Bassassin

Actually - just did what I should've done when the original thread was posted - and look: https://auctions.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk/catalogue/lot/882974bf7db6720157926c6e60ceb460/63b778f7668dabe928d3800924a99077/the-guitar-auction-four-day-sale-including-guitars-e-lot-267/ Sold for £620 (exc. fees) in March last year. So - did the buyer whip out the original Superfluxes, spend £5 on some plastic for a cover plate & then try to flip it for a profit - or are there two black fretless JB Tbirds with no logo out there, turning up within 18 months of each other?

Found a scan of an old JB catalogue from 1977. Interestingly there is a TB (page 10) but I'm not completely convinced the Gumtree fretless is the same. Body shape & control positions look a little different - although considering pics of both are pretty terrible, it's hard to be sure. http://vintage.catalogs.free.fr/johnbirch.pdf Worth a look for the plethroa of curious & downright bizarre stuff John did back then!

Gotoh GB11W might be worth a look... https://g-gotoh.com/product/gb11w/?lang=en

They are - and that daft collar comes loose all the time! The new design's something of an improvement, looks like it's got a hex screw for torque adjustment at the bottom. Speaking of which - if the screw pattern's the same it's a drop-in replacement, non-matching key notwithstanding... https://btnmusic.co.uk/products/yamaha-bass-machine-head-assy?variant=47499549311300

The original 3-screw Yammy tuners do turn up from time to time so it's worth keeping an eye open. Apropos of (probably) nothing, the same units but with cloverleaf keys were used on Tokai & various other MIJ basses in the early 80s, again, individual units & occasional full sets turn up on Ebay & Reverb sometimes.

I bought a Squier VM fretless Jazz off a BCer (sorry, can't remember who!) about 15 years or so back - there was a nice headphone practice amp/FX thingy tucked in the case - which I promptly returned to them 'cos I'm nice like that. Years ago I picked up a bargain MIJ Squier Precision (late 80s A serial) locally, came with a folding stand & an awesome wide leather padded strap. The bass went off within a fortnight for many multiples of what I paid, the strap & stand still are still here & in constant use. Bought an old 335 copy once, inside the hard case was a really odd, almost home-made looking tremolo adaptor device, designed to replace the stop-bar. Obviously the guitar's long gone but I've still got the trem thingy in a drawer somewhere. Didn't know what to do with it then, still don't...

Yeah... Not a fan, but it's set up nicely, intonates properly & they don't shift once locked down. Just as well it was only a £99 bass - makes me less likely to have a brainstorm & stick a Babicz or something on it!

Not sure if I'm gatecrashing this thread here but I've recently hauled this oddity out of the Big Pile Of Near-Forgotten Basses: It's a 2004 Aria STB-GT, which would seem to fit the hybrid bill as it's an Aerodyne-ish P shaped body with a Jazz-proportioned maple/blocks neck, plus an MM pickup in the correct position! The original pre was pretty horrid - and constantly drained the battery, so I cleverly converted it to passive with series/parallel switching, only to find it sounded worse. So I sort of gave up - which is a shame as it's a great player and (IMO) looks amazing. However, 10 or so years later it's back on the slab as we speak, having a well-deserved hose-down & about (this afternoon, hopefully) to be fitted with a shiny new Retrovive Stinger Pre!

I think the grifter seller's trying to say they've stuck a set of Seymour Duncans in it - although the other interpretation does sound like prime Ebay AI bullsh!t! If so I suppose that might raise their total outlay on this mess to about £200. Excluding the power consumed by running a belt sander for 10 minutes.

Unlike the wonky, malformed lumps and blobs that make up the majority of 'unique', 'hand-crafted', 'custom' & 'one-off' basses, it does at least seem that this is what the creator intended it to look like. Perhaps, like the work of numerous artists in a variety of other disciplines can, this artefact offers us a glimpse into the unique mind and tortured soul of a profoundly disturbed creator.

The seller doesn't point out that this absolutely catastrophic bodgefest is a Hondo with the logo removed, not an original US-made Curlee. They maybe don't know - but now you do. 👍 I know - just me being a dork!

Yeah - thinking about it a bit more, my 'shim staircase' won't work because obviously (well, to anyone but me!) it raises the bridge as well as the neck block, so the relationship between them stays the same. Duh. So the options would appear to be limited to shaving the neck block, recessing the bridge - or ripping off the fretboard & sticking a thicker one on! Unless there's a bridge out there with much lower saddles...

It would, but you create an angle by stacking layers of thin shims of different lengths, so they add height at the bridge but not where the neck exits the body.

😲 I absolutely wasn't suggesting you should do that!!! I just showed that as an example of how someone corrected a build flaw in a through-neck bass, where there wasn't an alternative fix, short of prising off the whole fretboard & replacing it with a thicker one! You have other alternatives available - it occurs to me you could shim the length of the 'through' neck with a series of graduating thin shims, layered like steps, so they add height at the bridge end but not the heel end - I did something similar to a guitar with a fairly long heel, using layers of thin plastic card. If someone else already suggested this, just ignore me. I really should go to bed...

