mellowgerman
Senior Member
Today I spotted something interesting on the Grateful Dead History page on facebook. They shared photos from 8/4/68, Orange County Fairgrounds, Costa Mesa, CA (Newport Pop Festival '68). Phil is playing his (presumably) first Starfire bass, that I had seen before in photos but always assumed it was unmodified. However, there's one photo where he looks to be coaxing some feedback out of his amp and I noticed that Starfire has a back-door! Also, looking from the front, the master volume control has been removed. So that made me wonder, what's going on inside that bass? Anybody have info on this?
Cutting a back-door into a semi-hollow would be a pretty drastic step to take if the tech was only removing a master volume control or replacing some pots or capacitors. Seems to suggest some extensive mods were done. Another thing I'd heard about this bass was that it potentially was THE Starfire that became the Godfather/BigBrown bass? Maybe these were early stages of experimentation?
Cutting a back-door into a semi-hollow would be a pretty drastic step to take if the tech was only removing a master volume control or replacing some pots or capacitors. Seems to suggest some extensive mods were done. Another thing I'd heard about this bass was that it potentially was THE Starfire that became the Godfather/BigBrown bass? Maybe these were early stages of experimentation?