waited, waited, and that bass, too never came, just another 'unavailable' response to another letter to them. So, on the recommendation of a friend who was taking guitar lessons from Carl Thompson, I went to his shop on court St. in Brooklyn. He made me a mahogany bass, and no extra charge for a lefty. The serial number was 10676. It was stolen in Rochester, N.Y. in 1991, when I was touring with Rick Derringer. I had modified it heavily by then...stupidly. it was painted turquoise...and had a repaired, but re-broken again-on the road headstock. I never saw it again. Someone out there may have seen it...It has Ibanez mc-924 pickups on it.
That experience hanging a bit with Carl changed my life. I began really getting into my work, and advancing my knowledge. I kinda wish I had received the lefty Bi-Centennial, but I ended up with something far more valuable. Nice to have another lefty bassist on here!

Damn! That story about Carl T is awesome. Bummer about losing that bass. It's also interesting to hear your T-Bird story. Gibson sure has dug in their heels on the whole lefty thing. (jerks) a few years ago I got a HUGE bonus and I contacted Gibson - both directly and through my local custom shop dealer - and they gave me no love whatsoever. I begged them. I told them I had $7000 to throw at a lefty T-Bird and they simply responded, "No can do." Is a custom shop really a custom shop if they don't take custom orders? I mean $7000!!!! For that amount of money you'd think they coulda just made the damn thing and had a laugh making fun of the dumb lefty who paid that much. In the end, the reason I was given was that they didn't want to "set a precedent".

Ah well. The T-Bird I ended up with is probably better. (Even if there was a lot of trial and error with it.)

Nice to meet you. This is a great forum!

Gibson's never made any money on their basses, and they'll always play second fiddle to Fender in that respect. They don't seem to care. They make baffling, idiotic business decisions sometimes, like reissuing the Ripper bass for $2800 list when you can buy an original one for less than half the price, or even worse, a Grabber Limited for $3200!.

Gibson does make lefty guitars, albeit in limited offerings (I just picked up a lefty SG standard - great guitar), but it's clear where their priorities lie.