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To be blunt, yes. I honestly have no idea why someone who claims to understand these instruments would say yours was made by Matsumoku. The only reason I can think of is that he is conflating the standalone Diamond brand with Aria Diamond, and then presuming that every Aria guitar was made by Matsumoku, which is demonstably not correct. If you'll bear with me I'll try to explain - it's difficult to do without being longwinded so this might be both boring and overly detailed. Brevity is not my forte (that's probably a prog rock thing!) but I'll try to make sense. I should explain that while I might only be some nobody on a forum, I'm some nobody on a forum who's been playing MIJ instruments for 40+ years, studying them for much of that time, and for years made much of my living restoring and selling them. I have owned, played, worked on, assessed and sold multiple hundreds of these things and along the way picked up a bit of info. My MIJ rule of thumb no.1 is, with a couple of exceptions, ignore the sticker on the end, if there is one. Most brand names have absolutely nothing to do with the manufacturer, and can be more often misleading rather than helpful. So, taking your bass as just a Japanese bass, I'll try to explain how I, and anyone else who knows these instruments, can tell that it's not a Matsumoku product. Many manufacturers had various individual traits which can make it straightforward to ID their instruments, or, like I said earlier, to be confident about what something definitely isn't! First - the neckplate. On their 70s era copies Matsumoku used two styles of plate: Both styles are exclusive to Matsumoku - a "Steel Adjustable" plate constitutes a 100% confirmed ID. The only Mats instruments that did not always use these styles were brands commissioned by specific distributors, for example Univox & SLM Electra, who specified their own logos and serialisation. The plate on your bass, with its lower-half MIJ stamp is a standard style mostly associated with Fujigen Gakki but also used occasionally by several other manufacturers including Kasuga and Moridaira. Importantly, this style has never been seen on a Matsumoku instrument. If you read the quoted section in one of my earlier posts, that gives a bit of insight into how metal parts such as neckplates were sourced by various different builders. I didn't talk about the serial on your bass earlier - as an aside, it's interesting (I have never seen that format or positioning before) but I think a red herring as far as a manufacturer ID is concerned. Looking at the irregularity of the characters compared to other serials, it appears to have been hand-stamped after the plate was manufactured. The pickups on your bass help to exclude Matsumoku as manufacturer. On their J bass copies, Mats used a couple of distinct styles which are quite different to standard J units: As the 70s copies were based on 60s & 70s Fenders, pickups were intended to be hidden under chrome covers, so authenticity wasn't considered that important. The earliest copies pre-date the existence of accurate J type pickups, so often manufacturers used whatever was available - it's common to find chrome Telecaster-style units under the covers of budget basses. Anyway, as time passed, the basses became more authentic & Matsumoku moved to using conventional J-type pickups, interchangeable with the original Fender units. The round-ended pickups like yours are common but broadly, not used by Matsumoku or Fujigen. Identification of electronics & pickups remains one of the big grey areas in the MIJ community knowledge - Nisshin Onpa was responsible for Maxon pickups which were very widely used, and very helpful in dating pre-serial instruments as from 1971 they bear a code which defines the unit's actual day of manufacture. However there are various pickup styles, including most bass pickups, which aren't coded or branded, so beyond the overall style not much use for date or ID. I need to explain how I know your bass is not early 70s. Simply, it's the headstock. Accurate MIJ copies of American designs started appearing around 1970 - bodies, headstocks, fretboards, the whole aesthetic, was intended to look as convincing as possible. It's entirely fair to say that no MIJ Fender copy made before mid-1977 would have a headstock like yours. You'll have heard the term "lawsuit" bandied about in relation to these instruments. Leaving aside the fact there never was a lawsuit, the threatened legal action by Norlin, Gibson's then-parent company against Elger Hoshino, the US arm of Ibanez brand owner Hoshino Gakki Ten, was in relation to Hoshino's use of the trademarked "open book" shape on Ibanez-branded guitars. No lawsuit took place because Ibanez had stopped using that style over a year earlier, as the brand started moving away from copy instruments towards its own designs. However a consequence of the stir caused by the legal threat was that it precipitated a general move away from copies, and other Japanese manufacturers followed suit, meaning most headstock shapes on exported instruments were modified from that point on. Matsumoku changed their Fender copies to this shape: It's worth mentioning that Japanese home-market copies weren't modified, and while by 1979 MIJ copies in general had pretty much vanished from export ranges, they continued in their home market for decades. As I said in my first post, I've never seen a bass the same as yours before, and while not getting a pat answer about its ID & manufacture might be frustrating, for the likes of me it's intensely fascinating. I think most of the MIJ intelligentsia elsewhere will probably conclude it's a Chushin - and they might be right - but I'm not sure. Chushin Gakki was a massive manufacturer which supplied an immense range of instruments of all levels with a countless number of brands - but their scale & significance is something that's only become obvious in the last 10 or so years. It's meant the name's become something of a catch-all for anything we can't be certain about, and realistically, that's a lot of stuff. I'm skeptical broadly because there are lots of examples of confirmed Chushin Jazz copies which are the same standard as yours but have very different woodwork details. It makes no sense that the same factory would produce two different versions with the same appearance, spec and price point. This is part of the same logic that can be used to tentatively rule out other manufacturers whose instruments are well-recorded such as Fujigen, Moridaira, Kasuga. I think your bass - and the related Cimars & CSLs - came from a specific factory whose traits we're as yet unsure about and whose role at the time isn't clear. The likes of Terada, Iida, Dyna, Kawai, Nagoya Suzuki & Kiso Suzuki were all active at the time and certainly on the copy bandwagon, along with numerous long-forgotten others, and of course Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai, the manufacturers' union mentioned in an earlier post, about which we still understand frustratingly little. I've often compared understanding these instruments to a form of archaeology - there is little information about the hundreds of manufacturers that came and went during the Japanese guitar boom, a period that broadly spanned the late 50s to the late 80s, and the ones we know most about are those that were most successful at the time, and that survive today. Everything else is the result of years of piecing together scraps of what's left behind.

