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Tobias Standard

meatwad

meatwad

Apr 9, 2008
2,734
1,033
Smallville, USA
#1
My Tobias Standard fretless says something like "Made In Japan For Tobias Of Burbank California" on the back of the headstock, making it pre-Nashville... Does anybody else have one of these, or ever owned one? I love mine, but they seem to be quite rare.

tobias2.jpg
 
#4
From what I gather, they were cut from planks to their basic shape in Japan, then shipped to Burbank for final shaping, paint, assembly, ect... by Micheal Tobias and his (then) small crew. Same hardware and electronics as the 100% CA-made basses of the era, while made from less exotic woods. The maple in mine is somewhat flamed, and the color is called "Candy Blue".

Didn't John Myung from Dream Theater play a red six-string version in the early days?
 
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#5
Chris2112 said:
What are they, licenced foreign made Tobias Copies in the vein of the Cort Curbow?
Click to expand...

Not exactly. Rather, they're a little more like the Sadowsky Metros--built to more or less the same standards as the US versions, but without any options in terms of woods, etc.

To quote Michael Tobias, after the Gibson buyout in 1990, the original Tobias crew moved to a bigger shop in Burbank...

Business was still very good and we were not able to make anywhere near enough basses to fill the orders. Instead of trying to jack up production, we tried to get outside vendors to build for us. We had 110 "Model T" basses made for us by a very fine builder in New England, and then we got the Terada factory in Nagoya, Japan to make the "Standard" bass for us. This was and is a great bass, but the $/yen ratio killed the project. There were about 400 Standards.
Click to expand...

Michael Tobias has some history of Tobias and MTD here: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Mike
 
#7
I own one... Great basses. As mentioned they were built in Japan... With the bartolini preamp, there is a mid control inside of the control box... never got a clear answer from anyone as to why... but It's a great bass. There is a 6 digit serial number. Not close to the bass right now but the first 2 digits are the month, the second 2 are the year and the last two are the build #. For example, 079218 would be the 18th bass made in July of 92. I could be incorrect in the order, but the number should read similar to that
 
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#8
Hi!! I Have two Tobias Basses, and my standard is blue exactly model of the photo, and my serial number is 20592, it was made in Japan, and i get it at 94/95, If the serials number is mouth,year,bass...my bass is impossible. The gibson crew saw me it the second bass made in may of 92 (finish was made for Michael Tobias)
 
#9
Pickebass said:
I own one... Great basses. As mentioned they were built in Japan... With the bartolini preamp, there is a mid control inside of the control box... never got a clear answer from anyone as to why... but It's a great bass. There is a 6 digit serial number. Not close to the bass right now but the first 2 digits are the month, the second 2 are the year and the last two are the build #. For example, 079218 would be the 18th bass made in July of 92. I could be incorrect in the order, but the number should read similar to that
Click to expand...

Interesting about the mid control inside the cavity, as I have read this most every time a Standard is mentioned, but mine has a stacked bass/treble pot and a single mid control on the exterior along with two seperate volume controls.

Also, does yours have wood cavity and truss covers, or plastic?

Thanks!
 
#11
Yours has been modified. The standard controls for this bass is Volume, Blend, Stacked bass/treble. The controls are typically 3 in a row. The mid control looks as if it was added. The funny thing about the mid is that it was a full size pot. Someone probably just mounted it as it should've been. What's odd, there's no reason that it couldn't have been mounted to begin with. Either way... nice bass
 
#14
That mid control thingy in the control cavity is a MT secret sauce kind of deal. I know of two Cats that have it in their current MTD's and I heard that MT does not ordinarily do this for just anyone.
 

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