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The Sledge is a seriously sexy bass. Slab body and mine is fitted with flats. It usually goes out as a back up to 'Marilyn'. I say back-up; I usually always end up playing it anyway cos it's just so nice.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this topic. I followed up every suggestion and have made my decision. I am commissioning Zoot to build me a Jazz Maniac similar to this one, but with P/J pickups.. It won't be built until next year, but I will put a picture of it on BC when it arrives.

Frankie says GET ON WITH IT.

Procrastination being a particular gift of mine, I've taken ages to get round to this build. I've been acquiring bits and bobs over the last six months, and now I'm going to have at it. Dave (Dov65) has donated a Ray 34 pickup and loom, and various screws, tuners and plates. I am indebted to you, Dave. I also have a no-name Jazz neck pickup, which may or may not find its way into this build. I have a slab of salvaged mahogany like wood, formerly a coffee table, and a Jazz bass style neck which I have used in various bitsas. I have an Aldi router, and I'm not scared to use it, also a new Bosch jigsaw, so mayhem is assured. I borrowed some Ray templates from ace classical guitar builder Steve Rees. Steve is an old pal of Pino Palladino's, from Cardiff, and the templates are from Pino's fretless Stingray of legend. Let's hope some of the mojo is transmitted from the templates. Firstly, I need to thickness the coffee table, so I've made a couple of sled rails from an IKEA bed base. No expense too great for this one. Utilising a £9.99 planer bit off Amazon. Behold!

What do you get if you cross an Elf with a Midget? A Milf? 😏

I'm giving this one to Carol for holding down a funky groove to allow the fret w@nkery from the other 2!

Previous owner of my '83 Ibanez RB920 was Paul Ryder (Happy Mondays).... It was used on their first couple of albums, TOTP performances, videos & live - lots on youtube of it in action. Madchester funk machine! I don't have any provenance in writing, except some messages on FB, as I'm friends with Paul - asking me if I've still got the bass & if I'm looking after it

Got a mate who’s currently in Gibraltar (he moves around a lot with work) he’s been doing lockdown covers. This time he asked me to join in...

...or an eidget.

I made my own which I use in my Bowie Tribute.

My signed copy of The Red Planet arrived today. I'm given to understand that Rick Wakeman personally put it in the post to me. First impressions are...as a concept it's fantastic. Close your eyes and relax and you can imagine the subject matter, much like the earlier Mike Ildfield albums. Some decent tunes, very tight musicianship. Im looking forward to getting to know it a bit better.

I'm down 24 gigs so far, with at least another dozen guaranteed to be cancelled, possibly more like 50. I think it's safe to say that I've missed each and every one of them, and I'd start gigging again this Friday if it was an option. It's not that I'm desperately bored or short of other stuff to do ... Lockdown unexpectedly turned out to be one of the busiest periods I can remember. But I took early retirement largely so that I could play more gigs, and I'm feeling pretty frustrated.

Other shortys I had in the '70s.

