I have mentioned here before that my first bass was an Epiphone Newport. It was a great bass to begin on at age 13 due to the short scale, but as I got older I wanted a "full sized" bass and a punchier tone than what I could get out of it's single mudbucker.
The only Gibson bass that I had heard where I really liked the tone was a buddy's Thunderbird. It was reversed, of course, so it had nasty neck-dive.
It has seemed to me since that the best of both worlds might actually have been an Epiphone Embassy, like this:
Like the Newport it has a horn up-top for better balance, and is relatively light weight since it is thin like an SG and made of mahogany. It has the same pickups, bridge and wiring of contemporary t-birds, and also has the same 34" scale. It also has my favorite of all Gibson/Epi headstocks: the batwing. (Not to take anything away from T-birds--that's my 2nd favorite)
Embassy basses were made between about 1963 and 1969, but I think that less than 600 of them were ever sold. A few years ago Epiphone reissued an Asian-made version (the originals were made in Michigan), but for some reason used a 2x2 headstock instead of the batwing (why, Epiphone?)
They are already beginning to shoot up in price. If you can find one on Reverb it'll already cost you like a pre-CBS Precision. Out of reach for me! I suspect it'll go up even faster when bass players discover that it sounds the same as a T-bird.
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