Photo by Dave Stotts
The Improbable Story Of Phil Lesh’s Legendary “Mission Control” Bass
We all know the holy-grail bass guitars: Paul McCartney’s recently recovered 1961 Hofner 500/1 “Violin” bass (not to mention his 1963 Hofner replacement, which he still plays); James Jamerson’s still-missing 1960 Fender Precision “Funk Machine”; and Jaco Pastorius’ recently resurfaced (and rebuilt) fretless 1962 Fender Jazz “Bass of Doom,” to name a few. Now another legendary instrument can be added to the ledger, one with quite a mysterious tale of rebirth — and a happy ending, given that the present owner allows top bassists to perform with it. I’m talking about Phil Lesh’s “Mission Control” bass, also known as Osiris. This was no ordinary instrument. It was a sonic revolution that helped define the sound of one of the most iconic bands in rock history, The Grateful Dead. From legendary performances at the Pyramids of Giza during a 1978 lunar eclipse, to unforgettable recorded shows like Cornell 5/8/77and the 1974 run filmed for The Grateful Dead Movie, as well as the studio albums Blues for Allah, Terrapin Station, and Shakedown Street, Osiris is woven into the very fabric of the band’s legacy. It also prompted other artists to seek their own custom-built instruments, which was a novel concept at the time.
As important as Osiris was during its years of active service (1974–79), it’s what happened after Phil Lesh retired the instrument that is as fascinating as it is improbable. Osiris, like many pieces of music equipment, faced the wear and tear of years of long performances and heavy touring. Placed in storage and seemingly forgotten, it wasn’t until decades later that one fan, Jason Scheuner, acquired the bass through a series of incredible circumstances. He subsequently embarked on an epic journey to source all of the original components and restore the bass to its original condition — not to hang on a wall as so many collectors do, but to be made available to musicians who inspire him and carry on the ethos of the Grateful Dead culture. Scheuner’s collection now includes three Lesh basses: A G&L 1981 L2000E, a one-of-a-kind 1985 Doug Irwin/Modulus collaboration, and a 1989 custom Ken Smith BT6. Says Jason, “The idea was to change how instruments are collected and take things back to the way they have always been in the classical music world, where patrons have loaned the finest instruments to the best musicians to share with the community. It has always bugged me that in rock & roll, people hoard them behind glass. I and a few like-minded friends want to change the way instruments are collected and shared within the rock & roll community.”
This is the story of how a legendary bass was created, lost, found, and restored, thanks to one music fan’s unrelenting love and passion.
Creating Osiris
The creation of Osiris wasn’t just about building a bass; it was about changing the way sound could be shaped and manipulated. Phil Lesh, along with the visionary craftsman Rick Turner and electronics expert George Mundy, set out to create a bass that could stand up to the Wall of Sound, a gargantuan system designed to deliver pristine, unmatched clarity and power to the Grateful Dead’s live performances. Lesh needed a bass that could interact seamlessly with the Wall of Sound and give him control over a vast spectrum of tones. The instrument was not merely a bass; it was designed as a sonic workstation, a tool for shaping frequencies with surgical precision.
In 1967, Phil was playing a red Guild Starfire bass, known as Big Red. While he had a few basses at the time, Big Red quickly became his main instrument. As the Grateful Dead’s sound began to evolve, Phil needed a bass that could keep up with the band’s increasingly experimental approach. That’s when he turned to Rick Turner and Ron Wickersham from Alembic.
Turner and Wickersham were already known for their innovative work in custom instrument design, and they took on the task of modifying Big Red. They stripped the red paint, transforming the bass into what became known as Big Brown. From there, they made several key modifications, including handwinding the pickups, altering the hardware, and designing entirely new electronics to match Phil’s growing needs. This new design allowed for greater tonal control and versatility, delivering the kind of precision Phil was looking for in his performances.
The work done on Big Brown paved the way for the creation of Osiris, which would feature groundbreaking electronics and sound-shaping capabilities. Osiris would become a key part of the Grateful Dead’s sound, and ultimately, change the way bass design was approached in rock music. As Scheuner puts it, “The analogy that I use is, it’s like you got a car in high school and you hot-rodded it. You kept beefing up all the different things and improving it, and you made the baddest hot rod around. Then you took everything that you learned from hot-rodding that car and you built a race car from the ground up. You built the chassis, you built the engine, and you built all those things. They created an instrument that was very much like Big Brown on many levels; it’s a short-scale bass like Big Brown. It utilized similar electronics. It also had a quad pickup like Big Brown and essentially was a from-scratch, no-holds-barred build to incorporate all the things that they learned from Big Brown.”
