Hey folks. Here's the short version of a fairly wild story about my Traben, a seemingly rare Chaos 5 in Fire Fade.
I've owned this bass for nearly 14 years now (bought it in May 2007), and until yesterday, had never seen another like it. An author I follow on Twitter had responded to a photo from someone he follows, putting the photo in my feed just in time for me to see a very familiar bass in the background.
I'd been curious about mine before, but never gotten far with research. Seeing another, and talking with its owner, lit the fuse on finally finding some answers. The search brought me here, and so I thought I'd share the rough timeline I compiled for this oddball, along with a few photos.
Traben's old site (via Wayback Machine) was my main source of availability data, so model lifecycle dates are approximate.
- 02/15/2004 - Chaos 4 page is available, Chaos 5 page is a simple placeholder
- 03/25/2004 - Traben homepage is first indexed
- 06/01/2004 - Chaos 5 page is available, listing original finishes: Burnt Orange, Deep Blue, Root Beer
- 04/03/2005 - Chaos 5 finish options change: Deep Blue removed, Fire Fade added
- 02/03/2006 - Last Chaos 5 page indexing (This result actually resolves to one from 08/30/2005)
- 02/09/2006 - Last indexing of Traben's homepage mentioning the Chaos model
- 04/02/2006 - Chaos model is no longer listed on Traben's homepage
From this, I've inferred that the Chaos 5 was only available in Fire Fade for roughly a year, and together with its serial number (T00111), this leads me to believe that mine was likely among the first produced. An interesting detail: the other's serial number is in the low 700s, which suggests an appreciable jump in Traben's popularity during this time.
An imgur post with screenshots of archived pages, and some photos of T00111 is linked below.
2005 Traben Chaos 5 (Fire Fade) - T00111 - Album on Imgur
