nmiller
Member
...and you get a Hagström Concord II De Luxe:
I must admit, I'm a sucker for anything with Van Ghent tuners. Aside from the usual minor cosmetic blemishes expected of a bass that predates Woodstock, it's quite clean and the only possible replacement part I see is the nut. The pickups even have all their faux-pole covers, which frequently go missing. The bass needs a litle setup work and some cleaning of the pots, but it's fully functional and came with the original case plus that hang tag from the American distributor. I'm told it was built in 1967; there's no online list of Hagström serials, but since they only made this model in 1966-8, I see no reason to doubt that.
As opposed to the Starfire's full center block, there's only a small sound post to keep down feedback. Interestingly, the post is located about 1" forward of the bridge, not right under it. Maybe Hagström were trying to keep that hollowbody thump intact (they did a pretty good job of that). The single-coil pickups sound superb as usual, with a lot more midrange than the Bi-Sonic but not quite as much as Hagström's later humbuckers. Just the right amount of low-end on the neck and clarity on the bridge. The neck feels a bit like a short-scale J-bass but it doesn't get quite as wide toward the body.
This is the first hollowbody Hag I've owned, and the first time I noticed the unusual bridge design. There are two holes in the body into which the studs loosely fit, thus ensuring reasonable intonation on a floating bridge, while the rosewood base serves as a spacer and support to keep them from falling all the way in. It's sort of halfway between a traditional floating archtop and solidbody-with-tune-o-matic design. The studs are threaded inside for action adjustment.
I must admit, I'm a sucker for anything with Van Ghent tuners. Aside from the usual minor cosmetic blemishes expected of a bass that predates Woodstock, it's quite clean and the only possible replacement part I see is the nut. The pickups even have all their faux-pole covers, which frequently go missing. The bass needs a litle setup work and some cleaning of the pots, but it's fully functional and came with the original case plus that hang tag from the American distributor. I'm told it was built in 1967; there's no online list of Hagström serials, but since they only made this model in 1966-8, I see no reason to doubt that.
As opposed to the Starfire's full center block, there's only a small sound post to keep down feedback. Interestingly, the post is located about 1" forward of the bridge, not right under it. Maybe Hagström were trying to keep that hollowbody thump intact (they did a pretty good job of that). The single-coil pickups sound superb as usual, with a lot more midrange than the Bi-Sonic but not quite as much as Hagström's later humbuckers. Just the right amount of low-end on the neck and clarity on the bridge. The neck feels a bit like a short-scale J-bass but it doesn't get quite as wide toward the body.
This is the first hollowbody Hag I've owned, and the first time I noticed the unusual bridge design. There are two holes in the body into which the studs loosely fit, thus ensuring reasonable intonation on a floating bridge, while the rosewood base serves as a spacer and support to keep them from falling all the way in. It's sort of halfway between a traditional floating archtop and solidbody-with-tune-o-matic design. The studs are threaded inside for action adjustment.
