October 12-String Basses
Early October branded headstock with Orange logo.
October brand 12-string basses
After the supply of Hades brand 12-string basses had been sold the decision was made to continue to offer 12-string basses under the October brand name. Few of these earliest October 12’s have been seen. As in the photo above, these early basses had a brass nut like the Hades 12’s. It is likely that they were produced by the same builder in Korea that made the Hades 12-string basses.
2007 October 12-string bass in the Tobacco Burst finish.
About 2006 a major guitar builder in Korea went out of business, leaving hundreds of guitar brands scrambling to find a new supplier. While the new supplier did a fine job on finishes, they apparently did not have access to the same hardware as the old company. Bridges went from 8-saddle to 4-saddle, and the tailpieces were clearly not designed for 12-string basses. And rather than adjusting the sizes of the routs for this different hardware, the existing measurements were used, resulting in the routs being much too large for the hardware that was incorporated.
2007 October 12-string bass in the White finish.
This headstock design was incorporated into October 12-string basses starting in 2006.
Although this bass has “NAMM ‘08” noted, October Guitars did not attend the 2008 NAMM shows.
The headstock shape was updated in 2007. The serial numbers on October 12-string basses follow the same format typical of many Korean-built instruments in that the first two numbers designate the year in which the bass was made - they are the last two numbers of the year. So in this case “07” means this bass was built in 2007.
The routs for the bridge and tailpiece on all 2007 basses we have seen are way too large for the hardware, giving the impression that wrong hardware was used. This may have been due to change in the Korean builder since the Hades basses built in Korea do not have this problem. Also, a 4-saddle bridge was used, rather than the 8-saddle bridges used on the Hades 12’s.
This over-sized rout problem is found on all 2007 October 12-string basses including the Rage, Jackyl, and Wraith models.
The tailpieces on the 2007 basses do not fit strings with normal bass-sized ball ends, they only work for Asian-made strings with smaller guitar-sized ball ends. The D’Addario strings used below can be crammed onto the tailpiece but they have a tendency to dangerously pop off the tailpiece while the instrument is being played.