Lado Super Falcon II 4 String Bass (Circa 1978) | Natural

The Lado Super Falcon II comes from an era when boutique instrument building meant doing things the hard way.Handmade in Canada by Joseph Kovacic’s Lado operation, this early Super Falcon II is an extraordinary piece of Canadian guitar history, combining wildly ambitious construction, ornate appointments and an electronics package that borders on excessive. Serial CND-SF-2-788, examples like this simply don’t surface very often.

The construction alone is remarkable. Mahogany body wings surround an elaborate neck through, multi laminate centre section loaded with heavily figured maple, while a dark wenge fingerboard is dressed with ornate mother of pearl inlays. Even among Super Falcons, this one has an especially unusual detail: its substantial brass bridge is beautifully ornate and sculpted with curved edges, unlike the more straightforward bridge designs we’ve seen on other examples. Add the matching figured headstock, extensive brass hardware and unmistakable Lado silhouette, and the whole thing feels gloriously overbuilt in exactly the way you’d hope from an early handmade Lado.

And Lado certainly didn’t stop at the woodworking. Two humbuckers feed an unusually sophisticated active/passive electronics package with a 5 position Varitone, active preamp/boost, individual coil splitting and phase switching, and 3 way pickup selection. It’s an enormous amount of tonal control built into an instrument that was already anything but conventional.

The previous owner identified this instrument as a 1978 model. We have been unable to independently verify the exact production year, so we’re conservatively presenting it as an early Super Falcon II. Whatever the precise year, this is a seriously rare piece from the early days of Canadian boutique instrument building, and easily one of the most interesting vintage basses we’ve had through the shop.