Old New Guy- DeArmond Starfire

[Lavrans]

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Larry Miller. I live in Cambridge MA, retired radio DJ and teacher.
After some 50 years of messing around with guitars, I decided to take up the bass, as a hobbyist, certainly not as a pro performer. (Well, maybe some open mic jams...)
My favorite bass players in the past have been Jack Casady, Phil Lesh, Jack Bruce, and John Entwhistle (Saw Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Cream and the Who back in the day). (If you remember the 60’s you weren’t doing it right...)
I’ve been going to guitar workshops at the Fur Peace Ranch for the last 3 years, and have taken classes with Jorma Kaukonen, Woody Mann and Larry Campbell; mostly acoustic finger-style blues as played by Rev Gary Davis, Skip James, Blind Blake). I have the goal of taking a class with Casady either this Fall or next year.
With this in mind, after a fruitless search for a Guild Starfire, I got a DeArmond Starfire on eBay for a very good price. I’ve put on D’Addario Chrome flat-wound medium scale strings with good results. I would have preferred a bass with a 30” scale, but am OK with 32”.
I have a little Peavey MAX 126 practice amp (with a headphone jack so I can play LOUD), and Casady’s DVD.
So: I am interested in sharing ideas with fellow Starfire freaks. Are the Dark Star pickups necessary, or are the standard DeArmonds good enough? What would be a good FX pedal for getting that Pastorius sustain? Can you mount the strap peg on the upper horn? How does a loop pedal work? I’ve seen the Jaco solos on YouTube, apparently playing with himself (pardon the expression) live on stage, and find that interesting.

Looking forward to some good dialog here!