Belka

No idea. I'd guess it's probably real but has been refinished by an owner or perhaps the Japanese shop.The body doesn't look cheap to me, it doesn't have the neck heel carve but not all of them did. I just don't think the finish is particularly attractive. I don't think it's a carbon fibre neck either, just carbon effect lacquer as you say. I honestly don't think anyone would fake an NYC. Contrary to what some people believe, the vast majority of Fodera copies are poorly executed Chinese jobs that no-one would ever confuse with the real thing. If someone had access to Fodera pickups/hardware and the luthiery skills and wanted to fake a bass they'd probably do a custom, not an NYC, as they could charge a lot more money for it. So, it's almost certainly the real thing, with an unconventional refinish. The pickups with the Fodera butterfly on them are Lane Poors.

Couple of pictures to show what I mean. Here's one with the dual coils, and an early looking 4 string with the Schaller roller bridge and what look like Lane Poor pickups. There are probably quite a few exceptions to the standard and custom specs.

Yes, sending the wood there and back does sound odd, and I'm sure there is plenty of high quality wood in Japan, but Fodera take their wood stock very seriously (I've actually seen it) and I have no reason to doubt them. They inspect and select, and age all the wood they buy so purchasing and shipping directly to Japan wouldn't be an option. Back when the NYCs were being made, their shop was a lot smaller than it is now, with maybe only 4 or 5 people building there, and they had horrendous (2-3 year) waiting times for instruments, so it made sense to build them separately I suppose.

As far as I remember the deal was this: Fodera would send some woods to a custom shop in Japan. The same shop also had some links with F Clef and Bottomwave early on, but apparently in later years they were only building Fodera NYCs. The actual NYC model was designed (or more like refined, as it's basically a Jazz clone) by Vinnie Fodera, and the Japanese luthiers in question were trained at the Fodera shop. When the bodies and necks were carved, they would send then back to Brooklyn where Fodera would install the hardware, pickups and electronics, inspect the fit and finish and do the final setups. They mostly have Seymour Duncan Jazz pickups (probably the same models that go into the customs), although some seem to have dual coils, which I presume would also be Seymour Duncans from the custom series and would almost certainly have been an upcharge. They had a two band version of the Pope preamp. They seem to mostly be ash body/maple fingerboard and '70s pickup spacing, or alder body/rosewood fingerboard and '60s pickup spacing. They made both 4 and 5 string versions but the 5 strings seem to be more common.They are fine basses, although at that price point they were competing with Sadowsky, Mike Lull and the Fender custom shop. Victor does indeed have one. Also, I believe that Jamareo Artis played one on the recording of Uptown Funk, so no arguments about how good they sound in a track

The two biggest overrated offenders for me would have to be Pearl Jam and to a lesser extent the Foo Fighters. This is not simply because I don't like them; there are a few bands/artists who, while I personally do not enjoy their music (The Spice Girls, The Pogues, Free, Soundgarden, The Mavericks and Nickelback to name an eclectic few), I can at least appreciate why others would enjoy them. It's also not a genre thing, I happen to think Nirvana were brilliant writers and I like lots of alternative rock. But they're just so boring. The melodies, harmonies and dynamics are not necessarily bad, they're just complete cardboard. Utterly dull. The fog-grey 2005 Ford Mondeo of music. Serious music for people who don't really like music. In terms of underrated, rather than going for obscure acts whose lack of success eludes me, I would rather mention popular writer who are often dismissed as lightweight. Abba, Gary Barlow, Nick Kershaw, all are extremely skilled writers who craft great music. Take That's Everything Changes has more melodic and harmonic interest than Pearl Jam's entire back catalogue. I'm not the only one who seems to think so: https://www.laweekly.com/pearl-jam-are-the-most-boring-band-in-20-years/

I'm sure he played a Telecaster bass on this track, or perhaps an early single coil precision. It's not a split coil precision to my ears anyway. It also sounds like the tone control is wide open - I remember reading that Motown bassists would record like that, but the engineers/producers processed the sound the treble got rolled off Jamerson himself said something about it being better to be able to take treble away from a bright sound during mixing than having a signal you would have to add to later (I'm sure someone else could quote him better). These days people trying to get that '60s Motown vibe just keep their town all the way down.

Elites. I hated them in the '90s when I first tried them. Picked up a set to try again recently and still couldn't stand them. Can't really say I've disliked any other sets, although I don't like steels with brighter sounding basses.

If it's a rare or vintage instrument, especially one which is prone to headstock breakages (vintage Gibsons) the financial impact would be less (perhaps even minimal on something like a '52-'60 Gibson), providing the repair has been professionally done. On anything else I'd probably say at least 40%. I have a bass with a broken headstock, albeit professionally repaired, and I wouldn't even bother trying to sell it; the hassle of explaining the break and how it's been repaired and the money off I'd be willing to take a hit on means that any sale is just not worth my while.

It would definitely matter if ever he needed to take it or sell it abroad due to CITES regulations on rosewood.

I used them for a bit in the 1990s and thought they were ok. I've got a set which is a bout 20 years old on an old fretless and they still have just a bit of brightness left. They were certainly better than the short-lived Trace Elliot strings which died completely within a week, and infinitely better than Elites, which I found to be my least favourite strings of all time. After trying out LaBella, Fender, Fodera and D'Addario in recent years I've settled on D'Addario nickels. As imported brands go, they're not too expensive, they last a long time, the B strings are firm, and they sound really good. It's all subjective though - I'm sure there are players out there who hate D'Addario and make Elites sound great.

