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It's landed...I'm going to have a couple of days messing around before band practice on Thursday after which I'll be able to report back on initial thoughts.

Love this thread.

This has just landed from Sandberg with Mark at Classic & Cool and will be with me next week...

Thanks fellas. No recording studio stuff yet but I'll try and get some recordings from band practice with the bass so you can hear it in action.

If I could find some I'd definitely swap them out, assuming of course I could afford them!

That would be awesome if that could happen.

I used to have a 4-string Darkhawk (it's the one for sale at BassBros at the moment. https://bassbros.co.uk/product/sandberg-california-ii-vm2-dark-hawk-4/ These are my thoughts and hopefully address your question! The bass is a really nice thing to play, I think Sandbergs have some of the best necks out there. The Darkglass EQ is unusual in that it has bass/lo mids/high mids and no treble control this gives it a more 'powerful' feel for want of a better word. The pickups are the Sandberg Black Label items that have a higher output than the standard items, think Quarter Pounders, so plenty of mids there to be tweaked and this seems to align well with the Darkglass preamp. This is a very powerful instrument with a lot of character. Flexibility wise the blend control is useful and the switch essentially transforms it into a Jazz bass. I think it's the two outer coils but not 100% certain. Plus the EQ can do really good deep lows to being actually quite bright even without the treble control. The Darkhawk was dreamed up by German retailer Musik Produktiv who married the Darkglass preamp to the existing Nighthawk model. Here's what MP say about it: We present a meeting of the giants exclusively at Musik Produktiv. Yes, it was our idea to bring together two of today's most interesting bass companies. We had a modern bass concept in mind with an extraordinary sound concept. After many, many prototypes with different woods, bodies, pickups and their position, after several trips and meetings, we are more than proud to present our result. The Darkhawk is - as the name suggests - based on a Sandberg Nighthawk, but is equipped with special pickup positioning, black label pickups and the Darkglass preamp. Together with the choice of wood, a steam hammer of tone was created that leaves no further questions unanswered. The prototypes have already been taken as a new reference tone both at Darkglass headquarters in Helsinki and at Sandberg Guitars in Braunschweig. There couldn't be a better accolade for us! I bought the bass new from Germany and used it for quite a while (never got to do a gig with it sadly). It was bought on the back of me joining a metal band and needing something appropriate! Sadly the project collapsed after some months. At that point I realised that I had way to much gear and decided to shift a good number of basses, and whilst I have two other Sandbergs this was the one that was likely to be used least. I do still miss tbh and have the BassBros page with the listing on my favourites list just in case.

Curious fact: The people of Dubai don't like The Flintstones. Nobody knows why, it could be some long-held fear of Hanna-Barbera animations. Even more curiously the people of Abu Dhabi Do!

Nice bass @Henrythe8 The colour and inlays look similar to those used on the Sandberg California II TSBS bass that I own.

Novels can be a fertile hunting ground. Off the top of my head (but most because I've just lent it to my daughter) J G Ballard's "Drowned World"

Sorely tempted TBH.

Does your Pulse II have the Junior TP in still or have you swapped it out and what do you think of the bass?

On the Sandberg theme, this one at BassBros used to be mine and is highly flexible with Darkglass EQ and pickup coil switch. https://bassbros.co.uk/product/sandberg-california-ii-vm2-dark-hawk-4/

Yup, that's the badger. When I bought the bass it had a Quarter Pounder p/up fitted, but I managed to find the actual original pickup set on here after a lot of digging around (thanks people, you know who you are) and restored it back to it's original state. I know what you mean about P basses. I did have 5 though (now 2) which I think you'll find is even more than @ash of this very parish who, at the last count, had 756 of them.

That might be my old one, a very reluctant sale but I had too many P basses. Will has helped me a great deal in slimming down the herd and has been brilliant to deal with.