Yessir, DHL delivered yesterday. {} It's a real nice piece of wood, with a bit of flame to the top, and some little birdseyes in the neck , and makes a great pair with: {} But! Reaching for passive mode today, the volume knob shaft pulled right out of the pot body. Looks like there used to be a snap ring/retainer clip on the end that isn't there anymore. Maybe I can pull the pot body apart and fix it, or maybe I need a new one. It still works in acitve mode, just can't engage passive, and it will fall out if I'm not careful. It sounds real dang good with the stock pups in there...
Congrats, Chef! You'll get 'er fixed up quick and be happy, I'll bet. I have a ~2001 55-01. It is a DeLuxe with a quilt top. That model was long ago discontinued. It's 3-tone sunburst with a rosewood fingerboard, and the Korean Pre-amp and Barts. I like it very much, and although the Nordy Fat Stacks and OBP-3 in my Valenti Fretless make me kinda GAS for a factory pre upgrade, the Lakland is flexible, and punchy. My only beef is that the old Korean lakland pre is so so hot. Solution: turn down.... I might add that the bass boost on the pre can verge on the ridiculous, but that is basically true of my Valenti and my Sadowsky, too! When I recently contacted Kirk at Lakland, here is what he said: "We can replace the preamp in your bass with our LH-3 preamp for $200. We don't have an upgrade for the pickups in the -01 series. We only make replacements for the MM and J style pickup shapes. I am attaching a review of the our system from Bass Player magazine. Personally, I like the -01 pickups. I wouldn't go to any trouble replacing them. However, the stock preamp in the 01 is a little less sophisticated than our LH-3. You've probably noticed this against the Aguilar in your Valenti as well. If you decide to go with this upgrade, let me know." He is a cool guy. When I bought it, I found the 55-01 sounded better that the 55-02's I had a chance to play, especially for finger-style. I recorded with mine a couple of times and liked the result. The B is great, needless to say. Let us know how your 55-01 and 55-02 compare for you and the music you do.
I've been flirting with changing the pickups on the 5502 ever since I got it. It sounds great solo'd, but in a live mix it goes kinda transparent, and seems to have trouble blowing a big wide hole open, like say a G&L 2500. I've messed with the mid dipswitch, and just am not ever quite satisfied with it. I've got/had J basses I like a lot, and had Stingrays I liked a lot, and was hoping the 5502 would "be all that and a bag of chips," but it seems to be at least a bag of chips short of that. It works, it just seems like it could/should work a lot better. I guess I find the 02 too clean, polite, transparent. I feel lke it need more midrange punch and grind to make me happy. I play everything from jazz to blues to rock, alternacountry...if it's fun, interesting, with good people, that's all good. A paycheck is even better So, my basses need to be able to cover a lot of ground on some nights. I find it a lot easier to "calm down an aggressive bass" with right hand technique than to make a mild mannered bass bark when it needs to. I'll have a chance to gig the 01 and 02 back to back a couple of times next week. I'm pretty sure I can guess the outcome. A little post script: while I haven't eyeballed them side by side, my intial impression of the 01 was that the fingerboard felt a lot flatter than the 02. I thought I had read they were the same. It also has at least one fret that needs dressed up top to get the upper register to play cleanly on the B and E strings. It's the first Lakland I've ever played that didn't have immaculate fretwork.
Very cool, glad you're liking it. Lakland was replacing those early MK-1 push/pull pots for free at one time. I don't know if they still are, I would contact Dan Lakin at his email. I agree with you that the stock MK-1's are pretty good, I didn't want to lose that thick humbuck sound, I just want a few more options, that's the reason I picked nordy Dual Coils in instead of the Fat Stacks or Big Singles. On the 55-02, my buddy had a 55-02 w/Barts that he loaned to me when I was trying to make the pickup replacement choice. I really loved the sound of that bass, but I didn't think it had the "edge" I was used to for rock stuff. Bill
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