WASHBURN'S M-SERIES BASSES The Washburn M-series has become something of an enigma. It gained the majority of its notoriety due to Peter Steele of Type O Negative. There is very little information on this limited run of instruments, so much so that I've read about inquires to Washburn turning up nothing, as those originally involved with it are likely no longer with the company. To make locking down details even more difficult, a lot of the input on the forums contradicts itself. M14 Raine had two humbucker-loaded M-models in his possession during our initial correspondence, which he sometimes referred to as "M-1 prototypes." He said they were attempts to specifically compete with Music Man and that only five were ever made. Washburn literature claims to not put serial numbers on prototypes, but Raine assured me all five of the humbucker-loaded basses were assigned numbers. The one I first encountered was in its original form, having a natural-finished bolt-on maple neck, 24-fret rosewood fingerboard, white fret markers the size of side dots, chrome Grover clover leaf tuners, a chrome Original Leo Quan BadAss bridge, a black diamond plate control cover, and a maple body that was painted gloss black. The headstock, which was painted black on the front only, simply said "Washburn" in white and was not marked with an M-number designation. The other one had been repainted to mimic Peter's personal tour basses - Raine said he had personally replaced the rusty Washburn high-mass bridge with a Schaller 467 bridge. He assured me that hardware (and everything else) depended on the client's request - the catalog shows them loaded with the BadAss. The serial numbers were not consecutive on the ones Raine owned (the gloss had the higher number), but the numbers indicated they were both made in 2002. According to Raine, they were loaded with a passive Seymour Duncan SMB-4D that was custom-wound. I confirmed with him that the scale of his M-basses were 34". During our discussion, he mentioned that the gloss black one had a battery that was there only to power the original LED on/off indicator within the original toggle switch. I have never noticed any LEDs on Peter's basses, though.