I had only met Mr. X once at NAMM show around 2017 time frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I got a call from Mr. X out of the blue during Covid.. He said he had just purchased the original Osiris \/ Mission Control Bass from Alembic used by Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. It was designed for the “Wall of Sound”. and used on the record “Shakedown Street”. I was very familiar with the band, their music and much of the Alembic music gear which had been designed around them as I had become a fan of the band 1986, seeing the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band 100 times before his passing in 1995. So it seemed like cool situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bass was not working as it was missing a special “LIMO” connector jack. It has 6 different outputs as well as power cables running into the bass, hence it required a harness with the same special connectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He showed up at my house\/studio\/lab in the thick of covid with Bass, 2 connectors and 2 harness cables he had specially made. Mr. X then asked if I could install the Jack and get the bass working. There was no documentation and it was a complete rat’s nest inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a few hours I wriggled thru the spaghetti wires and figured out what went where and what did what. I thought I had it right only to find, the pinouts on the LIMO were a mirrored opposite. I then decided to clean up some of these wire points and put them on headers like I do on other complicated electronics wiring. I wired in the second jack and, Voila! I also discovered that only one of the two harness cables was built correctly. It sure was a lot of hunting in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I just happened to be working on an album with a band called “Sweet Juanita”, which was the line in a song by the band Little Feat written by Lowell George. It just so happened that Lowell had produced the Shakedown Street record which this bass was last ever recorded on. I recorded the newly functional bass onto the song “Down The Line”. The 1st song to be recorded with the bass since Shakedown Street. Ironically , it is a song about the Kharma that\u2019s coming down the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n