Lakland Darryl Jones Signature Lake Placid Blue Skyline

Darryl Jones Signature 4 Skyline

Founded by bassist Dan Lakin and luthier Hugh McFarland in 1994, the company’s name, pronounced “lake-land.”

Lakland is well respected for the basses both from the weekend warriors/bedroom fighters to the top professional player around the world such as Darryl Jones, Gail Ann Dorsey, Kat Bax, Juan Alderete and Uriah Duffy to name a few.

Lakland is based in Chicago where the US models are made, and the brand skyrocketed from the mid 90’ties up to the status they have now. In the 00’ Lakland introduced The Skyline Series that are now made in Indonesia with great success the value for money is incredibly high. The basses are made of North American wood and features the same overall design as the US basses with some small changes in details. The basses are quality checked and PLEK in Chicago to meet the high standards of Lakland.

Oh, where to begin when you talk about Darryl Jones, well I guess Darryl has what it takes to be a hired gun for sure because the list is so long, let’s take a few. Miles Davis, Sting, Madonna, Rolling Stones the list is way longer, but you get the point he’s not fooling around, and that goes for his basses as well!

This bass is built around the 44-60 Vintage J bass but more curved and more dramatic cutaways. This adds to the vintage feeling.

The bass features a swamp ash body, maple neck, all that is familiar but what is unusual is that the fingerboard is made out of Indian Laurelwood which is new for Lakland and it’s the response to the CITES laws regarding rosewood. The Laurelwood is very similar in sound to rosewood, but it’s a bit harder and faster than rosewood which gives some more growl to it.

The pickups are Lakland’s own Vintage hot J4 single coil pickups. The pickups are hand fabricated and scatter wounded, this technic makes more air space in the coil to give more treble and resonant peak of the pickup. That in combination with the wood gives an old school kind of vibe with a little more aggression than a true vintage bass and that works really well.