I think what we can't be clear about with this bass, is whether this is a problem that's developed over the years, or whether it's always been like this. This is a Korean-made bass from the late 70s, a time when factories like Samick (who made this) & Cort were upping their games but still not achieving the QC of the more established manufacturers. I've had a few Korean-made through-neck basses from this era which had unadjustably high actions simply because they came out of the factory that way, rather than deterioration. Here's a Samick-made Satellite I had, which some previous owner's corrected by routing the bridge about 5mm into the body: I think before suggesting any remedial action with the SD Curlee, I'd need to know whether we're correcting an age-related problem, or a manufacturing flaw. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the former.

A conventional pocket shim won't work on this bass - it has an extended 'heel' which extends back to, and constitutes part of the anchor point of the bridge, or a previous poster described it, a bolt-on through-neck. If it's the neck angle rather than curvature that's leading to an uncorrectable high action, unfortunately this will need the neck itself to be addressed, by accurately removing wood from the entire length of the back of the 'heel' - at the correct angle to bring the strings closer to the fretboard. That's not a job I'd feel confident tackling!

Love it. I'm not normally a fan of black hardware on a Jazz but that white/black/maple aesthetic really works. And I'm a complete sucker for a maple/dots J neck. 😎

Might be worth PMing the OP in the hope they've got notifications turned on - they've only posted once + a status update. Btw that's a bargain at £250, even not entirely original. Apropos of nowt, IMO wiring it passive with 2x V & T (ie making it an RS824) is actually an improvement - I prefer mine passive, and wish it had a facility to blend the pickups!

That is definitely a defretted RS924, and the OP should absolutely get it refretted. These are extraordinarily good basses (if a bit of a boat anchor!) and increasingly rare - as I implied in my earlier post, you're not realistically going to pick up a replacement neck for it anywhere on Planet Earth - they're getting on 45 years old & were only made for a couple of years before the Roadstar IIs were introduced. I own one of these, old MIJ basses are sort of my thing, and I know of what I speak. And if I'm wrong, please point me in the direction of a replacement blueburst neck for my irreparably twisted 1984 Aria RSB Deluxe II - cheers! RS924s are also worth a bob or two in an increasingly collector-oriented market - as it's not factory fretless, returning this to standard would potentially improve its potential resale value.

That "small tour" (with a session drummer) is currently standing at 56 dates and I'll be surprised if there aren't more. Given the short timescale from the initial announcement of 11 gigs, for an event of this scale all of those additional dates & venues must have at least been reserved in advance. So those 'unhappy' fans are clearly willing to bend over & accept the sphincter-ruining ticket prices, however much they may complain, and the band/management would have had a pretty shrewd idea that's exactly what would happen. I'd be very, very surprised if the band weren't well aware of, and getting a pre-agreed percentage of the outrageous prices - I don't think any of the tickets & packages are a consequence of dynamic pricing - that's just what they cost. I first saw Rush in 1981 and I'm quite saddened that even going back that far, I never saw them in a venue smaller than the colossal, soulless, acoustically disastrous sheds that 'big' artists tend to play. I detest these venues with a passion & at this point I don't think there's any band I'd be willing to pay 3 figures to 'see' (through some f*ckwit's phone screen waving in front of my face) in one. And that includes 2/3 of Rush!

Finally - a new bass I can (almost) justify buying! I've been shortscale-curious for years but so far nothing's been pink enough well specced & affordable enough for me to justify it. In the wildly unlikely event that the UK market gets anything other than the drab green one, I'm in. 😎

Regrettably a lot of people appear to be. You'd think musicians, who you'd expect have devoted a lot of time, effort & dedication to learning & refining their craft, might be skeptical about music 'created' in seconds from a handful of lines of text, whether it's supposedly 'original' or intended as some sort of jokey pisstake. Maybe not being content, even eager to embrace my own obsolescence means I have finally succumbed to old-fartdom. I dunno.

AI slop, then. I'm curious but don't feel I want to encourage it.

Hark! Is that the echo of the sounds of salesmen?

Yes I do. It's not something I feel there's any ambiguity about - I play musical instruments to create music that would not exist if I had not created it. It's not for me to judge whether or not the music I make has any 'artistic value' - but I like it; since I first started dabbling in composition many thousands of years ago, I've always been motivated to try & make music I'd want to buy or go & see if I heard it. I didn't start out with any ambitions to be a composer/songwriter - I just wanted to play in a band because I loved music, and wanted to make the sort of noise my favourite bassists made! I doubt I'd still be playing at all if I'd never got beyond just playing other bassists' lines, though.