At the time, most musicians were playing standard instruments from manufacturers like Fender and Gibson, so a fully custom, high-tech bass built to these specifications was totally new. The production cost was a staggering $35,000 ($30,000 for the electronics alone) at completion in 1973, which, adjusted for inflation, is roughly equivalent to a quarter of a million dollars today. This was an investment, as Osiris would become an emblem of boundary-pushing innovation and artistic vision.
Lesh’s collaboration with Rick Turner and Alembic didn’t just result in a groundbreaking instrument; it also initiated the wider adoption of boutique and highly customized instrument builds by major artists and bands. While the first Alembic bass was built for Jack Casady in 1972, other notable contemporaries of Phil Lesh who would go on to get custom Alembic basses after Osiris include Stanley Clarke, John Paul Jones, John Entwistle, and John McVie. Jerry Garcia, too, had custom guitars built by Rick Turner’s apprentice Doug Irwin, who would ultimately leave Alembic to form his own custom guitar company. Scheuner says that Geoff Gould even told him that seeing Osiris was what inspired him to start his own company, Modulus Basses.
From the very first use in a live performance, Osiris made an immediate impact on the Grateful Dead’s sound. The bass debuted in the summer of 1974 and quickly became a cornerstone of the Dead’s live show. It was used in some of the band’s most iconic performances, including Englishtown, New Jersey, on September 3, 1977, where over 100,000 Deadheads were treated to an all-time great performance. The bass is also featured prominently in countless live recordings, helping to define the band’s sound during a period of experimentation and evolution.
By 1979, the bass began to show signs of strain, with the intricate electronics faltering. The technology that had once given the bass its unmatched power began to fail under the strain of constant performances and heavy touring. George Mundy had been let go (according to George, because an accountant felt he was getting paid too much), and the task of maintaining and repairing the extremely complicated electronics fell to the Dead’s live sound man, Dan Healy. Given that all of the electronics had been designed from the ground up by George and had complicated and unique circuit boards, the task of keeping the bass running proved overwhelming, and it was ultimately replaced as Phil’s main bass.
After he retired Osiris from active use, Phil befriended a mechanic who worked for McLaren Automotive named “Turbo Tom.” Tom had a bridge and tailpiece system that he wanted to test out, and he asked Phil if he had any basses lying around that he could use as a test case. Phil, being enamored with race cars — and believing that someone who could work on cars as complex as McLaren’s must be capable of working on musical instruments — offered up Osiris.
During the process, Tom removed several components that were crucial to the instrument’s sound. Additionally he gutted all of the electronics, removed all of the knobs and pots, took off the pickup ring, took out the neck and bridge pickups plus both quad pickups, and took off the tailpiece. He then put on the bridge and tailpiece system that he designed, installed a single passive pickup with single volume and tone knobs, and fit those pots through a couple of the holes that were already existing in the bass. Then he tacked metal plates over the front of the bass to cover up all the holes, which were now there after removing the electronics that were attached to the buttons and the electronics for the filters and pickups.
The bass was returned to Phil in that condition, and it was put away in storage room 7 (according to Turbo Tom) at Club Front in San Rafael, where it remained for years until Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995. When Garcia died, much of the Grateful Dead gear was moved around, from the main location to various secondary locations, and “Mission Control” was moved from its San Rafael location to a storage facility in Windsor, California. This marked the beginning of a long period of neglect for Osiris. Its status as a sonic tool of innovation faded, and it became a relic of the past — until it was rediscovered and restored.
A Chance Discovery
For years, rumors of the demise of Osiris circulated, but eventually Jason Scheuner discovered the true fate of the bass. Apparently the Grateful Dead had been responsible for the monthly payments on the facility where Osiris was stored, but when the card on file expired, the unit went into default. The contents of the storage unit were then sold to a salvage company, which, in turn, sold the bass to guitar dealer George Gruhn in Nashville.
Initially, Gruhn planned to have Rick Turner, the original builder, work on restoring Osiris, but the timing didn’t work out. Gruhn’s team decided to restore the bass themselves and began the work. While they did an impressive job on the restoration, it was nearly impossible to recreate the circuit boards and other electronics that Mundy had built decades before without having the original parts or schematics. They sourced vintage Alembic pickups, but these weren’t the single-coil pickups that had originally equipped Osiris. Instead, they used AXY pickups, essentially humbuckers, which they stripped down and recast to resemble the original pickups as closely as possible.