I've no idea whether they ever sourced from Matsumoku, but we can see from the details that these basses are not Matsumoku products. It is incorrect to suggest they were made by Hoshino, as these are mid/late 70s basses, and Hoshino's Tama factory only made guitars for a short period in the mid 1960s. (I should point out that all of the "copy era" instruments are 1970s. There were no accurate Japanese copies of American instruments made in the 60s wth the exception of the very first Les Paul clone, which sneaked onto the market in 1969. Difficult to be clear about dates but Fujigen & Matsumoku LP copies first appear in 1971 catalogues, along with Strats, Teles, Precisions, SGs, Jazz basses etc - so it's realistic to pin the start of mass manufacture to 1970.) However, the Mataos may well have been sourced via Hoshino, acting as a distributor for whichever factory manufactured them, I think that's a reasonably possible hypothesis. Ta for the additional pics, I think it's quite likely both of those basses are from the same factory again. The black Precision is sort-of what I'd expect from a post '76 export bass; accurate copy bar the headstock - which is exactly what you find with Cimars & CSLs from 1980-ish. This is my 1980 CSL Jazz copy: It's not particularly original - I've pimped it a bit but originally it had a standard bridge, round-end pickups like yours & a 3-pot control plate. It also has the same 3-screw, cast-body, torque-adjustable tuners - and I'm sure it's from the same mystery factory as all of these others. Basses identical to mine were also sold branded Cimar. I also have this, which is a Cimar. It has the same headstock, tuners and heel-adust truss rod as my Jazz: Both of these basses have a lower-half stamped neckplate, like yours & all the others. Yours only differs in having a serial which I think was hand-stamped post-manufacture. The hardware's interesting but represents another gap in the hive-mind knowledge thus far - if we knew who made some of the parts, it might be easier to tie things together. It's (unfortunately) no help at all, but part of the intrigue, that these 3-screw tuners are a variation of the units fitted to 70s & 80s Yamahas, which are identical (and interchangeable) apart from the style of the key: And that headstock shape looks a bit familiar... Really that's probably a coincidence, but the confusion here isn't mitigated by knowing that Yamaha outsourced manufacture to a variety of factories, and not knowing which factories those were. So in short, my thoughts are as follows: Mataos come from the same factory as your Diamond (but not necessarily other Diamonds) and the similarities between them and Cimar/CSL suggests those too are from the same factory and since Cimar & CSL are brands known to be connected to Hoshino then there's a circumstantial possibility that Matao was also sourced via Hoshino in their role as distributor which is a role we know they undertook because UK importer J.T. Coppock Ltd sourced their Antoria guitars (which were functionally identical to Ibanez) via Hoshino and those were sold alongside the identical Ibanez instruments at a significantly lower price point which we know through the personal testimony of sales reps at the time who used the same demo instruments to sell two different brands to two separate dealer networks and, and, and... Hope that's clear! Congratulations! That concludes Phase 1 module 46.3(b) of your induction into the Vintage Japanese Guitar Community. Your badge will be in the post, pending submission of the correct remuneration and completion of a short (92 page) written test.

Just take one string off?

This thread has taken me on a search for good cover versions. The Chickenfoot version is brilliant - Satriani playing the organ solo with some synthy pedals. Also shows what a great singer Michael Anthony is.

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Well where do I start I gave up with them and contacted DPD direct tracked down a manager who checked lost parcels and then found that a mis labelled package had arrived in Sunderlsnd at a guitar shop instead of private buyer in Glasgow I then got it redirected to proper location so no help from eurosender at all ,who stated we are just a logistics company the middle man in other words abdicated all responsibility as far as Im concerned they can go and F**** off

They have both types. Country and, err West Country.

Today I took receipt of my first bass a Fender Vintera Mustang in sea foam green. Bought the bass from @Grantd who made the process super simple, really nice guy and went above and beyond to get the bass to me, so thank you, definitely buy with confidence. Really chuffed with this bass, should give me a solid platform to learn from and more importantly makes me smile.

Sonic bliss actually. This Trace/Peavey, Barefaced combination is basically a marriage made in heaven. And so very small. They could be made for one another.

Hello dear bass community, on my first attempt to create some youtube content with halfway valuable information, I created this topic. I had my early 80's StingRay customized with a passive bypass switch back in the 90s and never regretted it. What are your thoughts?

This has been really time consuming and quite fiddly but it's done. The LEDs are installed in the fretboard, glued in place and the clear plastic installed and trimmed to get the light to the edge of the board. It's always quite a bit of faff as you need to ensure that the (really thin) wires are away from the fret slots in case they need to be cut a little deeper after the board is radiused. Everything also has to fit in the channel in the back of the fretboard so it s flat and level ready to be glued onto the neck. It's always nice to get to this point as almost everything is now robust whereas prior to gluing everything is quite delicate. I've installed the truss rod so next task is to drill the hole through the neck for the wires then this can all be glued together. The last item to make the LEDs completely robust is to get the wires soldered to the connection on the back of the neck. Once that is done nothing is left exposed or vulnerable and I can get on with the basic shaping of the neck.

