Bassassin

The only reason I can even remember that they existed is that they were invariably referred to as Condom King.

I had two early 90s Fujigen SR800s, fretted & fretless, like an idiot I sold both of them. Later filled the SR-shaped hole in my life with an SR500, but always had massive GAS for a through-neck one though.

I would expect they'll be volume, pickup pan, treble boost/cut & bass boost/cut. Never had a TW or Cort but had an Ibanez SR with a similar 4-control active layout. You should be able to work out what does what by fiddling around with them.

And unaccountably, some people seem to think they're a great idea. Pretty colour, mind.

Jolana Diamant, 70s/early 80s Czechoslovakia. These are pretty good & getting a bit collectable. Loads of Jolana info here: http://cheesyguitars.com/

A noodle of bassists.

Not a 'bass guitar' per se, but Tutmarc's bass fiddle is unquestionably the first electric bass, fretted, & intended to be played more like a guitar than a double bass. It wasn't a spectacular success but it would seem wildly improbable that Leo wasn't aware of it.

That sort of thing, like?

Modded Vox with one original pickup, then - I think that's exactly what it is! Excellent work @Jean-Luc Pickguard

Long time ago, there used to be a great Thin Lizzy trib in Glasgow called Fat Betty. I always thought if I was forced/offered enough money to do an Oasis tribute, it'd be the Bullsh!t Beatles. For reasons I can't quite remember, my last band once played a set where each song started with an intro from a Rush track, under the name The John Rutsey Experience. A project that never happened (but still could) involved combining Sweden's two finest musical exports, playing Abba songs in the style of Opeth & vice-versa. This was/would have/will be called AbbaRation.

Stunning. Had a lot of GAS for these when they first came out. That's an insane amount of quality bass for barely more than Harley Benton money. GLWTS!

That's an interesting old bass but I don't think there's any connection to the UK Encore brand, which is owned by distributor JHS. I'm guessing you're in the States - all the 70s & early 80s Encores I've seen are in the US, and (despite what some not-too-reliable online sources say) I'm pretty sure they're nothing to do with the domestic brand here. JHS Encores seem to have appeared in the late 80s & the details of this bass (brass bridge, P/P pickups) were more common 8-10 years earlier. Also, I've never seen one before! Your bass looks to me to be late 70s/early 80s, post 'copy era', and from what I can see, probably Korean-made. There are some vintage MIJ & MIK Facebook groups with a lot of knowledge so it might be worth posting it there, with any luck someone might've run across one before, or might know more about the brand. https://www.facebook.com/groups/55074615631 https://www.facebook.com/groups/772335426130798 https://www.facebook.com/groups/277195109119716 I'd be interested in seeing more pics - any stickers or stamps on the back of the instrument could help narrow down details, or markings on pickups, pots etc.

Guitarists are ten a penny, just accept you'll have to have a revolving door until the one who can play well enough & isn't a [email protected] eventually turns up. Keep the drummer.

70s Japanese copies were sold with various brands - Maya, as mentioned by @Grahambythesea Avon (which I had 10+ years ago) and various other names. These all seem to be rebrands of the same bass, thought to have been made by Chushin Gakki, and were very accurate copies. A bit hefty, certainly, but well-made & a good player. If I recall the neck profile was P width but quite shallow, pretty high output & a reasonable range of tonal variation moving the pickup. Quite hard to find, like a lot of old MIJ stuff now, wish I'd kept mine! Some better pics of a nice one in this old TB thread: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/70s-gibson-grabber-copy-incredible-orig-cond-sliding-pickup-maple-neck-orig-hsc.1164324/ There was also an Italian-made copy, made bt Melody, these turn up very infrequently & as far as I can tell were good & pretty accurate. Never seen one in the flesh, but some decent pics here: http://guitarz.blogspot.com/2018/06/gibson-grabber-bass-copy-by-melody.html The recent Epi version is probably easier to find than either of these, but (someone correct me if I'm wrong here) not a true Grabber as it didn't have the sliding pickup, iirc it had a standard split P unit.

Remember coming across an old German guitar with a 5-pin DIN - can't remember if it was a Klira or Musima - at a flea market in Berlin years ago. Cool/weird old thing, should've bought it...