Bassassin

This is what happens when someone who has never seen - in fact is entirely unaware of the existence of - a bass guitar, is tasked with building one based on a vague, ten-word description. Whilst blindfolded.

Wouldn't be an MDP bass if he didn't wonk the tuners! The arrangement appears to be standard for these strange headstocks and I'd be surprised if it didn't provide inspiration for future MDP customs. Shame he got hold of this neck & destroyed it - always liked the laminated fretboards on these & quite like the idea of building a headless around one.

It's a Cort, made in Korea by Cor-Tek. Nothing to do with Matsumoku. Guitar version:

I'd always assumed he was on his way to kill Euronymous.

Not when you consider Retrovibe came to prominence making Rickenbacker copies.

I quite liked my old T40, tonally very versatile but (in my experience) fiddly as f*ck to find the sound you wanted & nigh-on impossible to keep it dialled in. Very playable bass apart from the back-breaking weight, so mine never got gigged & didn't stay around too long. I like the fact David @ Retrovibe's done this but for me it doesn't work aesthetically - the body proportions are off, looks like he's used a Stingray-ish body with the neck (and therefore pickups & bridge) set further back than a T40, leading to that oversized-looking scratchplate. That said, I hope it's successful enough for there to be a v.2, with proper T40-shaped body, in natural or black. I could be tempted...

Great. Now I'm going to spend all day preoccupied with the religious significance of Bojack Horseman.

Reassuring it's a Genuine Home-made, not one of those fakey mass-produced Chinese knockoff Home-mades. 👍

Oh, go easy on Greavsey there. Can't be easy what with all those WokeyDokeys cancelling everything, rewriting history and locking you up for saying that you're English. Can't even have a nice, calming pint of Bigot's Best in the Hung Golly any more. Dunno what the world's coming to.

It's a Cort, made in Korea & from 1980-ish. Sold branded as Kay in the UK, and a million or so other brands worldwide. Cort made dozens of different guitars & basses based on the same through neck/triple dot brass inlay template, from little travel guitars to double-necks. They're generally nice quality & were an inexpensive alternative to the through-neck Aria SBs, Ibanez Musicians etc of the era. That said, this one's a mess, looks badly neglected and £99 is wildly optimistic for a start bid. This is one I had a few years back. £50 BIN & it scrubbed up nice.

Not sure how that's gone under my radar! Now I really want a black/gold pickguard one with cream DiMarzio Model Js. For no good reason.

Eurovision goth metal, anyone? Germany's entry:

The BBOT bass! Have we discussed these before? I can certainly remember expressing opinions about interesting concepts but lazy, ugly execution and absolutely eye-watering price tags. Can't think where else this would have come up if not.

I am sure about it - it's a piece of sh!t bitsa (a 'sh!tsa', maybe) with a ghastly obvious-fake relic finish. The pickup's unlikely to be from a 'Japanese Hondo' as the overwhelming majority were Korean, & the occasional MIJ example would probably have had actual Dimarzios. Which I'm sure the listing would mention! So I'm saying cheap, new, probably Chinese body & neck; glued-on fretboard (no skunk stripe) & slightly wonky headstock shape. And touches like the chewed-up pozis holding the ashtrays on (meaning no pics of the apparently awesome pickup or hardware) are reassuringly professional, arent they? 👍 This is the same seller trying to fob off an MIJ 'Fairytale' (70s Swiss dealer brand) Jazz copy as something it's really not, and whose completed items contain things (which all have awful, fakey, grimy-looking relic refins) that sometimes do not quite appear to match their decriptions.

It'd be the nicest-playing Jazz or Jazz copy that was within budget. Probably end up with a Squier Affinity, or maybe a Classic Vibe if there was a sale on.

Could be MIJ but not sure. Looks like they've been white originally & yellowed over time, so not the cream covers some MIJ P types use, also the lugs look quite big - an oddity of 70s/80s MIJ P types is that they often have smaller lugs than standard.

Not sure why that would be. Anyway, the two things are hardly the same - bisexuality's just a boring, everyday sexual orientation, not the hot-topic, divide-and-conquer political punchbag that transgender discussions have somehow become.

Don't think BC's ever done a bisexuality thread - or any other topic about contributors' inclinations. Wonder if we're grown-up enough?

To be fair they weren't all sh!t - I've had one or two Columbuses they played fine after a proper setup. Pickups were rubbish, though.

Loads of people who heard: Fück you I'm not doing my homework! Fück you I won't tidy my bedroom!

WTF? Eco-Butcher's Apron? Ghastly.

That'll be the Frog Bass: I'm off to pick up an old Avon EB copy for £60, some green Halfords rattlecan & a bit of tacky bling. Pretty sure I've got a scabby P pickup in the spares draw, probably doesn't work but that's just a detail. My painstaking artistry will definitely be worth the extra £900.

Don't think I've encountered one of these before. Nice, that.

I'm a massive DD fan (one of my first influences) and this does look like a pretty accurate Billion $ Bass replica - but this is a £200 bass with £30 worth of mirrors & rhinestones stuck on it. And £5 or so for the superglue. I think for £1000 I'd want Dennis to have stuck the mirrors on himself. And then show me how to play Gutter Cat & Dead Babies properly.

Quite correct - and they were a bit better than Columbus; in the 70s FCN had a 3-tier range, Satellite at the bottom, Columbus in the middle & Kimbara at the top. From what I've seen, most but not all copy-era Kimbaras were Matsumoku - this Ripper has an Aria-branded counterpart that's likely to be identical. There are some Kimbara oddities with effects circuitry which are the same as the Japan-market Fresher brand, these were made by Chushin Gakki. I had a very nice Kimbara L6S copy, Matsumoku-made, very much a sibling to the Ripper. Was a bit of a resto.