It's T'Pau or something like that...

I bought one as a back up to my marusczyk Jake paid about £575 for it way exceeded expectations, now gets gigged probably as much as the Jake , not just a great bass for the money just a great bass. I’ve had a number of USA precision’s and there certainly isn’t a £1000 difference in quality

Spooky. I've just been playing through my Elf into a BF FOUR10 and it also sounds truly wonderful.

Perchance the device one chances to view these, shall I say, OBJETS D’ ART, upon may govern the verisimilitude of the hue. Or some stinky poo like that.

Emphatically not. I suppose someone somewhere might reasonably observe that a light coating of nicotine has been known to 'green up' Daphne Blue instruments.

I've just done it on my Two10. Easy enough job with a metal grill. Took me 20 minutes. I videoed it to show that any numpty can do it. Not sure how it is done with a cloth grill. My cab was a 12ohm version which simply has a capacitor across one of the drivers (this has to be removed when fitting the new switchplate). There are no other crossover electronics. I understand the 4ohm version has a different arrangement.

I think this is a more realistic photo of the actual shade:

Same here...like the contrast chrome, blue. I’ll see when I’ll put her together and then... maybe even gold hardware?

Well, that was fun, and I never thought so much sawdust could come from such a shallow cut. I'm taking it down from about 45mm to 41mm or maybe a bit less. My Yamaha BBG's are about 40mm, and they feel nice on the strap. Unfortunately it's pissing down today, so I'm not able to work outside. Amassing the parts:

A simple way to try "bypass" on any bass, all passive, 2 tone caps to choose or bypass and a kill, in one switch.

I built a mini board for fly dates and awkward festivals 😉 the volto powers a line 6 g30 as well. no idea why it’s upside down though🤷‍♂️

Realigned measured 300mm from last fret to back of bridge each side... Bottom left hole ran in to each other, snapped the drill bit trying to encourage the hole over, screws down fine. You can just make out the edge of the old bottom right hole under the curve of the back of the bridge. but have to look... Looks way better than in the previous pic, Intonated and Sorted...

Me too but I bought it in '77. I went down to the Friday Market and bought it at lunchtime (or dinner time as it was called then) and brought it back. I'd never heard them but pretended to everyone that I knew them because I had read about them in Sounds and Kerrang. When I went home and stuck it on, at first I thought what the hell is this? As soon as it kicked in that was me hooked!

It says in the add. The paint stripper ran so he painted a white stripe around the edge to mask it. Presumably with a tree branch.

Wowzers, now THAT is a lot of pedals 👍🏼 Compare my Nano version 2 ha ha

If you watch the vid in YouTube you'll see a comment that it is the MIJ soundtrack sync'd with the Copenhagen DVD. Almost works.

Finally after almost a year - a new update. Gone: tc electronic shimmer and chorus, rat clone, Mooer LoFi, tuner (I prefer clip-on tuners). Back: CKK tremolo, Chowny Fuzzster. New: MuTron Micro-Tron IV, Boss Multi Overtone. Moved some things around on the board, not in the chain.

Picked up a Gibson faded SG short scale bass and a hardcase for a song earlier. Pun intended. Will get pics up later. Bought it off a guy in a well known international Irish band funnily enough (used to be very well known anyhow). Will post pics later! It has roundwounds, so think a set of flat wounds might work good here...

A couple of mine....

Buy a Sandberg Electra - miles better than any Fender for the same price.

Rather ironically the night he blew his groceries in my car we’d been to see Be Sharp in a really small venue. The classic lineup - Jerry Stevenson, Bob Jenkins and Dave Bronze on bass. I remember Lee being completely in awe of the immense talent right in front of him, as if his own natural talent was nothing in comparison. A very modest and unpretentious guy.

I think if she contacts me again I will report her. Saxes are funny things and if there are keys misaligned, you know all about it when you play it and you certainly wouldn't wait 4 weeks to send it to a repairer or indeed not bother to contact the seller to report an issue.