The team also crafted a quad pickup from scratch, aiming to match the original design, and added a brass pickup ring, a new Alembic bridge, and a new Alembic tailpiece. One of the most significant modifications was the installation of an Alembic SF-2 Super Filter. Joel and Tony at Gruhn Guitars referenced an old diagram of Big Brown and purchased, gutted, and repurposed an Alembic SF-2 and installed it to achieve similar functionality to that of the original. The SF-2 featured controls for direct volume, filter volume, resonance, frequency, and filter type, which seemed to align with the general layout of Osiris’ electronics. However, the SF-2 was not an exact match of the original components.
Around this time, Scheuner contacted Gruhn Guitars for help getting an appraisal for his custom Ken Smith Phil Lesh BT6 (Phil’s first Ken Smith bass). During the call, Gruhn mentioned that he was in possession of “Mission Control,” and Scheuner inquired about purchasing it. He was told that the bass was already being negotiated for sale and was unavailable.
Gruhn had retained Analogr, a dealer of historic music gear, to sell Osiris. Initially, the bass was to be sold to a high-profile collector, but when the deal dragged on, Analogr contacted Scheuner with an offer to purchase the bass, which he enthusiastically jumped on. When Scheuner purchased the bass in December 2019, he received it with these restored parts. While the work was successful in getting the bass to be operational, Scheuner decided to see if he could take the restoration further. For example, the iconic LED lights that once marked the buttons next to each filter had not been restored. Instead, the holes where the LEDs once sat were filled with screws.
Scheuner reached out to Rick Turner to lead the restoration, and luckily, the timing worked out. Turner agreed to take on the project. During this time, Scheuner began researching his newly acquired bass online and happened upon a 15-year-old thread on a bass forum, where someone claimed to know the person who had the original bridge and neck pickups for the bass. When Turbo Tom took the parts out of the bass, he mistakenly believed that the pickups were stock and held on to them when he returned the bass to Phil. The pickups ultimately ended up with Fred Hammon of the company Darkstar. When Scheuner responded on the thread, to his surprise, Fred Hammon still had the pickups. When Fred asked why he was asking, Scheuner informed him that he had acquired Osiris, and Fred immediately said, “Well, then you need to have the pickups!” and sent the pickups to Scheuner. (As an aside, Scheuner had Fred’s favorite bass completely restored as a thank you for sending the pickups.)
Rick Turner began restoring the bass by installing other key elements: the missing LEDs, a new power-supply unit, a complete rewire, passive replacement for the original active hum-canceling controls, exact replica of the original one-of-a-kind tailpiece, and even an exact vintage match to the original bridge off Stanley Clake’s first Alembic bass (his name is even scratched on the bottom).
In 2022, Scheuner and Leo Elliot of Scarlet Fire Guitars decided they wanted to put this instrument out into the world in as many ways as they could, by creating exact replicas. Scheuner volunteered the original bass for reference, and he agreed to consult, refusing to accept any payment or equity in the project. To Scheuner, this was never about making money; it was about the legacy, and fulfilling his vision of spreading the joy that these instruments bring into the world.
Scheuner, Leo Elliott, and the Scarlet Fire team took precise measurements of Osiris down to 1/1,000,000th of an inch with NASA-grade scans of the original inside and out, crafting an exact reference model that would serve as the foundation for the replica project. The project was ambitious and complicated, but with Elliott’s expertise, the replicas came together with incredible precision.
With the body design completed, there remained a significant hurdle: the electronics. Rick Turner was asked to consult on the project, and he enthusiastically agreed. It was decided that Rick Turner Guitars would take the lead on making the replica pickups, and with the originals to reference, they were able to completely reverse-engineer the pickups and capture the magic. But there was still one problem: the missing filters.
To complete the project, Scheuner sought out a company to create new filter units. (The company name is being withheld at Scheuner’s request.) The plan was straightforward: build new filters that could replicate the originals and bring the sound and capabilities of the replica bass to its full potential. Unfortunately, the company hired to build the electronics delivered defective parts. The filter boards were useless; not only were they incorrectly built, they were also misrepresented as functional parts. The electronics even failed right before the first one was to be played for the first time live onstage. The project was put on pause until a solution could be found.
