yondergo

Bad news on that Antoria I bought, the neck was pretty badly warped on proper inspection, and the truss rod went after I took the adjusting nut off, just spins inside the neck now. real shame.

PHEW! Got it! first impressions - gorgeous neck, truss rod moves. Poorly installed original badass and brass nut - neck pocket has been shimmed, presumably to account for the non-routed badass. Body looks like it's done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson but people pay a lot of money for that these days apparently. E77***** serial, so May 1977 (i think). so, chuffed as anything with 68 quid outlay. Will need 20-30 quid spent on it to get it right, but hopefully i can raise that from flogging the badass - never did like them.

Cheers, hopefully its just him not checking his messages rather than someone in his ear making off-ebay offers. You know what people can be like.

That would be me. The guy isn't responding to messages about picking up so I won't be celebrating just yet. Fingers crossed we can get this done without any silliness, wanted a Fuji gen bass for ages.

Nice one!

Blimey, if that fetches 700 quid i'm flogging mine immediately. just got to figure out who i can pretend it was played by.

Been eyeing that antoria, just down the road and i need me a fujigen bass, might push my current bitsa ambitions to one side if it doesn't go bonkers on the price... Just one more bass..

Have there been any P basses on there lately? Toying with the idea of buying a cheap solid wood P to mate with a jazz neck I have lying about

A tiny bit OT, but just to stick up for korean squiers after the claim they have plywood bodies - not completely true. Early E1 series korean basses and guitars from young chang had solid wood bodies, and are blooming lovely guitars to play with outstanding necks. I have a tele 6 string and a j bass of that era, and previously had a Squier bullet bass. All were solid bodies, basswood I think, and excellent players.

I've had a week or two of forced separation from my SX p bass and I've gone over the fender with a fine toothed comb, I feel more at home playing it but I'm going to make the next gig the test, if it doesn't feel right on the night it's a goner (or cupboard fodder at the least) Weirdly one of the big changes I made which has actually made a difference was adapting the strap I use on the fender, I added a strip of leather to the underside which has stopped it slipping while playing. I figured out that the wide suede strap I use on the SX was really stable, allowing a lot better left hand movement due to not having to support the neck at all. The fender, by contrast was slipping all over the place, requiring more left hand support which seemed to be slowing me down a noticeable amount. Funny the things you notice when you really look at these things in detail.

Oh man, I'd love an antoria bass, from the fujigen guitars I had I know the quality is so good, hardly ever see those kind of fujigen basses come up though. The bass player from United Vibrations had an 70s ibanez jazz, looked really nice. Devils advocate: If you've got a good mij bass from that era, do you really need a not so good example like the cmi too?

Pretty sure from my guitar days that CMI guitars were rarely if ever associated with the fujigen factory who made guitars for companies like ibanez/hoshino, CSl/antoria and others. Fujigen instruments are viewed as the better examples of the Japanese instruments of the era. Solid bodies, great necks, decent pickups. Hence any 70s Japanese guitar on eBay invariably being tagged as fujigen to whip the price up, despite it being just one of many Japanese instrument makers at the time. I seem to remember CMI being more frequently being linked to moridaira or matsumoku factories, who made some not so good instruments, a lot of plywood bodies, some ropey pickups etc, columbus and rose morris for example. a mate of mine still reckons theres some good matso's out there with proper bodies and electrics, but they churned out that much dross its hard to pick them out sometimes. Have you had a chance to check the pickup or control routs to see if its solid or ply?

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1442998177' post='2871205'] OK I'll explain despite the fact that IMO this is just another inverse snobbery trolling thread. [/quote] Hmm, well honestly that's not the intention behind my question, I'm discussing the relative merits of 2 of the basses I own and my subjective interpretation of how I find their playability etc - and I'm interested in whether other people have had similar experiences, and from the interesting responses people have left it would appear that it's not as unusual as I would have thought. Sorry if you find my question annoying or something, you sound like you might have had similar conversations previously and are bringing whatever negative feelings you got from them into this conversation, I can't really do anything about that but to accuse me of reverse snobbery and trolling is quite a leap to make - and a bit rude really. I'm just trying to use this forum for a bit of honest discussion about something that's been on my mind lately. Thanks for the replies guys, loving that CSL Jon!

good chat

Bear with me, this has been a long time coming. About 2 and a half years ago my wife bought me an SX p-bass (one of the early ones with the very F-style headstock not that horrid kayak paddle current design) as i was just getting back into playing bass in a band after going to the dark side for a few years and i wanted a p-bass - i also reminded her that as a bloke we don't really get much out of the whole marriage deal other than a b-squad of nagging parents and a good pissup. Great bass that SX, played it for a year and a bit, got my first set of flats on it and really got into finger-style playing - had a great time with the 90 quid thing but decided time was coming to move up. I sunk a bit of loose money into a Japanese Fender P and had it shipped over from Ishibashi, looked the absolute business so i took my time setting it up and it played great and sounded cool. Happy, right? wrong! For some reason, after the initial novelty of the Fender has worn off i now keep going back to my little cheapo SX bass. I took it to Brazil with me last summer, i use it for writing and practicing on at home and it has always sounded bang on to me, we used it on our first album and it sounded great. And i mean i genuinely i find the tone of it to be just right for me, even more so than the Fender with all the the wiring and pickup upgrades i've chucked at it. It even plays better, i've found myself laboriously swapping strings between the two after convincing myself that it MUST be the set of status/fender/picato flats on the SX thats the difference, only to find its not at all. Measuring neck relief and trying to match it, endlessly diddling with the pickup height. I even briefly entertained the idea of putting the 5 quid SX pickup in my fender to see if thats the missing link. Nothing i do seems to close that little gap that keeps the SX always a little bit ahead. Basically it's now starting to dawn on me that as great an instrument as the Fender is (and it is objectively better in every respect - looks, craftsmanship, materials, electronics etc) i just seem to have this weird rapport with the SX bass that i can't seem to shake. Am i entirely and completely mental to be thinking of biffing off the Fender in favour of a sub 100 quid knock-off? have any of you guys ever had a guitar you just clicked with even when comparing it to pricier, more worthy specimens?

wowzers they've gone up! got given a young-chang made Squier Jazz just like that that i've pimped a bit. average basswood body, electrics were awful but the neck is phenomenal. had a bit of trouble getting a replacement truss rod nut but worth it for that neck, feel bad about butchering it with a router now people are asking daft money for them. same story with my Telecaster, got it for about a hundred quid from pete oakley music in burton in the late 90s, absolutely leathered it with the router trying different pickup combos, probably killed any resale value but it plays lovely. People (nutters) will be asking 300 plus for them soon at this rate.