Any info on this?

Looks like an Electra MPC Outlaw. I don’t know enough about them to tell if it’s legit, though.

 

Yeah, those two ribbon pull things really make me think they are battery compartments. Two possibilities come to mind:

1. One battery is for active pickups, the other is for an onboard preamp that would have occupied the large cavity in between the battery slots. (I have no idea if this is actually a normal thing to do.)
2. Only one battery is used at a time, and the other one is for redundancy.

 

More likely it's an 18 volt preamp, which is not uncommon.

 

Hey, look what I found:

 

So this is either an 18 volt preamp, or one battery runs the preamp and the other powers the modules.

 

SOLD - RARE - Electra MPC X620 "Outlaw" Bass w/case

Maybe passive pickups and a battery for each "Modular Powered Circuit"? I dig the tortoise neck binding! And the shape. And the inlays.

 

Very cool bass! Is this the model Squire used during the Drama era?

 

If you're feeling ambitious, you could build your own modules. Welcome to BYOC sells effects pedal kits, and you can download their instructions, parts lists, and schematics free. They were even willing to sell me only the circuitboard for one of their pedals, so I bought the rest of the components from Mouser for a lot less. I bet it wouldn't be too difficult to adapt their kits to fit in that cavity.

 

it looks like a real cool project that has been waiting years to be completed, lucky you!

 

Really cool
Best of luck with it

 

The Outlaw was pretty wild for the time. They had something like 10 effects modules available. And the bass and sister guitar could host two of them at a time. But the real gem was the 5-way switching on the pickups. You could get some great tones even without the effects electronics.

If you do decide to rebuild it and use onboard effects, Guitar Fetish has a number of affordable prebuilt effects modules designed for onboard use if you don’t want to scratch build. Find out more about those here and here.

 

wow....…...the bass knowledge here on talk bass never ceases to amaze me.
keep up the good work all !

 

my Jackson used 2 9v batteries as it was an 18 volt system.