Bassassin

I fully understand how making claims about the origin & pedigree of an unbranded bass is dubious & potentially deceptive - but heresy? Not sure the seller deserves actually being burned at the stake!

I guess so - but 70s JB pickups aren't exactly something you can pick up off Thomann or Gear4Music, so if you really needed a set, your only option might be with a bass attached! If the calculation was to flip the bass for around what you paid for it, it sort of makes sense.

Fair point - I never looked at the fees or calculated a total. It is definitely the same bass - on the headstock there are two chips & a scuff in exactly the same places in both sets of pics. I'm assuming it was bought just for the pickups - wonder what they went in?

Coldplay are the perfect example of a band for people who don't like bands, who play music for people who don't like music - and that's precisely why they are so phenomenally successful.

It's an interesting & quite layered question. I've been trying to think of a band/artist who's objectively rubbish on every level - but I don't have a single example. I can think of any number of bands who have members with no discernible ability - oddly it's usually the vocalist, and even more oddly (or is it?) you can be confident that if they didn't have that vocalist, you'd never have heard of them. As examples I give you Liam Gallagher, Axl Rose, Ian Brown - terrible, terrible nails-on-blackboard 'singers' but all absolutely central to their bands' success, despite the fact you're left thinking the only reason they got to be in their bands in the first place was because it was their van or their PA or something... I think I grew out of the 'that's rubbish because I don't like/get it' mindset by the time I hit my 20s, and while there's a lot of music across all genres that I don't like (I'm a prog fan who thinks Dream Theater are utter dogsh!t, for example) I think I can be analytical enough to appreciate (maybe not the right word) why something works, and usually how, even if I hate it.

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!