Well, I am sure we have all seen this, but just so we know where things end up, it turned up here! A Shuker 6, with a neck like a major runway. A series 2 I believe. I am not a 6 player and I am not fond of a spacing greater than 17mm, this goes past both of those, its neck is so wide it doesn't fit in any of my hangers or stands, so it will have to sit on the floor! I figured that although it might be difficult to use, if I never manage to get on with it I should be able to not lose on it like I normally do Although a the moment that isn't an issue as I am getting on with it fine at the moment. Plyed it a bit last night but then it started hissing and sound went down, which struck me as a battery problem, sure enough it was, replaced the batteries, all seems good now. Anyway, here are the pictures

ignore the hilariously bad photo edit...

I finally installed my Tbird pickup, made a scratchplate and a refret as well.

If we’re playing spot the wig, this was after almost 12 hours of solid Zoom meetings last month

A bit busy just now but I managed a good half an hour of guitar noises... The guitar is beautiful, flawless finish, I tried hard to look for cosmetic issues but found none. The closest was perhaps the fret slots, viewed from the side, the filler is a bit paler than the surrounding wood. That. And then I remembered how much I paid. It was in tune when I took it out (nearly, I did retune it, but I've heard bands play live with guitars that were more out of tune than this one straight from the box), which suggests someone tested it before postage, or maybe it was the display model (it was the last red one they had). Frets are pretty good. The action is set low enough (I'd like it a bit lower) and plays nicely everywhere until you get to around the 14th-15th fret where the strings choke a bit: it's usable as it is, but it needs a little adjustment so that it plays smoothly all over. The frets are not shiny, they look like the guitar has been out for a while, which again makes me think it was probably a display model, but if it was they really cleaned it up (or not many people ever tried it :D) , except for the frets. As such they feel a little 'scratchy' when bending strings, but I'm sure after a couple of weeks of regular use (which it'll get) they'll be just fine. Fret ends are smooth as... Neck is pleasantly wide and chunky. Not baseball bat style, just... the right amount of girth, for my liking. If you are a fan of the Ibanez RG series necks, you'll find this a bit too deep, but I think it's the right size. Oh and lacquered, beautiful 'vintage' tint. I love lacquered necks. I'll probably cut the nut slots a TINY bit lower. I was thinking it would need a new nut, as a lot of budget guitars come with pretty horribly cut soft plastic nuts, but I'm not in a hurry with this one. As it is, it plays well enough, a little harder than ideal, which is very clear when I switch to the PRS, but... £139! I am surprised I get something that looks as good and is perfectly usable out of the box. I haven't mentioned sound yet. It sounds... like a Telecaster. It's very good, especially the bridge pickup, it's got that edge that Tele bridge pickups have and it's lovely with high gain, which is what separates the meh from the yeah pickups. The neck pickup is a little polite and lacks a bit of 'sparkle' compared to my ideal Tele sound. It sounds good enough, but I'm looking for negative points and I can't find anything else. Ideally I'd have something a bit better there. I have a black pickguard for it... however it doesn't fit. It's what happens sometimes when you go for non-Fender derived clones. On the SX the neck pickup is mounted on the