Bassassin

Only in relation to the not-exactly-PC nature of the lyrics!

China, Indonesia, possible off-chance Korea, maybe 10 or 12 years back. It's an Aria STB-GT, I have one, it's a rather brilliant budget Stingray/Jazz/Aerodyne P hybrid.

Always do my research before buying, and if I'm selling I try & cover every possible question in my description. Nothing you can do to stop numpties going TL;DR and still asking anyway.

Great watch - and the bass was looking absolutely lovely until he made that horrible bloody mess of the finish.

And no cheat lines - so no good to me! Interestingly in my experience even the lowest-end stuff would tend to have decent fret work, with most corners being cut on materials & electronics. A lot of the cheapos play OK after a decent set-up - wish I'd known that when I was starting.

This thread has inspired a bit of uncharacteristic nostalgia so I've been listening to a few old Strangs tracks. That closing instrumental section of Dagenham Dave (2;10 onwards) is 100% prog as f*ck!

You said you had a "crap" Antoria. That suggests you don't know that MIJ Antorias were made by Fujigen Gakki and were identical, right down to the model number, to the equivalent Ibanez model. Cimar was actually the budget brand of Hoshino Gakki Ten, their upper-tier brand being Ibanez. Cimars came from a different manufacturer and many of them really weren't very good. Which illustrates that "most people" don't know good from not-so-good vintage MIJ instruments! Not sure re-purposing this thread to be a "warning - this is junk!" portal is that useful, as I said in my earlier post, there's not too much old MIJ stuff on Ebay these days.

That was never the intention though. The title's tongue-in-cheek & by no means only meant to be for low-end MIJ dross. Although that's quite welcome. All of the Japanese factories manufacturing during the 70s & 80s produced a range of instruments from starter to pro level. The joke was that back then they were all considered junk & somehow lesser than US brands, even when they weren't. This thread's meant to be for all vintage (60s/70s/80s) MIJ, not just the crap. Fwiw Maya & Columbus were from the same factory, Chushin Gakki, and the low/mid models were the same. Maya was a Japanese distributor's (Rokkomann) brand, whereas Columbus was the midrange brand of FCN Music, in between Satellite and Kimbara. So logically there will be more good-quality Mayas.

This isn't a thread that pops up very often any more - probably because there are fewer & fewer interesting basses of any sort on the old Feebay these days. However - when it does, I can't help feeling a little bit uncomfortable about the title I gave it when I started it. It was originally a tongue-in-cheek nod to old jokey biker rivalry from the 70s & 80s - JapCrap, BritSh!t, [email protected] etc - but from the perspective of 12-odd years later, it feels a bit off. So - am I just being a whiney, oversensitive, woker-than-thou little snowflake, or should I change it?

I'm really talking about the attitudes and the language, rather than the timeframe. I know it's complicated.

Interesting that The 'Oo were the first band I really got into - went to see Tommy at the local flea pit with some mates, and that was that. That was a good year or two before it even occurred to me to play an instrument, and when I did, Entwistle's playing seemed so incomprehensibly complex that I didn't even try to learn any Who stuff! I'm sure I remember reading that the first two albums, which were released just a few months apart, were pretty much the entire set they'd been gigging for the preceding couple of years. Back then I didn't think that deeply about the lyrics but I was still conscious that they were often pretty grim - and from the perspective of 2019 the likes of School Mam, London Lady, Ugly, Bring On The Nubiles, Princess Of The Streets etc are often downright horrific! I think the really dodgy stuff is confined to the first two albums though.

I wouldn't sell the SD-1, it does sound nice and I might use it one day. However - I also have a CS-1 compressor, which is totally useless to me, and I only still have that one because they take up such little room. That one's even older - I bought it second-hand, I should probably flip it & buy a boat or something. It's got the Silver Screw & everything! Hmmm... wonder what a Pearl OC-07 Octaver goes for these days?

I've had that too, despite Squire/Yes not being a direct influence on either my playing or composition. My "gateway drug" into prog was Rush - I suppose being into punk & metal meant I was drawn to the harder end of the genre. Took me a good few years to realise the second-hand influences I was getting from the players I was listening to.

I have a lot of largely useless and superannuated musical junk, but I think the oldest is a Boss SD-1 Super Distortion stomp box, which must date back to mid '81. Bought it when I started dabbling with guitar, trying to write songs. It probably still works - haven't plugged it in in a while but see no reason why it wouldn't. Still have its original box & manual, too.

Bit late to get upset about that. JJ Burnel: Worth reading the whole article too - I'd love to have heard the 6-part prog rock suite that Golden Brown (that one that alternates between 12/8 and 13/8) came from. https://www.loudersound.com/features/rick-wakeman-meets-jean-jacques-burnel Also always felt very strongly that JJ might have had the occasional sneaky listen to Chris Squire, to end up with such an upfront, technically dynamic & attacking style. Have the same suspicion about my other big bass influence from that era, Bruce Foxton. I sort of think, @Barking Spiders, it would be good if we could raise our discourse above the playground rivalries of 1977. I play bass because of JJ Burnel - I probably would never have picked up the instrument if I hadn't heard Peaches. I play guitar, and was motivated to compose music because of Stuart Adamson, whose band The Skids (as you probably know) got their big break when JJ invited them to support The Stranglers at the Battersea show mentioned upthread. I'm (broadly speaking) a prog rocker but the punk era is a huge part of my DNA. It shouldn't upset anyone to understand where music comes from.