Some of you might know about the Peerless, founded over 40 years ago and makers of some of the best MIK Epiphones and Gretsches from several years back, but their name-brand factory in Gimhae (the historic city also happens to be Cindi's ancestral home, 77 generations/1800 years back) is a apparently a very different setup from from their massive OEM business. They were parked behind us at NAMM for a few years, and checking out their hollowbodies I was quite impressed...Proper carved tops on some of them and all.
Instead of immediately pulling the trigger on a $350 New York(!), I was attracted to a Peerless Smoked Bass that had been up for a while, a huge 17" wide semi-hollow thing (1.75" thick) with a Gibson EB2-style pickup arrangement, but rather having a lovely full 34" scale. A kid I met on the site had curiously enough won the thing with his group last fall from some "battle of teh bands" deal in Busan, and they decided to sell it and split the cash. 5 months on it was still being posted regularly with no one biting, and my phone call gave him the first offer: Brand new it costs a tad under $1000 here, and they have had it online for a little over $600. Like new yeah.
So anyway, he felt too lazy to ship it and instead took the bullet train up to Seoul to meet me (go figure), so I felt fine paying a little bit of his ride to forego shipping and get the bass in person.
So the bass: It's a really odd thing in my hands, about 10 lbs and bulky but I like it so much my fingers nearly bled from playing this evening. Laminated flame maple body on all sides, 5-piece maple/mahogany neck + rosewood board, transparent matte charcoal finish(weird factor number one), huge neck that's almost too much for my little girl hands, but the sustain and acoustic volume is stellar and with a gentle turn of the TOM-style bridge post, things were feeling rather comfy. I haven't bothered to plug it in yet, but I'm going to guess no feedback and some nice speaker cone exploding action from that neck pickup. The 10lbs part of the equation is that it's thakfully not neck-heavy, and I messed about with the Couch strap in hand to lower it nicely for Hooky/Gallup thumping on the knee...Now I think I "get it".
The only big hmph I have is that this model is the premium "custom" version with tacky abalone inlays and gold hardware. Like a proper ss.org posting dood I like nice colors and less bling, and naturally I feel that the Standard model's white binding and nickel hardware is simply perfect...A sligtly scratched-up Standard was online for about $380 a few months back and sold fast, but I'm not about to start regretting this purchase by any means. Will do an demo next week.
L'ICEY BOMBEROS:
The gold is admittedly not bothering me as much as the abalone.
From the pics it looks almost like an LP bass with a Florentine cut, but with the thing on it looks and feels huge. Potty room shot for mirror's sake.
Promo shots. Note: IT DOES NOT COME IN CHOCOLATE.
Tim Harries(Eno!) shown with the Custom.