pickguard rather than straight into the wood underneath, which suggests a wide pickup cavity underneath (they often do that so that they can produce different models with different size pickups... humbuckers etc using a single body design). The bottom of the neck is also a couple of mm longer than a Fender-derived version, so the only way I can fit this pickguard is moving the pickup 2mm down, which may be easily done if the pickup cavity is large as I suspect. No biggie, 'though. One day I'll adapt it. If not... I can use the black pickguard on the purple Tele that I'm getting for my birthday in September Seriously... £139? Add a decent setup and this can be a seriously decent guitar. @madshadows you were right, it's a very pretty metallic red. Hard to make it justice on a phone picture.

My 54p self-build from last year...as much as I love my 2011 Am Std P, my Lakland Dudepit Jazz and my 2002 AVRI 75' Jazz, this would be the one I'd grab on the way out should I have to. Cliche, I know, but my wee boys initials and date of birth are on the logo / serial number decal, means a lot, especially as I was so happy the way it turned out and sounds.

This one. I’ve owned it for 26 years and it was my only bass for a long time. It’s been stolen and recovered, has been round the block a few times, and refretted twice.

So... Lockdown = boredom I fancy a new plaything...time for a reassessment of the basses and guitars I actually use... It dawned on me that I rarely pick up my Highway One precision bass in favour of my Ibanez because, no matter how long I’ve had it, and regardless of the change from precision neck to jazz neck, it has always felt a bit of a chore to play! How can I get that glorious p sound from an Ibanez but still keep the Ibanez?! Lightbulb moment...What if could put a p pickup in the Ibanez?! Surely it’d sound close enough?! A few messages to the BC collective later I had a “yeah, I could do that” for our very own luthier wizard @Andyjr1515 Highway One up on the classifieds...SOLD! SR300 disassembled SD Quarter Pound PJ pickup set ordered Ordered new loom from @KiOgon Body and pups in the post on their way for Andy to do his thing, separate thread for the work here https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/434728-small-job-for-a-basschatter/ Meanwhile I started the prep on the neck for painting Neck sanded flat and taken back to bare wood, primer on, and painting begins... Had a few issues with my spraying area but once again, the clever souls of this very forum came to the rescue https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/432737-painting-issue-help/ https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/434263-have-i-just-fluffed-it-truss-rod-content/ Issues overcome and we’re back on track! Painting of the neck is completed and now I’m just running around the house like a big kid at Christmas waiting for the body and pickups to get back to me... Body is here!! Really happy with the work carried out! Masking up... Filling of chips... More sanding... More priming... More sanding... More priming... Ready for paint...4 days of rain forecast! Nadgers! Suns out for a couple of days! with advice heeded, first and second coats go on! Looking good! Third coat of paint followed by a forth and I think I’m done here for now... Most pleased with the results so far! New lesson learnt...lay the body/neck/whatever flat when painting, I found, for me anyway, I get a much more even cover without all the drip marks Currently letting the parts hang and dry/cure for a few days whilst I wait for micro mesh and polishing compound to turn up in the post...standby folks, this is where it’s all going to go wrong...

