“The only person to get a good sound out of that bass was Berry Oakley. It’s got so many pickups!” Berry Oakley set the template for the Allman Brothers Band with a modified ’72 Jazz Bass, known as ‘The Tractor’
The tragically short life of Raymond Berry Oakley III was an incredibly innovative and influential one. He was born on 4 April, 1948 in Chicago and was a founder member of the Allman Brothers Band in 1969, wielding what became nicknamed the Tractor Bass – a modified 62 Fender Jazz Bass with a Hagstrom Guild pickup.
Oakley pulled the Hagstrom Bi-Sonic single-coil pickup from his Guild Starfire bass and dropped it into the re-routed neck-pickup position of his Jazz, and then re-installed the displaced neck pickup between the bridge and the bridge pickup to give him a total of three pickups and five control knobs: a volume and tone for the Hagstrom pickup, and two volumes and a tone for the Fender pickups.
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