Bassassin

Which was why I didn't bid! Went for a fair bit less than I expected, too.

Driftwood? Throw it back.

As it happens, it was. Not me though, the person in question (who shall remain nameless until such time as they identify themselves!) picked my Vintage MIJ - addled brains about it. Camel was a high-end Japan-only brand owned by Kyowa Shokai, who also sold the Fresher range. So this should be good quality, very rare & hopefully a bargain a £200-odd. Really hope so, gonna feel a bit guilty if it's a dog.

Well spotted - definitely the same hardware & pups. Does look like it's probably a Headway product.

It's tricky to establish range heirarchy with the SRs outwith current models. The SoundGear series has been around since the 80s & Ibanez regularly re-use & recycle model numbers for basses with pretty much unrelated specs. Fortunately pretty much every Ibby catalogue since 1960-whatever is available online, if you don't mind spending hours doing laborious spec comparisons!

I've seen Kubicki copies before, don't think they were branded Bass Collection though - would remember that. It's cool but I have a feeling it's going to get silly-expensive.

The price on that example is somewhat urealistic, but really does make me wish I'd bought one 15 or so years ago when you pretty much couldn't give them away. These & the solid-body Westone Quantums were seen as ridiculous, dated junk and would've struggled to make £100 a few years back.

Now that's cool in a slightly wrong sort of way! Never heard of this before & curious to know what the background is & who actually made it. If it was mid-80s, chances are it's a Chushin Gakki build. Rokkomann is a trading company not a manufacturer, and at that time had their own Maya & El Maya brands, as well as selling Rokkomann-branded instruments. El Maya was the high-end brand and these came from Chushin, so it's not unlikely that this did too. I want it, but not enough to actually buy it! Pretty sure it's a defret, too. Shame. Edit: Available for less money & with more frets! That's better... https://reverb.com/item/10545034-alembic-1986-aj-ii-hb Still ain't buying it though.

I like it, but I do have a thing about weird basses. Crying out to be headless-ed.

Spotted this in a newsagent's record rack when I was about 14. Made a big impression, it did.

The picture just makes me feel sorry for it, lying there like some poor, malformed experiment gone badly wrong. I just want to put it out of its misery. With a flamethrower.

Hilarious wishful thinking price - typical of that seller! Real world prices are closer to £300 for a Westy Track 4, not that they come up too often though. 2xP was a pretty common format in late 70s/early 80s MIJ basses, often clearly inspired by the BC Riches of the era. Never had one myself but always had GAS for one, something obscure like this would do nicely...

Quite so. It's a lot more interesting than any Fender - but similarly a lot more ugly. Late 70s, Japan-market only, as the weirdest stuff often is:

Interesting. It looks like an early (batwing headstock) SB900, with some unspecified mods. No such thing as an SR900, btw. The original SB900 was passive, seller claims this is active so maybe has had circuitry installed. Not 100% sure about controls for an early 900 (they were changed later) but I think this should be v/v/t, 3-way rotary selector, plus coil switch for each pickup. So no idea what's going on here! The bridge pickup's a replacement - it is an Aria unit but not correct for this bass. Anyway this is what it should look like: Intact examples of early SBs aren't very common but I'm inclined to think this is a bit overpriced for a bass with a number of unspecified mods. Putting it back to stock would be borderline impossible - while (costly) repro pickups are available, the knobs used on these simply don't exist anywhere other than on other basses - I've been looking for a pair for an SB-Elite for four years! With this one, I'd want a very close hands-on look at it, and the seller would have to be prepared to be haggled at, hard!

Can't quite be sure but when you zoom in on the headstock pic, it appears to be E-serial, MIJ. Does look a bit messed-up, but might be worth dumping a few quid on it just for that.

£290's a bit closer to the mark (than the near £400 it failed to sell for previously) considering it's probably modded, damaged, a bit of a cosmetic mess, and isn't a "classic" era Aria. ELTs are awesome basses though, wherever they were made.

I met Tony Butler years ago, and shook his hand. Does that triple the value of my hand?

Couldn't agree more. It's the shape which makes it a very ugly bass - I really like the actual woodwork.

Re-listed. Same description, so he's clearly not following this thread...

Not a Washburn - there wasn't a P styled model in the range in 1984. Closest thing would have been one of the Force models & they're very distinctive & nothing really like this. Don't know what the bass is but I've seen a few bound body/no scratchplate P types from that era - pretty sure Fernandes did something like that. Failing that it could be some sort of custom job. Apropos of nothing, can't read the logo but the placement looks really odd...

It's an early 70s Japanese LP bass copy, plywood body, pressed top, the necks on these are also a mahogany multi-laminate - which strongly suggests they're Sakai Mokko builds. The same bass was sold in the UK as Jedson, and also unbranded. The one I had aged 16 was unbranded - it was a decent & playable starter bass and actually sounded pretty decent - unlike a lot of these the pickups were proper humbuckers rather than single coil "mockbuckers" - and it was pretty gutsy. Just noticed this has an old Maxon single-coil as a replacement for its bridge pickup. Oh - the Guild logo's a sticker, and this is about £100's worth realistically. They're fairly common.

First off it's not an SB-900 - it's a late 80s (post-Matsumoku) SB-ELT. These were probably Japanese but they don't have any serials or other identification so they may be Korean builds. As far as I know (and I ain't no expert) all the Matsumoku fretless SBs had lined boards - I've never seen a fretless ELT before so this might be factory. Not too sure though. Whatever it is, the seller's a lazy sod for i) not researching what it actually is, ii) not doing what he claims is a simple repair that he's done before, and iii) not giving the bloody thing a wipe. Still managed to get nearly £400 for it though.

Just had a proper look at the pics (I was on my phone earlier) and that's a Thunder 1A, probably a Jet with the finish taken off. Ignore my earlier remark - it's a wreck!