bassaussie

The Westone basses are lovely looking instruments. They look like this wonderful combination of Alembic, BC Rich and Aria Pro II.

Mate, I agree with you, 100%. I've seen his auctions for years, and I would never consider dealing with him. But some people do, for whatever reason, so his ploy seems to work.

I'd agree with this. He puts trainwrecks on Ebay, we all talk about, then we all go to look at what else he has. It's just a perverse form of advertising that seems to work, because he's done this for years.

I always thought this was such an incredible instrument, in the way it completely defied all the traditional ways to look at a bass. It was made by a Swiss luthier named Claude Pagelli in the 1990s. There's some information about it on his website http://www.pagelli.com/e-guitars-innovations.html Look for "Golden Fretless". He also has some nice close up shots of the instrument. Ironically, I mainly play Fender or that style of instrument, which I love, and I'm woeful on fretless, despite numerous attempts at trying to master it!

About the bridge, it's not the original bridge. It's a Schaller 3D.

Thank God I'm not the only one who did that! You know what they've done, right? The actual logo should have two rows of patent numbers. They've simply taken the bottom row, and hoped no one would look at the actual numbers.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Also, according to the patent numbers on the headstock, this is actually a Fender Jaguar guitar, not a Precision bass!

That's what I was thinking. I think he's doing it a disservice by saying that - it might be somewhat inspired by that brand, but given that 95% of the basses on the market are inspired by something else, what difference does that make?

I had a friend who used one of these as his main gigging bass for quite a while. Definitely one of the better copies from that era (you know - the "Lawsuit" period!!!! ). I'm not a huge fan of the Fenders that were made around this time (say mid 70s to well into the 80s), and it always makes me laugh to think that people back then would derisively smirk at the "Jap Crap" that was being produced in Asia (mostly Japan), when in fact, a good percentage of those instruments were far better than the Fenders being made (and other major brands, in fairness - Gibson certainly falls into this category). I guess it was just the mentality at the time - we'd always believed that the Asian brands were inferior (not just with musical instruments, but generally), and that the European or American brands would always be better.

I had to check the photos half a dozen times to convince myself that wasn't photoshopped. That's just weird.

TE made guitar speakers in that shape, but with 3x12 speakers. I had a bit of a Google, and the model was the SC312. I even found some old ads with Richie Sambora endorsing these with an accompanying head, the TVT9

What do you think of the price? Only asking as I own an L2, and I have no idea what it's worth.

This wording is dreadful. There's absolutely nothing positive to be taken from it, whereas there's multiple ways to take it negatively. You said you feel you may've dodged a bullet. I think you might be right. If they can get something as simple as a rejection letter wrong, imagine what else they can get wrong.

That's great that you put the two ads side by side, I'd wanted to do the same, but got lazy! But it clearly shows they were the same instruments. I remember the first time I saw Cimar in Australia. I clearly remember the Blazer type headstock with the Ibanez styled logo (not the Mk I, the later style), and the salesman saying "this is a budget line from Ibanez". I know why this stuck with me, because this was just after I started playing, and a Blazer guitar or bass was what most kids wanted when they couldn't afford a Fender. This would've been around 1981, 1982, something like that, so that somewhat matches with the dates that website has. I think it might've been the black Bass (2210) in #6, because I remember thinking how strange it was to put a P bass pickup in a Jazz bass body (as a 13 year old kid I clearly wasn't the most lateral thinking when it came to bass designs!!). I know Cimar also released a guitar that loosely looked like the famous Charvel star design. If you do a Google search for "Cimar Star guitar" it's easy to find, but I don't know the model number. I saw other examples of Cimars over the years, but I don't think they were hugely common in Australia.

Can I just point out something in this story that you mentioned, as part of the story background, but you didn't really focus on. This came about because you made an honest mistake, and when confronted by it, you behaved honourably and did what you believed was the right thing to do. You didn't make a fuss, you showed respect, and helped the other person out. Often times this might not have happened, but for me, it was your actions here that initiated a very positive experience. I'm a firm believer in the whole "karma" principal - you do something good, eventually you get that good energy back. In your case, it just happened a little quicker and more directly than normal. Not trying to take credit from John East here, but you deserve some props here as well.

Could you clarify something for me. One thing I notice with Cimars is that they used two headstock designs that were identical to headstocks used by Ibanez. What's the background on this? The first is the one in the Ebay link from pete.young. I think Cimar had some guitars and basses called the "Stinger" which they used this headstock on, and Ibanez used it on very early Blazers (and generally, there's a distinct similarity between the Stinger and early Blazers). Later, they changed to a headstock that is well known as being the later Blazer style, also used on Roadsters. I found this page, which shows the headstocks I'm talking about. http://www.guitar-letter.de/Knowledge/History/DieGeschichteDesJazzBassBeiCimar.htm Go to section #5. Also note the wonderful stringing on the bass with the blue strings!

Good point.

I've seen his Ebay auctions for years - I would imagine it has to be at least 10 years or more. I cannot figure out how he stays in business. He has to spend money on each auction, so unless he likes spending that money for no reason, then somebody must be buying stuff from him. So that would be my question - what sort of person buys his stuff? For the life of me I cannot imagine why anyone would buy the garbage he advertises.

It's actually a pre-L screw, dating to 1963, or could be 1964. Many people confuse these, as the width of the cross on the head is .95782344 mm for both years. The only way to tell the difference is to measure the depth of the cross - for 1963, it's 1.09761524mm, for 1964 it's 1.09761522mm. People who know their Fenders can hear the difference, there's clearly more depth in the sound of the 1963 screw.

I actually love the placement of the stickers on the headstock. It's like they've gone to the internet, made a list of every sticker they could see, sourced those, and said "right, where can we put these"! It's hilarious.

Not true. One of the screws on the scratch plate looks right.