£100 will buy you quite a few top end of consumer pickups if you shop around:
DiMarzio Model P
EMG GZR Geezer P
etc
Cheaper stuff - Warman maybe? Never tried them personally, but heard good things
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Why do we let them do it to us?
How far is "too far"?
They (instrument manufacturers in general, not just Fender) seem to have a knack of extracting just the right amount of michael such that significant numbers of people don't vote with their wallets.
Sure, but it would limit what I could take down with me. If I'm going to this much trouble, I'd want to take the whole shebang down with me (6 basses, amp, ironmongery/leads).
I'm already making the circa 1100 mile round trip to attend the SW Bash - sorry, they got in there first!
Whether or not I can face doing another circa 1100 mile round trip the following month remains to be seen. Ask me after, if I and the car survive the first one!
Jealously reading everyone's gig reports - holidays etc. means no gigs until 1st Sept, last one was July 22nd. I'd better get a bass out and play it, lest I forget which way round to hold it or something...
That sounds better than my usual way around the usual hotel breakfast rip-off - coffee for breakfast...
Can you take payment in advance in some way? If you prefer cash on the day, no worries, I'm sure I can find some between now and then.
One of the first basses I ever encountered was a friend's Ibanez Musician. Didn't know at the time what a good bass or a bad bass was, but I do remember it being a weighty beast.
Pretty sure it was one of these:
At least you've got a day between them to recover, would have sucked doing the late gig the night before the afternoon gig... It's bad enough doing two late ones back to back.
A big fat meh from this correspondant. Gibson haven't done anything interesting in bass for at least the last 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if they're basically leaving bass to Epiphone now, Epi arguably make a better Thunderbird than Gibson are capable of right now.
My guess is that it'll be full of Les Paul guitars and anything else other than basses that you can slap a Gibson logo on.