Lakland Skyline 55-02

Posted by Benjamin on October 24, 2008 Filed under: bass, bassguitar, Gear tagged: lakland, Skyline

I’ve posted about the Lakland Owners Group, now it is about time for me to write about an actual Lakland Bass. This fellow here is the Lakland Skyline 55-02. The 55 denotes that it is a 5 string, and the 02 that it has a jazz front pick up and a musicman style one at the rear. The Skyline basses are made overseas, but to the US Skyline design, and finished in Lakland’s Chicago facility.

One of the first things you’ll notice is the optional quilt maple top. Very striking! Turning the bass over reveals a few surprises too:

The neck is anchored with 5 screws, rather than the usual 4. You can see the electronics compartment, which we’ll come back to, and the battery compartment with its simple to use flip-out cover. No screw driver required to change this battery. Some other manufacturers, who shall remain nameless, should take note.

The 5 holes at the bottom of the bass are the ferrules that enable the through-body stringing (mentioned in Bass Bridges). Looking at the bridge from the front you can see that the strings can go through the bridge in the traditional style, or through body:

Apart from that little feature, the bridge is very musicman-esque in appearance, and it isn’t the only thing that is…

The combination of both musicman and jazz style pickups is very versatile and one of the things that really drew me to this model. You can hear quite how versatile it is on the Lakland site sounds section. The clips there include the bass played with flats and with rounds – see Bass String Design.

The 35″ scale neck is rock maple, and graphite reinforced on this 5 string, no graphite in the 4 string models though. The fretboard itself is rosewood, with round markers. Having owned a Lakland with a maple fretboard before, I chose the rosewood this time – to my ear it is a warmer, more traditional sound.

The headstock features a hold-down bar for the strings and Hipshot licensed Ultra-Lite tuning heads, as well as the Lakland logo of course. Going back to the body…

The electronics set up features a volume and a pick up pan control, as well as bass/mid/treble tone knobs. The little switch selects better coil splitting options for the rear pickup. The controls are flexible, easy to reach, and not mind-bendingly complex.

I’ll leave you with this video, from Rock Palace (in Den Haag – hence the language), so you can see a Skyline in action: