Happy Jack

While you're at it, have a look at ...

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Fender-Precision-Bass-RARE-In-White_W0QQitemZ120128802229QQihZ002QQcategoryZ4713QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Fender-Precision-Bas...1QQcmdZViewItem[/url]

Like Paul Cooke, I'm class of '75 (well, '74 if we're being picky). It's undeniable that the one benefit you (sometimes) get from being older is a higher disposable income, and I'm a bit like a "born-again biker", re-visiting stuff that I stopped doing a long time ago. I couldn't get back into bikes because I never stopped riding them ( ) so basses was the next best thing.

My point is that buying/collecting basses requires nothing more complicated than money, backed up by some knowledge of the subject. Playing them requires talent and practice and dedication, while being able to tell a good '75 P-bass from a bad '75 P-bass requires something of an entirely higher order.

Prices for '70s P-basses have gone through the roof because there's a lot more money coming into the market (think of those guys in the City who get £1m bonuses [i]every year[/i]) and most that money is coming from guys like me, who play a bit of bass in the garage, don't really know what they're doing but they're having fun, and ... well, you get the idea.

Incidentally, I have zero interest in Fenders - I collect Hofners (they're cheaper and IMHO more interesting). And no, I don't get £1m bonuses.

Pas avec un trois-metre bargepole, mon ami.

French seller with feedback of four, posting to mainland France only. Claims that it has all four original strings (!) and has never had any problems, despite knowing virtually nothing about the bass's history. Doesn't state if the electrics work at all. No case mentioned. Lousy photos.

I'd rather bid for the Hondo!

Thanks guys - this is the most thought-provoking (and supportive) thread I've seen since BassChat went live.

Thanks guys - this is the most thought-provoking (and supportive) thread I've seen since BassChat went live.

But you can't keep a good bass down ...

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Shaftesbury-Bass-Guitar-Rare_W0QQitemZ150126758526QQihZ005QQcategoryZ4713QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Shaftesbury-Bass-Gui...1QQcmdZViewItem[/url]

[quote name='Bassassin' post='7978' date='May 28 2007, 10:30 AM']I thought it was clearly the reflection of the case lid - and I don't know if a bit of paint off the bottom edge of the back merits a refin on a 27 year old bass.

The point was that it's only £200 dearer than a tacky Oriental copy.

J.[/quote]


Jon,

Next time I sell a bass, would you mind endorsing it for me here on BassChat?

Within a day of you pointing it out as a bit of a bargain, the price has already reached £785! Just another 5 days to go, then ...

Rather tidy? Either he's the world's worst guitar photographer, or that bass is the one for which the phrase "cosmetically challenged" was invented. Quite apart from all the missing paint, it looks as if the back is actually two different shades of blue ... erm ... I mean AzureGlo.

The seller has excellent feedback so it looks as if WYSIWYG. I'd reckon that price was about right once you factor in the cost of a re-fin.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='4057' date='May 21 2007, 11:12 PM']Spotted these yesterday:

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=270122334297&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=017"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...A:IT&ih=017[/url]

A rather ordinary Shaftesbury ...[/quote]

... which just went for a slightly astonishing £300!

[quote name='elom' post='6959' date='May 26 2007, 01:23 AM']They do allow us bumpkins into the metropolis on rare occasions so I may take you up on that kind offer at some point! Thanks[/quote]

Arrr, ye bain't be goin' down Grimpen Mire, be ye? Arrr.

The title of this thread had me completely fooled. I was thinking

Bass Centre
Bass Centre Returns
Son of Bass Centre
Zoltan, Hound of Bass Centre
etc.

Vintage = made before I was born?

Bloody Hell, I hope not. The bass guitar was only invented a few years before I came along so, by that definition, there's precious few of them about.

I think "vintage" is a deeply subjective concept, but there are a few features that we can all agree on. Ideally, a vintage bass is one that is:[list]old
rare
well-made
a thing of beauty
perhaps valuable
perhaps improved (tonally?) simply through being old
[/list]
I'm only interested in Hofners from their glory days, roughly speaking that's mid-50's to late-60's. Although I have some solid-body Hofner basses (3 in fact), that's mainly because I wanted one of each model; my real interest is in the semi-acoustic and hollow-body basses, instruments built the traditional way by genuine craftsmen. Every one of them (and I have 6) ticks every box on the list above.

They're also great fun to play, and I play ALL of them regularly, but they are limited instruments and it's nice to be able switch to a full-scale bass with roundwounds.

Since buying my first Hofner early last year, I have been well and truly bitten by the bug. I'm not sure at what point having "a bunch of Hofners" becomes having "a collection of Hofners", but I suspect I'm about there.

Anyone else out there been sucked into the whole vintage thing? And what are you collecting?

POSTED 21 MARCH 2019 - YES THAT'S 12 YEARS LATER.

Here's the official Price List from 1993 listing the model range as it stood at that time. 

Note that a few well-known models had already disappeared by then, in my case most notably the SB320, which is my all-time favourite SGC Nanyo bass.

Nice one Elom.

I see you're in Devon ... if you find yourself up in London ping me an e-mail, my 325 is about to be joined by a 320 and you're welcome to have a play on them if you're interested.

Seeing as I actually put a bit of time & effort into this, it seems a shame to let it get wiped when Basstalk goes.

Cut & paste starts here:

I sold my SGC Nanyo Bass Collection SB301 (snappy name, huh?) last year and almost immediately regretted it. I’ve just managed to replace it with an SGC Nanyo Bass Collection SB325, a 5-string active version of the same bass.

It’s not often that I go back and replace something I’ve sold. I already knew that the original (i.e. SGC Nanyo) version of the Bass Collection was and is a well-respected bass, but that there was great confusion over their history and over the various instruments you can find on eBay or in dealers.

So I did the usual quick Googles and discovered that precious little was known about the background. I also discovered that at least three different Bass Collection ranges now exist, probably from three different sources, none of them the original but all of them looking remarkably like it.

I was now curious enough to do some relatively serious research on the whole topic, and this is what I found:

During the mid-80’s a Japanese electronics manufacturer called Nanyo (who presumably made pickups, amongst other things) bought a small British firm called the Sexton Guitar Company. They scrapped any guitars that Sexton were making and concentrated on making one basic design of bass guitar, which they called the SB range (Standard Bass? Sexton Bass?).

The range was launched in either 1987 or 1988.

The design was available in a number of flavours:
4-string or 5-string
Active or Passive
J/J or P/J configuration

All were 24-fret maple necks with rosewood fretboards and genuine Gotoh tuners.
All were fitted with own-brand pickups which say – VERY faintly – SGC. You need to look pretty closely to spot this.
The cheaper basses (SB301 and SB310) had alder bodies, usually painted.
The more expensive basses (SB320, SB325 and SB330) had sen bodies.
The SB325 was the 5-string, the SB330 was a fretless with fret-markers.

The range was not cheap. These basses sold in the £500 - £800 range 20 years ago.

Serial numbers were 6-digit numeric, the first two digits being the year of manufacture (so my 325, S/N 883357, was made in 1988). The serial number, bizarrely, was on a label stuck to the electronics inside the back cavity. This meant that owners of a passive Bass Collection (like my old SB301) never realised that there was a serial number at all, since there was no reason to take off the back cover.

In the mid-90’s, probably in 1996, SGC Nanyo went bust.

Almost immediately a new range of Bass Collection basses appeared, made/marketed by a firm called SX, sometimes labelled “through Marina”. SX are probably Korean, but I can’t confirm that. The early SX versions of the Bass Collection range were apparently pretty decent, though not as good as the SGC Nanyo ones.

Current SX Bass Collections can be bought in the US through Rondo Music for $100 and are apparently exactly as good as you’d expect a $100 bass to be. They have standard alder bodies and generic electronics.

Meanwhile, Godlyke Inc. in the US started to sell their Disciple, a clear copy of the SGC Nanyo Bass Collection made of hardwood and equipped with “SGC electronics”, for prices ranging upwards from $825. Quite a long way upwards, in fact.

As if that’s not enough to be going on with, our own dear Bass Centre has just launched the Bass Collection Speakeasy, made of basswood and own-brand electronics, for £299.

What this all means is that a bass described to you (on eBay, for example) as a Bass Collection could come from any one of four different ranges from four different manufacturers, made at any time from 1987 to the present day. Looking on review sites such as Harmony Central doesn’t help much since so many reviewers clearly don’t realise the differences, and the exact model number is often misquoted or misdescribed.

Even the wood used by SGC Nanyo has caused confusion, especially the ash bodies.

SEN is also known as hari-gari, or occasionally as nakora. Although it is often described as Japanese Ash, this is quite misleading since it is actually a member of the Ginseng family. (Betcha didn't know that, huh?)

The wood is similar to both American Elm and Ash in texture and appearance, and can be mistaken for Swamp Ash.

Sen is less dense (SG = 0.45) than either American Elm (SG = 0.50) or Ash (SG = 0.58). It is therefore significantly lighter but, of course, also weaker.

By God I love the InterNet!

Traditionally, you start on eBay with a garage clearance (or shed / loft / whatever). It's educational and entertaining ... stuff you think will fetch £20 goes for 99p and - you guessed it - stuff you think will fetch 99p goes for £20.

By the time you've disposed of all your [i]mathoms[/i] (that's a cultural reference) you'll have a decent feedback rating and a much better understanding of how the whole eBay thing works. You probably WON'T have made any money, mind.

From a musician's point of view (and I'm having to guess a bit here, seeing as I can hardly make that claim) it's really very difficult to beat eBay. In the last 18 months I haven't found ANYTHING that I couldn't find & buy cheaper and with less hassle on eBay than down the shops, and I work 100 yards from Denmark Street in London W1. The one thing you'll struggle with is 'try before you buy'.

The feedback system is sheer genius. Anyone who has studied economics will recognise eBay as the closest mankind has got to a Perfect Market.

Hmmm ... not sure about this one:

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/sehr-schoene-RICKENBACKER-KOPIE-super-original-sound_W0QQitemZ140120590717QQihZ004QQcategoryZ87492QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/sehr-schoene-RICKENB...1QQcmdZViewItem[/url]

Wouldn't want the new site to be deprived of one the busier threads, so I'll kick off with

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RICKENBACKER-STYLE-PROJECT-BASS-NICE-NECK-AND-INLAYS_W0QQitemZ160117979000QQihZ006QQcategoryZ4713QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RICKENBACKER-STYLE-P...1QQcmdZViewItem[/url]



though we shouldn't forget

[url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=010&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=200109500394&rd=1&rd=1"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...p;rd=1&rd=1[/url]

Other = Hofner, currently 9 of them, all from the 60's (bar my 500/1 1963 re-issue).

I look pretty young but I'm just back-dated.