The only thing you can really do if you want to truly keep your input stage passive is get a more powerful amp. A clean boost/preamp/equalizer pedal will help with output but will also add hiss and may affect your tone just like an active preamp would. Essentially they are nothing more than active preamps, but in a pedal rather than onboard your bass. If you don't want to get a more powerful amp then I would look into fitting a Bartolini preamp to the bass. As active preamps go, they are very quiet (although not as quiet as passive electronics) and they complement the tone of Bartolini pickups very well. They also have an active/passive switch which you could use if you DI the bass to keep it passive.

I recently moved back to the UK after a long time abroad (non EU country) with basses I'd purchased abroad and just walked through the green channel with no questions asked. I didn't do this deliberately, I had owned them for a minimum of two years and so didn't even think of them as purchases that needed to be declared. If I had gone abroad to buy them I would have declared them. As for rosewood, you can take one bass back from the US with you if belongs to you (and it will be your bass if you buy it, obviously). It's when you send them abroad/import from abroad that you need a CITES cert. If it's Brazilian rosewood however you will need a CITES cert to take it out of the States/bring it to the UK as I think it's in a different category to other rosewood types.

He was great in Jamiroqaui. He is just very talented to be able to do what he did after playing for so short a time. He also said that he doesn't really practice (by himself, I'm sure he does practice with the bands he's been in). By the way, was the identity of Mr X (who played on the album version of Return of the Space Cowboy, Zender played on the single) ever established? Anyone here in the know?

I've wondered about the authenticity of some vintage guitars for years. A skilled luthier who knows a lot about vintage guitars could pretty much fake anything, but I guess to make it worth the scammer's while they would stick to the really high dollar stuff like '50s Gibsons and pre-CBS Fender. Strangely enough, I would imagine it's easier to fake a '50s Les Paul than it would be to do a '60s Fender. Laminate (non slab) Brazilian rosewood necks would have to be done as one-offs and aside from Spitfire, it's almost impossible to come up with tortoiseshell that looks vintage. I guess that's more of an incentive to fake slab board custom colour Fenders with white/mint guards which would claim a higher price anyway.

This topic has been a massive pain for me over the last year. I moved back to the UK from Ukraine and had to take 4 basses with me. I took a few risks and was lucky but came to realise just how annoying this is if you have to travel regularly. The first two basses I put in a Mono M80. One was a neck through, one bolt on. I actually put the body of the bolt-on in my suitcase and the neck in the Mono, wrapped in clothes to keep it from hitting the other bass. I gate checked the Mono so it wasn’t under anything and everything was fine when I collected it at gatwick. I planned to gate check another bass but when I got to the gate it was too late and I had to carry it on with me and put it in a spare seat. Luckily I wasn’t made to pay for this. Finally with my last bolt on bass I put the body in the suitcase again and just had the neck in my carry on rucksack. It was sticking out but no one at the airport raised a fuss. Even though I consider myself lucky not to have had any damage to the basses, each time the process was stressful as you just can’t predict how staff at the airports are going to behave when they see a guitar case.

I agree with you there. I think the sunburst '60s Fenders with tort guards look the best. Personally I like the 66-72 models best, TV logos but still with tort before going to black in the early '70s. I actually though sonic blue was one of the more common custom colours. It was available all the way from 60-72, but will admit there don't seem to be many out there with matching headstocks, and I do see it more on P basses than Jazzes. Black seemed more common on '60s guitars than basses. I guess the really high prices would be for colours such as burgundy mist, Sherwood green, charcoal frost, all the silvers and golds, teal green, blue ice metallic, ocean turquoise metallic and shell pink. Those seem to be particularly rare. Olympic white, all of the reds, and lake placid blue seem to be the most common. I have heard (but have no concrete proof that it's true) that you could choose your own paint and ask Fender to do custom colours that weren't offered in the brochures, although you'd have to pay extra of course. Apparently there may be a Capri yellow Strat (built in '60s, not on of the international colours from 1980) and a metallic purple Mustang out there somewhere. I guess today though unless you could show evidence they came like that from the Fender factory people would assume they were refins.

Look, you know more about vintage instrument prices than I do, and you're obviously involved in the trade in some way, so I'm not going too debate this further. One thing you should remember however is that the vintage guitar market is a global one. In 2008 the pound was at the highest point it had been since the early '80s, trading at over 2 dollars to 1 pound. It has since crashed to well below that while the dollar has remained strong throughout the last 10 years. So actually, while prices in the UK may have doubled since 2008, the actual worth of the guitar has not really grown much at all. However, I will concede that in the context of the UK, if you have bought a guitar which has doubled in value, you've done a lot better than keeping that money in the bank. But to get back to the topic of the thread, after looking briefly at the basses currently for sale at Andy Baxter, Reverb, eBay, Vintage and Rare, Talkbass, the Jazz on sale for £23,000 is not 'on the high side' , it's way overpriced. I do agree with your earlier point however that if it is a sonic blue matching headstock near mint condition '60s bass you want, and you have the money for it, someone may pay near to that price. At the same time, however, the seller has to consider the fact that such a person may not come along for a good few years, if at all, while people who are prepared to pay a realistic price will be put off and not even bother bidding on it. Dave Markee's custom colour 1964 Jazz has been on sale in Vintage and Rare for years at less than half the price of this.