Bassassin

Looks like the original covers with different units mounted underneath. That would account for the additional screws. Still a bargain - why's it still here?

Looks well enough executed to me. Controls could've been better thought-out, by the looks. Don't really get the guitar/bass double-neck thing, but this looks pretty decent.

My old rock covers duo (bass/vocals, guitar/vocals, pre-recorded backing. F-off big PA) got a booking in a dodgy, out-of the-way little pub we'd never been to before. Small but decent crowd, went OK. During the 20-minute break between sets the two shadiest looking punters in the room came over and started chatting - and ended up offering to sell us the gear they'd robbed from the last band that played there! Needless to say, afterwards we packed the van in shifts, and never went back there again.

Excluding import duty nonsense (and ignoring CITES nonsense!) this one would be about £800 shipped!

Always loved the look of the Surfcaster and that one's gorgeous. Only wish they'd used the same snowdrift inlays on the bass that the guitar had. Someone on here was selling an utterly stunning Surfcaster guitar a year or so ago, bit of a bargain too. Anyway - purveyors of overpriced Chinese knockoffs Eastwood now do an overpriced Chinese knockoff Surfcaster bass. You might want to be sitting down before you look at the price. https://eastwoodguitars.com/products/surfcaster-bass /

A few less strings & some cheat lines and it might! Reminds me quite a lot of the "One Bass To Rule Them All" design idea I knocked up about 10 years back: Having since owned a twin-neck in real life, I'd scale down the body a lot to reduce weight. Done right it could be quite manageable...

Aria have previous for this sort of thing: 1985-ish SB-R60, unusual but original finish. I think it looks great. Apart from the bodged repositioned strap button.

The ad describing it as "very little use" might have put a few people off...

Funny thing is, that body shape & minimalist design would work really well on a full-scale headless build. I did say "99% of singlecuts".

Having one of those "wish I hadn't looked" moments.

Contracting elsewhere - Aria have never had their own factory. No idea who makes them now - most of the Japanese manufacturers who were prolific & respected in the 70s & 80s are long-gone. From memory, Fujigen, Iida, Dyna, Moridaira, Tokai, Terada are still going, and there will be others. The classic MIJ Arias were predominantly from Matsumoku but examples have turned up that are from Kasuga & Fujigen. After Matsumoku closed in '86, apparently some high-end MIJ production went to Tokai, while midrange & lower went to Korea.

If I remember the first listing did describe it as a Fender. That was pulled & it was relisted after the "error" was pointed out by several on here. So even if he doesn't know what it is (which he does, because I told him exactly what it is), he knows perfectly well what it isn't. Interesting that it's "sold" previously, been relisted and immediately bid up unfeasibly high for a beat-up copy. IMO quite obviously shilled to buggery.

I find 99% of singlecut basses absolutely foul to look at - would not be seen dead playing such a thing - even if it was a £15000 Fedora. Really don't know why theses vile, bulbous, lumpy things, with their extra 2kg of unnecessary wood, seem so popular with people who spend huge money on luthier-built basses. Likewise basses with more than 5 strings - which funnily enough seem to go hand -in-hand with a massive exotic-wood body-plank shaped like Snoopy's head. You just know someone's going to pick it up and start endlessly noodling out anaemic, bloopy-sounding, atonal "solos" don't you?

I think I've seen the document you're referring to, someone (can't remember if it was here or one of the FB guitar groups) linked to it quite recently. I've had several Hohner-branded instruments and was interested in researching them - but found two of them (an HVX-45 guitar, MIJ and from around 1982, and a slightly later Korean-made HTB-3B bass) did not appear in the list. I'd imagine it was collated from whatever existing records they still had, so various models were not included. As I say, I bought my B2A new in '85 - both the active & passive versions launched simultaneously. I remember drooling over them in my local guitar shop for a while before I could afford to get one!

The later Arias are surprisingly good, I'd say underrated, guitars. I have an odd thing which I found out was a Korean-made PE-DCW T, apparently only 100 were imported. I bought this very cheap with a view to flipping it for a profit (back when I did that sort of thing a lot) but found it to be such a playable, unique-sounding guitar, I still have it, 15 years later: I also picked up this about 10 years ago: It's an STB-GT, basically an Aerodyne-style P body with a Jazz neck, Stingray-ish electronics, all with a fancy bookmatched top & pearl block inlays. I bought it because it was cheap & pretty, kept it because it plays & sounds great. I think at the time Aria were experimenting with better specced versions of their lower-end copies - if I remember there was a "Rosie" version of this (like the Rosie IGB above) and a 5-string too.