Bassassin

Hah! I almost said, bet you bought it in Scotland! I found a Custom LP special at a car boot in Edinburgh! They only seem to turn up in Holland, Germany & central Scotland!

Well - this is interesting. Firstly, 'Custom' was a Netherlands importer brand, I think for a specific retailer - somebody on one of the Facebook MIJ guitars groups found the name but it's slipped my mind, annoyingly. They sourced from a number of different manufacturers including Moridaira, Matsumoku & Chushin - so they probably just bought in whatever their supplier had, rather than contracting to specific manufacturers. Customs turn up in the UK pretty regularly, very often in Scotland, which has led to some speculation a Scottish retailer was bringing excess stock over from the Netherlands - no evidence as yet but no-one would be surprised if it turned out to be the very entrepreneurial Jimmy Grant, who had Glasgow & Edinburgh Grant Music shops, his own range of Grant guitars (with UK distribution) & was also UK importer/distributor for Canadian hand-made Odyssey guitars & basses in the 70s & 80s. As for the bass itself - that's really interesting - and this is why: Had this back in 2011, and I could never pin down what it was. This had a plain, oddly home-made looking neckplate & the body was a not-quite right P shape. Came with no hardware, and I pretty much concluded it was likely European, not MIJ, based on the Eko-esque inlay patterns. I have never seen the same neck before today. I think the finish had been stripped under the rattlecan black & it had no hardware or electronics to help ID it - but seeing @Shabbs's pics I'm confident it's the same bass. No logo on mine, the head having been stripped & re-finished, probably with Ronseal! I'll speculate & say this might have come from an organisation called Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai, the Matsumoto City instrument manufacturers' co-operative. They bought in bodies, necks, electronics & parts from various small manufacturers & assembled instruments from an order-book system, where a customer would choose necks, bodies & parts, and instruments would be built up & branded to their specifications.

Aside from the fact several are headless, I don't see any design similarities between Herr Schmidt's quirky & rather home-made aesthetic & the design & construction of the Bass Gallery Antbass. I doubt they're related.

That's lovely - IG650, just like the one in the catalogue. Hope you saw my link upthread for the Hohner/Moridaira guitars FB page!

Appropriated from the title of a book: Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense.

In an ideal world, I'd have a half-cut bass.

Have you tried a squish of Servisol lubricating switch cleaner in your original pots? I've revived many an ageing & crackly potentiometer with it.

Hi @Heydayday - welcome to BC! It's important to remember the huge majority of headstock names on these instruments have nothing at all to do with the factories that made them - your bass looks like it's probably from a different manufacturer - and possibly a different country - from the Johnny Guitar in the link. Headstock names would be applied by the manufacturer if a customer requested one and provided a logo design - it looks like Johnny Guitar (& later, Johnny Pro II) were probably names owned by a European retailer or distributor (possibly German or Dutch), who would have ordered & imported batches of these instruments. If a customer didn't request a brand then headstocks would be blank and the wholesale price lower, which is why there are so many 'no name' guitars & basses from the 70s & 80s era around. Sometimes, like both unbranded basses in the first post, it's possible to work out the manufacturers from build quirks & details, but sometimes they can be annoyingly hard to ID! The DiMarzio Model J on yours is a bonus - the PAF-stickered, silver pole early examples are increasingly rare, and that bassbucker's interesting. Both Schaller & DiMarzio made similar pickups, but those both had hex pole pieces rather than the slotted ones on yours. Not sure what that is.

I was a massive fan of Stuart, BC and The Skids - when Fields Of Fire came out, & subsequently The Crossing, it coincided with me starting to take songwriting & composition seriously, and using the guitar as a writing tool. It's entirely fair to say he was my single biggest influence as a guitar player & songwriter at that point. I got the opportunity to meet him briefly in the early 90s & told him so - he seemed genuinely humble & flattered. Such a loss, it broke my heart when he took his life.

JJ Burnel, Lemmy, Geddy Lee - in that order. It worries me that I may not have progressed particularly far in the subsequent 45+ years.

Stoopidest bass-related decision I ever made, knocking that back. Bugger.

That's an SB-R60 or an SB Elite I, which are broadly identical - apart from minor neck width differences, apparently. I've only ever seen fretted TSBs in this finish - is yours definitely factory?

Holy NecroThread, Batman! And an opportune moment to mention that I have spent the last 5-odd years kicking myself for not buying that Fernandes P/P when I had what was undoubtedly the only chance of my life. And I bloody knew I would be...

Love that finish - very rare & something I've only seen on TSB550s - apart from this, which might be a refin for all I know. Not sure but that & black might be the only solid colours Aria used on through-neck body wings.

Agreed. It's the classiest BBOT I've ever seen.