Whew. Wrong on several fronts.
After Gibson purchased the company in January 1990, they struggled to meet high demand for Mike’s designs. To increase production without sacrificing the brand's boutique reputation, they outsourced the construction of approximately 400 of the Standard models to the Terada factory in Nagoya, Japan.
These were built during the "pre-Nashville" transition period (1990–1992) while Mike Tobias was still with the company in Burbank, California.
When they were first released in the early 1990s, there Japanese-made basses typically had an original list price around $1,850 - $2,300 The MIJ Standards are definitely highly regarded because they were still finished and set up Michael Tobias’s original Burbank crew.
They are rare. Only about 400 were produced before the project was canceled due to unfavorable exchange rates between the dollar and the yen.
Pickups were off the shelf Bartolini but the preamp was the same Bartolini TCT used on the USA built basses.
