While looking up videos of Jack Casady on YouTube, I stumbled upon a real head-turner of a bass: the Lane Poor Minima. Poor, who is renowned for his pickups, designed and manufactured the bass in the early ’90s.
Besides the obvious headless and stepped-tuner body design, the Minima had a graphite fingerboard with special epoxy “frets”, which as Bob Gollihur put it, “large flat protrusions off the board.” The super strong epoxy is said to never wear down or need replacing.
The Minima was armed with Lane Poor’s soap bar pickup, though some of the few hundred produced have variations in pickups. Another innovation is the bass’s volume control, which is a large cylinder placed on the edge of the body next to the pickup.
The Lane Poor Minima was discontinued in 2000 after only a couple hundred were made, but you can find them popping up every once in a while for around $1,500.
Check out Jack Casady playing the bass with Hot Tuna:
Lane Poor Minima Bass Gallery:
