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Wal Bass Club.

edit: So from 2007-2010(ish) i was saving a couple pics from every Wal that i could find for sale (ebay,TB,BC etc) and i have found ONE in my saved pics folder of a 5'er with Schaller tuners of this shape. But between that and image Googling Wal bass...its the only other one i could find.
These could be customer requests/shipping mistakes/replacing a broken one with a matching set etc.

But i would guess that there wasnt a "batch" of them.....rather very few numbers with a random reason why they are on there.
 
Never mind, I understand. Sometimes it surprises me that people do not realise what a small company Electric Wood actually was. It wasn't a big factory and everything went on very small scale.
I will post some pictures from Wal's with the elephant ear tuners. ;)
 
Never mind, I understand. Sometimes it surprises me that people do not realise what a small company Electric Wood actually was. It wasn't a big factory and everything went on very small scale.
I will post some pictures from Wal's with the elephant ear tuners. ;)

I know exactly how small of a company Wal was/is. But the numbers speak for themselves!

But hey if you consider a "batch" of "wrong" tuners consisting of 2 or 3 basses worldwide thats your opinion.

Unless someone who actually installed/swapped or requested these from an orig build chimes in we can only guess.
 
I'm fairly new to the world of Wal, but from all of my research, these basses have been made pretty much the same for 30+ years and are held to a high standard, I can't imagine Pete would diverge from their norm because they had some spare tuners laying around? Unless it was a really big batch and didn't make sense monetarily to not use them, but then we'd see a lot more of them out there right? I dunno.
 
I'm fairly new to the world of Wal, but from all of my research, these basses have been made pretty much the same for 30+ years and are held to a high standard, I can't imagine Pete would diverge from their norm because they had some spare tuners laying around? Unless it was a really big batch and didn't make sense monetarily to not use them, but then we'd see a lot more of them out there right? I dunno.

My guess as well.....but Pete was very accommodating!...If he had a BIG Fender fan ordering a new Wal build and requested the same Schaller tuner with a different "ear"...im sure he would have done it for them.

Here is a pic i found that someone had just changed the E string ear!
CIMG2249.jpg


The 5'er i was talking about...So that makes only 2....so far....
85848873-photo-of-bass-guitar-and-wal-bass-guitars-5-gettyimages.jpg
 
J,
During 92 thru 93 a lot of them have these dumbo tuner ears, so yeah I can tell when a bass if from this period. Yeah Pete must have received a huge batch because there are a lot of basses with them including 5 strings and fretlesses. I've probably saved pics of at least 20 basses with them, all from the same period.
 
Found 2 more from around that same build/serial # era

Interesting ....no gold ones though

Besides all of those things everybody said, let's remember that Wal basses are a custom shop company, so if you pay you can add a lot of different stuffs for your dream bass. And tuners are very easy for Paul to offer as an option.
 
It's not my intention to suggest that people here do not know what Walbasses is. If people feel that way, it was not my intention.

If you look at the serialnumbers W3619 to W3901 you find Mk1's fretted and fretless and also 5 strings with the elephant ear tuners.
I had the privilege to have met Pete "the Fish" Stevens on several occasions. And besides the fact that he was a lovely person he also had great stories on running a workshop that made Wal basses.
 
Bass42 said:
Besides all of those things everybody said, let's remember that Wal basses are a custom shop company, so if you pay you can add a lot of different stuffs for your dream bass.
I think Pete was a little more accommodating in an odd special build if you really wanted it.
More random pictures....

36fret_custom.jpg


post-8799-0-76894100-1345026126.jpg


HellborgBlack.jpg


24-4-IanAndersson-Bass2001.jpg


WalRefinFull.jpg


Info about the single pickup fretless has been killin' me for years. No one seems to know about it!
Link Removed

Nothing really unsual except for the color on this one. But I really want to know who owns this! I've seen a few pics pop up over the years.
298246817_5b4a2098a6_b.jpg
 

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