...So I’ve been putting her together as she is now...few more setup tweaks, find some new knobs and put the truss rod cover back on...pleased as punch! Can’t plug her in yet, little ones decided they wanted to sleep the gits!!! anyway, her she is pre-proper finishing... thank you @Andyjr1515 for the sterling filling/routing work and anyone else that has given advice to help me finish technically, my first bass build (please excuse the wayward cat fluff in the the pictures) now to finish my ‘51 slab precision build...onwards and upwards as they say...

Eye of Sauron!

Can't get over how well the board has cleaned up and the position markers... One of the big attractions of these basses for me, so glad they cleaned up well.

I also read this. But cannot agree. Nothing wrong with it at all. However I am a passive bass kind of guy so if the preamp made it too hot or zingy I would have disliked it. Don't be fooled by talk if starter or back up basses. Harley Bentons are only cheap in one area. The price tag.

Ahh, wearing wigs and pretending to play guitar. Some things never change. 😁

She's back, she's in good shape. The crack repair has been done well, you can still see the crack but you can't feel it, which is the most important thing! There's now a bone nut installed, strings and a set up... Though the pickup is not yet working, I've still got a knob missing and for some reason the switch has been hidden inside the cavity.

This. One finger per fret is not a good bass technique, even on short scale basses.

Well you all know mine! Here's a pic from 2005; I think I got it in 2004 but it was before I was on Facebook and before I had a camera phone so there aren't any pictures I can find. When it first came to me it didn't have the pickup surround which I added a few weeks after getting the bass. It was made for me by a BC member in Australia who sent it over super quickly. What a legend. As you can see it has already some customised elements as the bass was originally found as an empty shell with a P pickup installed across the centre gap(!) The Basstec pickups and Marleaux 3 band pre were added to give the bass it's proper sound. Fast forward a few years (2008 ish) and I started experimenting with hard drugs and Roland V-bass equipment. I installed the pickup 'brain' on the back of the instrument which worked fine but was a bit ugly. However I was poor and electrically challenged so I left it like this for years, I think up until about 2012 when I bravely took a chisel and went about an internal install of the kit (which in all honesty took about a year to arrive from Roland) After all that it didn't;t work 100% properly (although I'm still proud that it worked at all) so the Guitar Gallery in Oxford tidied it up a bit and got it working perfectly. So now it looked like this: However I missed drilling holes in my bass so I soon decoded, by now 100% sold on the Roland system, that I wanted the up/down/assignable switches to be installed in the bass. I drove down to see @KiOgon who happily did the job in about ten seconds flat and as I remember offered a very well brewed cup of tea. So then it looked like this: But then I didn't like having a stacked bass/treble knob, and wanted more holes in my bass, so I had the knob turned into two separate ones like this: ...which is where we are today, and have been for five years or so. I can't see anything changing from here, and this is DEFINITELY my choice of 'the one' Sorry, I went on a bit there didn't I!

A courier just delivered a shiny new hercules stand, I'm a very happy customer, especially as I had no serial number or idea of how old the stand was, there was no discussion or convincing on my part they just sent out a new stand. Matt

French fries don't work. 🤣

There's only one song guarenteed to make me happy See, it worked. I just jigged to the kettle, put it on to boil and did a spin and jazz hands on the way back to my PC. "Feel good, feel good !"