Scheuner and Elliot reached out to Mike “Waldo” Wald of Waldotronics, known for being the guru of all gear related to the Grateful Dead. A Deadhead, historian, guitar player, and electronics whiz, Waldo agreed to take on the project of recreating the Osiris filters from scratch.
Another Chance Discovery
In a twist that could only be described as fate, the story took another fortuitous turn in March 2024. Analogr, the company that had been consigned to sell Osiris, contacted him about a lot of Grateful Dead cases they had. Jason offered to help Analogr go through the lot and prepare the cases for auction. As the staff was sorting through the cases, they happened upon the original flight case for Osiris. Almost immediately, they contacted Scheuner and gave him the first chance to purchase the case. But this is where things became borderline unbelievable. When he opened the case, all of the missing parts, both missing quad pickups, the original brass pickup ring (made by Doug Irwin and etched with his designs), all of the pots and knobs, hum canceler, tailpiece, and electronics were inside — even the original 18-pin LEMO connector. Everything that Turbo Tom had removed, everything that they had spent years trying to source, reverse engineer, or replicate, was right there.
The missing pieces had been sitting untouched for decades, preserved in the flight case and waiting for Scheuner, Elliott, and Waldo to bring them back to life. This was the turning point in the restoration, as it allowed Scheuner and his team to begin the painstaking work of reverse-engineering the electronics to return the bass to its original glory.
Reverse Engineering the Magic
With the original parts now in hand, Scheuner and Waldo worked tirelessly to replicate the filter units and pickups, ensuring that every element was recreated to match the original’s exact specifications. Scheuner is quick to point out that Waldo was the brains of this portion.
During the process, another idea began to form. To make sure everything was working exactly right, each pickup and filter section was tested outside of the bass extensively, and only once passing this quality-control step were the parts given the green light to go into the replica basses. While testing the Osiris filter in a standalone unit, Scheuner realized that it gave any instrument the powerful and wide-ranging sound-sculpting abilities of Osiris. True to his vision of not just restoring Osiris but also making it available and accessible to as many people as possible, Jason and Waldo began building and selling standalone Osiris units. It’s called the Osiris Philter, an homage to the bassist who inspired the journey in the first place. (Scheuner notes that the Osiris Philter is not a pedal.)
In an incredibly circular moment, in October 2024 at Scheuner’s place, Waldo himself installed the Philters, preamp, and active noise system — all reverse engineered by Waldo for the replicas — into the original bass. (The original filters handmade by George Mundy had become finicky and were carefully stored for preservation).
Epilogue
The journey of Osiris, from its creation to its improbable acquisition and restoration, is a story of luck, perseverance, passion, and an unconditional love of music. Jason Scheuner’s commitment to restoring Osiris wasn’t just about reclaiming a piece of musical history; it was about honoring Phil Lesh’s legacy and preserving the sonic tools that had shaped the sound of the Grateful Dead. It was also about continuing to fulfill a vision to make legendary rock instruments available for live performance, to continue making sure these brilliant instruments are shared with the world. A belief that instruments are built to be played, to be heard, to be experienced, to be cherished — that you can be both a collector and act as a custodian to an instrument’s legacy and purpose.
Today, Osiris stands restored to its former glory. It is played regularly and celebrated as a symbol of innovation and musical history. It more than lives up to the legacy of the ancient Egyptian god it was named after, who represented resurrection and the cyclical nature of life, death, and renewal. And with the Osiris Philter, the power of Phil Lesh’s bass is now available to any musician who seeks to harness its magic. The story of Osiris reminds us that music transcends time — and sometimes, with enough dedication and passion and some luck, legendary instruments can be brought back to share their magic with the world.
Phoenix Riffing
Notable bassists who have played Osiris include Kevin Scott (Gov’t Mule, Warren Haynes Band), Karina Rykman, Sam Grisman (Sam Grisman Project), and Skip Vangelas (Dark Star Orchestra). Notable bassists who have played the Scarlet Fire Replica Osiris (numbers 1 and 2) include Oteil Burbridge (with Dead & Company at the Sphere and GD60) and Skip Vangelas. Notable bassists who use the Osiris Philter include Tim Lefebvre, Kevin Scott, Karina Rykman, Skip Vangelas, Ryan Stasik (Umphrees McGee), and Brandon Boone (Tedeschi Trucks Band).
Links
https://scarletfireguitars.com/guitars/osiris-mission-control-bass
By: Ben Hyman
