The "blond" Tractor started life as a '62 Jazz Bass. Oakley put the Hagstrom Bi-sonic pickup in the neck position and added a route and relocated the stock Jazz neck pickup between the bridge and bridge pickup. Oakley at one time had the Tractor wired for the Bi-sonic pickup to run to one amp and the two Jazz pickups going to another amp, separating the highs and lows. When Berry Duane Oakley, Berry Oakley's son, received the bass in 1989 as a gift from Dickey Betts, who had rescued it from a FL guitar shop, he and Joe Dan Petty rewired the pickups back to series. Shortly before Berry Oakley died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash, the neck from his '66 Jazz Bass was swapped onto it. The '62 neck went on to the '66 Jazz body. That bass belonged for a while to Oakley's daughter, Brittany, but she somehow lost possession of it to a former boyfriend who now plays for a famous southern rock outfit. It is believed to be somewhere in the Jacksonville, FL area. The sunburst Tractor that Oakley played was actually the first Tractor. It is believed to be a '68-'69 Jazz Bass. He acquired that bass shortly after the band moved from Jacksonville to Macon in 1969. Pictures exist of that bass in stock form, then with the Bi-sonic pickup in the neck position and one Jazz bridge pickup, then two Jazz pickups at the bridge. The whereabouts of that bass is unknown. Some people claim that the Sunburst bass was sanded and became the blond bass, but if you look closely at the Bi-sonic pickup positions in the two basses, the blond bass shows a tilt in the pickup installation. There were two Tractors, but only one is accounted for, and it belongs to Berry Duane Oakley now. Also, Oakley had a '66 Precision bass that Dickey Betts had after Oakley's passing, and he recently presented it to his bassist in Great Southern, Pedro Arevalo.
