Bassassin

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That's a bit rubbish. Fair enough if it'd been £300 but nearly £900 for that's a joke. It looks like a generic budget P type (check out the glued-on maple board) with Tbird pickups bodged on - I guarantee the cheap-looking surrounds are to cover chopped-out routing for the bridge unit, & the original P cutout on the pickguard. The headstock sticker's the most custom thing on offer. I think it'd be a fun & quite straightforward project to build a far more accurate replica of Pino's than this thing. I bet you could do it for a good bit less too - including getting the body properly routed & a pickguard made.

Naah! The 'Made In Italy' sticker's likely right. I think it's probably a Gherson - a quick Google for 'Gherson JB' shows a bunch of different versions, none identical but with a lot of the same details across them. I think the bridge pickup's not original, looks like a new-ish DiMarzio with those black hex poles. Looks like the tuners also may have been changed, the way the D unit's hanging off the headstock doesn't exactly look 'factory'! Do you have a neckplate pic? Anyway, I think it's pretty cool, I'm a sucker for a bound dot board on a J.

Happy birthday!!! I had no idea, but it turns out I too am a Grand Master. That's bait.

Wavy Grovers! Split pickguard! Extra tailpiece screws! Lovely example of an early 4003, and it looks pretty much unplayed!

Good score. These were broadly mid '80s - mid '90s, made in Korea by Cort, and very nice quality. Lots of P/J versions turn up but not too many single Ps around.

We don't have a guitarist, drummer or keyboard player. We never perform live. We manage to write approximately one song a year. In a good decade. Beat that.

A reverse image search chucks up a few Reverb listings & a bunch of pics from a TalkBass Skjold thread, showing 4 & 5 string Drakkars with this string anchor system. No clear pics of exactly how it works, but it does appear to be pins, similar to how guitar strings are anchored to a Bigsby trem system.

Pete's also a member of Kino, one of the many creative outlets of one-man UK prog scene John Mitchell (It Bites, Arena, Frost*, Lonely Robot, John Wetton, Karmakanic, Asia, David Cross Band etc etc...).

To be fair, if it was a 4-string (there doesn't seem to be one) & £100-odd cheaper, it could be the basis for an interesting project.

Amazing - I've been making Rick-type TRCs for years from clear acrylic, & head-scratching over how to add custom logos - usually ending up printed on a bit of paper trapped underneath. Absolutely never thought of this! Chapeau - you are a genius! 😎

I can see that, maybe both share a Chris Squire/John Entwistle influence despite their music being quite different. And known for using Ricks early on, of course. I was definitely a Foxton fan in my early days, Tube Station was an excellent challenge when I was starting out.

It's almost like they forget: "What do you want to do when you grow up?" "I wanna play in a rock band!" "You can't do both."

100% agree - having rediscovered them & dug into the early Hogarth era, Seasons End is a classic & a superb debut for h. If Easter had been the lead single I'm sure I would have picked it up. Still kicking myself for all the tours I misssed out on.

Big fan - saw them a bunch of times in the Fish era, I was initially highly skeptical but got dragged along by a girlfriend to see them. Front row at Hammersmith on the Real To Reel tour sort of changed my mind! I lost interest after Fish left - I hadn't liked much of Clutching At Straws, and when I heard Hooks In You, the first release with h, I thought they'd been railroaded down a commercial pop-rock route & didn't bother listening to them for a very, very long time! Anyway they played locally to me in 2011, I thought it would be rude not to go - and for the second time seeing them live blew me away. I'd say I far prefer the h era now, Hogarth is such an expressive, captivating vocalist & frontman, and lyrically & musically the band's scope is so much broader than the early years. I find much of the Fish stuff pretty uncomfortable to listen to now - so much embittered misogyny in his lyrics. Apropos of nothing - the very first time I saw them Pete was playing an Aria Pro RSB Deluxe II, which was what I had at the time. Last time I saw them was at the Berlin Weekend in 2023, and here he is playing a Yamaha BB400S fretless, just like one I had a couple of years ago!

I really, really hope they're called 'Licker'. Because as a pal of mine said when he heard Load - "well, they ain't f*ckin' metal any more!"

Hadn't encountered this band before you posted that track, and having had a listen to Pony Express Record, the album this song's taken from - what an incredibly interesting band! I very much doubt I'll be trying to learn any of the songs - like you say it's not really about technique, but I'm having a great time trying to get my head around what's going on compositionally & arrangement - wise. Such a lot to take in, I think I'll be coming back to this for a while. Thanks for posting that track!

I think it's a hardtail Strat copy body with a bit of veneer (of some description!) stuck over the front to cover the pickup routing. Neck & bridge 100% from some random budget shortscale. Anyone want to volunteer to drop £260 on it to find out?

ABBA / Cannibal Corpse crossover incoming! 😎 Apropos of nothing - I have just read that apparently there's a Mexican George Michael tribute who calls himself Carlos Whisper. If that's actually true, this thread's over.

Back in the 90s there was an excellent Thin Lizzy trib in Glasgow - Fat Betty. For years I've wanted to create a tribute to Sweden's two greatest musical exports - ABBAration will either play the music of Opeth in the style of ABBA, or the music of ABBA in the style of Opeth. Or possibly both.

To be honest I don't remember. But you'd think OP would be asked to edit the post to remove that part, rather than completely delete an otherwise acceptable & genuinely interesting query, pics and all.

I wonder why? I think part of the value of this community is to be able to help non-bass players with questions like yours. You're far from the first person with a mystery bass they'd like to know more about! Anyway, glad we were able to give you some insight into it - please do ask if you have any other questions.

I wouldn't get my hopes up too high. It's a bitsa, constructed from a budget 1970s-era Fender Jazz bass copy, from what I can see possibly a Korean-made Hondo or Satellite, which has been mated with the neck from a Taiwan-made Kay shortscale bass. It appears to have been refinished with possibly some sort of adhesive backed checkerboard patterned paper or plastic. Anyway, this is what the body & electronics came from: And the neck came from something like this: I can see what look like the screwholes from the bridge's original position so it may be that it's been moved to compensate for replacing the original neck for a shorter one. If that's the case it should intonate correctly. If not, it's a fairly straightforward modification to reposition a bridge of this type. Edit - looking again, the bridge has definitely been moved - it's right up against the bridge pickup. It's possible that may be enough to intonate it. You can check this by measuring the distance between the zero-fret & the 12th fret, then between the 12th fret & the bridge saddles (or rather, saddle) - they should be the same.