If you already know about intonation on a guitar or bass then cool but being new to bass you may well not know. If you play an open string then that same note should be heard when fretting the 12th fret, check both open string and fretted at the 12th fret with your tuner, if slightly flat or sharp then you need to adjust the saddle back or forwards a little. This is done by using the long screw (probably with a spring on) directly behind the saddle running in line with the string. If the 12th note is flat then wind the saddle forwards, if to sharp then wind it back. Retune the open string and check tuning at the 12th again. If the intonation is out then, even if the open string is in tune, the notes on that string will progressively get flatter or sharper the further up the neck you go, hence your higher fingerings sounding slightly off. 🙂

Finished fabrication today. - Neck cavity now a few mms deeper - Pots/jack/bridge installed (and taken off again 😂) - screws/ferrules for the neck sorted (just need to shorten the screws a bit) - magnets installed Now to sand and slap on 4 coats of Tungoil...

I was wondering how much love there is for Afrobeat 'round these parts? Not just the classic old school Fela Kuti and Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou and The Funkees and Tony Allen etc, but also the modern day revival acts like Antibalas, Vaudou Game, Fanga, Newen Afrobeat, Bixiga 70 etc? I used to play percussion in an Afrobeat / Jazz hybrid outfit and it was some of the deepest, funkiest, most life-affirming music I've ever been involved in. Would do it again in a heartbeat. Please share some of your favourites, old and new, if you're a fan of this stuff. Afrobeat, African funk and soul, highlife, anything 😎 The band that kicked off the current revival was probably The Daktaris. Martin Perna and co. recorded just one studio LP before evolving into the band that became Antibalas, but that whole album is killer! The video is the most boring YT video ever but the basslines totally hit the spot 👍 Vaudou Game are a great live band, I saw them twice midway down the bill at festivals and they absolutely destroyed it for the poor bands that had to follow them: The Budos Band's output varies a lot, but when they're on an Afro tip they totally nail it: And from France, Fanga. They often had Tony Allen sit in with them and, again, a devastatingly funky live act: Please if you're into this stuff feel free to add your faves to the thread! Cheers - Lee

I got together with some of my pals to record this recently. It's one of my favourite tunes to play. Hope you enjoy it!

We like music for different reasons, when we're broken hearted, doped up, in the mood for lurve, etc but what would you put on to really lift your mood. For me it's Manu Chao and Radio Bemba Sound System doing their thing live

A topic on The Ramones sure does bring out the snobbery in you "real musicians!" FFS! When you've wrote songs that are known the world over, done the world tours, had your music in movie soundtracks, had the album releases and sales figures to justify your high and mighty stances. Your opinions might be worth something!

Hey hang in there. Sometimes a break is a good thing, not least when we're all having to fly solo for 3+ months - it's not easy to keep enthusiasm going. In my case I'm definitely missing having gigs and a full band to play alongside. I also had pretty much a full month off when I was barely touching my basses; in fact only started picking them up again in earnest over the past couple of days. Fortunately I'd not forgotten which way up to hold the thing...although I did manage to leave a Smoothhound connected up to one of my active basses during the period and found the 9V battery was completely flat!

Well it’s tomorrow, and I have a useable guitar. It still needs work; Setup; fret dress; pickup balancing. I’ll do the setup & balancing later in the week. The fret dress is a bit above my pay grade so I’ll leave that until I can get it done professionally and put up with a couple of slightly iffy frets in the meantime. if I had the inclination I would tinker with the electrics a bit (cap values and maybe antilog pots for the tone controls) but I don’t, so I won’t - at least not right now. Soundwise it’s early days as my main objective today was to get it working, but I like it already. It’s a properly distinct sound, noticeably different from any of my other guitars, which is pretty much exactly what I wanted. On one level it feels a bit weird hearing a pumped-up single coil sound from a Les Paul (yes I know early models had P90s, but it sounds nothing like the 80s LP Custom I used to have), but then again I did it to get a different sound so I’m happy. The Fender Blues Junior IV has a very bright sound which is impossible to control with the current tone pots so I may need to tailor it a bit with my graphic pedal. So far so good.

