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Life With A Mockingbird |
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I bought my B.C.Rich Mockingbird in June 1979. The bass was one of three Mockingbirds and three Eagles that were bought into England by a small company calling themselves EFR Guitars. They bought in two Birdseye maple Mockingbird models that had Ebony strips going right through the body on either side of the neck and a third one that was made from a wood called Koa. Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy used the Koa model for the video ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’ – a not very successful tune compared to Lizzy’s other offerings but the video itself ain’t bad. I ended up buying the bass that Phil had used (and abused) for 650 Pounds but that story is too long to be told here. Anyway, about the bass itself. The bass is a 34-inch scale neck through body design with 24 frets. The neck is quite a bit narrower than that of my Gibson Thunderbird and the body is smaller with a long pointed lower horn that can do you a mischief if you’re not careful with the instrument. The truss rod is adjusted from the head end of the instrument, as you’d expect. The bridge is a lovely piece of American engineering. It’s called a Badass bridge and it’s one of four ‘name’ hardware parts on the instrument. The machine heads are another ‘name’ brand – they’re called Grovers and they’re the business – very accurate and extremely well designed. The pickups are Di-Mazio and are of the P. Bass variety. There are two sets of pickups on the bass. The last ‘name’ items on the bass are the Straplocks which allow you to unclip your strap from the instrument. To my mind, the straplock at the back is positioned a little too high and the strap tends to get in the way of your elbow a little. I think the reason they’ve put the straplock up so high is so that the head of the instrument doesn’t aim itself at the floor like that of the Thunderbird bass who’s strap button is in the conventional (but maybe incorrect) position. This instrument was one of the first basses to sport active electronics. The really scary part about this fact is that the battery is stored in the same compartment as the circuitry and not in it’s own compartment as is the norm with modern day instruments. The rear-mounted plate covering up the electronics is just screwed to the back of the body in ‘surface mounted’ fashion rather than ‘flush mounted’, as is the norm these days. The control knob area is really cluttered with various knobs & switches that unfortunately give it that ‘dated’ look. Nevertheless, the Mockingbird is a well-behaved instrument and you’ll feel equally at home whether you’re slapping, tapping or just playing plain old fingerstyle. The bass is a cool looking instrument – very visual – not the kind of instrument you would buy to use exclusively in the studio and it looks really at home if the guitarist in the band is also using a B.C. Rich with an outrageous body shape. Unfortunately my bass hasn’t held its price in the market place. The cheaper B.C Rich instruments that come from the East with the flashy paint jobs seem to be the instruments that are snapped up by musicians looking for this particular kind of axe and given the fact that the newer instrument will have all the latest refinements (separate battery compartment for instance), it’s not really surprising. Unlike vintage guitars, vintage basses, in general, aren’t very good investments as the bass guitar is still enjoying it’s ‘evolutionary stage’ due to the demands of the modern day bassist whereas our guitar playing buddies seem more at home with instruments designed in the 50’s & 60’s so the older instruments increase in value if they’re from a good heritage (Fender and Gibson for example). |
