NBD: Oh Mighty Lord...

nice looking ax! if it feels good to play it = you win! i also gotta believe that as far as a variety of sounds are concerned: you're covered --- congratulations on your new instrument!

 

Ibanez made some great instruments back in the day back before they got the beginner instrument label. Congrats!

 

What a beauty! Loving two 80's Roadstar basses, I wouldn't mind inspecting this one closely.

Have you seen this video?

 

I had one just like it back in the day. If I could only go back in time....

 

Great looking bass!

 

Very good bass. I owned one briefly years ago until I got my MC824* and RS924 pair (both since gone). Have fun.

* Sold on epay to a kid that turned out to be very good which is nice because he got it at a bargain and I lost $. Oh well...

 

I didn't know that Benny Hill played bass.

 

I would have done the same. I remember those first time around. They look great, sound great and feel great.

Just curious - on the ones I remember having in my hands the pickups were the same size. What's the difference there? I assume the bridge is a single-coil. Is the neck pickup a full-size humbucker or a 'P' in an oversize housing, which was quite common on a lot of Japanese basses at the time?

 

To the best of my recollection it was the MC824 that had the same size PUs. I expect Hypercarrots to come along and show me to be wrong...

Here was the one I had.

 

Incentives, or volunteers?

 

Scott Whitley plays in the Scottish rock band ‘Big Country’. He replaced Tony Butler in 2015.

Scott Whitley also has a signature bass as well as provides online bass lessons.

 

Perhaps. It was a long time ago, probably 1984/5, but I do recall a multitude of knobs and heavily chamfered body compared to your MC824. Either way it was only a casual question for the sake of a little nostagia.

 

I'm not Hypercarrots, but perhaps I can help: as mentioned in the video, they changed up a lot of stuff for the 1982 model year, that included the pickups. The original Musician pickups were the brown single-coils shown in post #12 above (turns out they did come in black, too, but were somewhat rare) (and yes, the coils under the epoxy potting were as big as the covers).

For 1982 they changed to the P/J as shown in the OP (and the video), typical single coil J-pickup at the bridge, and a split-coil P-pickup in a big cover. Interesting thing to note about the bass in the video (which has a late 1981 serial number), the P-pickup is reversed — E/A coil closer to the bridge. Don't recall ever seeing one of those in the big Super-P4 cover before.

 

Congrats! I really like the look of these basses, and the basswood body makes them pretty light.