What’s the sentimental story?
Okay okay, I'll attempt a somewhat shortened version of this long story
It came from a friend with whom I believe I first crossed paths in some JackCasady/Guild-related youtube comments section, circa 2008. We've always lived on opposite ends of the country, but stayed in touch via email and social media over the years and he even passed along a lot of very cool Jefferson Airplane stuff that he had collected since his youth (news paper clippings, articles, books, 45's, etc.) in a re-occurring series of "a small package of value will come to you, shortly". At one point he brought up this Starfire bass. His main player had long been a 1968 Starfire II, but he came across this 1970 somewhere along the way, second-hand, and had the idea to make a Casady inspired hot-rod out of it. That project never quite took shape though and it sat safely and practically untouched, in it's case for decades. When he offered to sell it to me, at a very fair price (especially considering the very clean, original condition it was in) I was super stoked. That said, I was a roaming explorer of sorts at the time and did not have much stability or consistency in my life at the time. Thankfully though, my friend was patient and in no rush to unload it. He felt that if I wanted it, it should go to me. Sure enough, on February 6, 2017 (7 years and 1 day after he initially proposed the idea of passing this bass along to me) it arrived.
I was immediately in love with it, from the moment I first opened the case and started playing it. I enjoyed it plenty with the single neck pickup and passive volume/tone/suck-switch circuit, but within a year I worked up the courage to commit the vintage-gear-collector's ultimate sin... to start working toward the bass's long-intended metamorphosis into a dual-pickup, Casady inspired hot-rod. Gradually, it has undergone a lot of changes but it has always maintained this really distinct je ne sais quoi... maybe influenced a little by sentimentality, but it just feels like home to my hands and my ears. I hope that someday I can pass it along to my kids to remember me by, ideally by using it, but mounted on a wall works too.
