Addison wrote:
Lakland will make all of their USA models lefty, but they don't offer any of their imports as a lefty.
I wonder if Lakland still has the magic they used to have... I've heard/read a few reports where people that had a Lakie back in the day bought one recently and were not impressed.
I might have written something about this. I've had a 1999 55-94 for a while, and maybe two years ago I got to try a brand-new one with the new Lakland electronics. I don't know if my old one had more charm because of the natural aging or because it was built by the original Lakland crew, but to the touch it does have more magic. The new one felt 95% as good - still very high quality instruments. The one thing I had a problem with was that the neck angle (in relationship to the body) of the new was a bit straighter than the old one, resulting in slightly higher action that I would've wanted. I would've had to shim the neck in order to get it where I wanted. I even got to talk to Lakland's general manager, and he said the specs have not changed and the only way to tell if there was something wrong was to ship the bass back to them. . . but I didn't want to go through the trouble. Very nice people and very concerned about customer satisfaction.
In any case, I think that new Lakland still are within the best.
Talking about necks, Lakland necks are very thin, especially on the 4-strings. So if you are a P-Bass baseball-bat neck lover, Lakland might not be for you. Although I would think that they will do custom neck contours on a special order.