Shurrup you

Will you have to queue up outside?

We have a drive in Festival booked at Newark Showground 7th July. A strange experience but a gigs a gig in these times!

Five weeks down the line and I'm loving this even more than I already reported on here. These are fabulous basses! All the US owners on Talkbass reckon that this s-s version is tonally more versatile than the standard-scale 'Rays, i.e. it does the classic 'Ray sound and then some.

To be installed this evening...

Well..this thread made me buy the 5 string lefty. The only physical default on mine is a wiggly plastic cover in the back. Does not sound bad too for 159€. Can’t complain.

Sadowsky it is then - does everything the BB does...just, better-er.

Might seem like an odd choice to some, but this bass just feels so much home at this point, despite being a cheap budget 4 string 28,6" scale Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass, and looking pretty messed and battered up by all the mods I impulsively haphazardly done, I am almost tempted to say against it, rather then to it, by now, not least the big blemish near the neck, that is a filled up failed attempt to drill an extra neck pickup cavity at some point. With a just all freshly installed all new DiMarzio Model P pickup wired directly to the output jack socket, the J pickup from the previous P/J EMG Geezer Butler set it had installed previously still sitting there, but not connected anymore, tuned in regular 4 string bass, E standard tuning, here equipped with gauge 1.00 to .045 D'Addario strings, though the plan is to have it strung up with a set of gauge 1.00 to .045 coated stainless steel Elixir strings soon, mahogany body and bolt on maple neck with a 22 medium fret rosewood fretboard: I tend to call him Dud Bottomfeeder. I do still have a great 34" scale white Aria Pro II Laser Electric Classic which was my main bass for many years, but I've gone almost exclusively to playing short scale now, just enjoy it much more, the effortless playability, and in my opinion with no disadvantages either, only advantages, beside that I never really liked it's white finish. Also own a much prettier black 5 string GSRM25 Mikro with a poplar body and a jatoba fretboard, but that I have stringed with .090 to .030 strings and tuned in F# standard tuning, as in 2 half steps above E standard tuning, F#1 to D3, and I still feel much more at home and safe on my good old abused 4 string Mikro.

I'm going to list my squier SS Jaguar on ebay for one billion pounds - then I will be the owner of the most expensive bass. mwah ha ha ha (rubs hands together as if applying hand sanitizer)

current lockdown toy.

Simple songs, with simple melodies, that brought joy to many around the world. Could be describing a pop band, but no, The Ramones were def a punk band, and one of the best imo as for me punk has always been about the music and image, I wasn’t that fussed on the behaviour and anti-many-things. Re the bass itself, I hope a true collector gets this one, someone in the world of music maybe, rather than someone corporate.

Correct. It's not just cheese - there's endless fun to be had with the highland bagpipe! Classical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8H2HHs6Iqg Jazz: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mFeMMXhTua-ZXjiy9qcwuzLDCPlIam80E

I only have an opinion as to who were not.

Every time I see this bass...I go silly in my tummy.

I wouldn't say Dee Dee Ramone played a bit part in punk. He wrote at least half of the tracks on the Ramones debut album and similar on the rest. It's undeniable that the Ramones were an extremely significant part of many new genres, not just punk.

I don't get the hate. It was played by Dee Dee Ramone during and close to the height of the Punk era. It's a piece of rock and roll history. I'd dare say Dee Dee Ramone is more well known and more influential than most of the names that get bandied about this forum. His ability is borderline irrelevant to the the sale of this instrument.

If talking about genre as oppose to artists then for me it`s Motown.

I’m way more offended by the curtains......