Bassassin

Never played one but always liked the styling, seem to remember them being fairly common back in't day. In the mid 80s my local music shop (Frenchy's, Duncan Rd, Gillingham, if you have a long memory & know the Medway Tahns) had a fretless B301 that seemed to be in & out of the window for years. Affordable fretlesses were pretty thin on the ground at the time, & apparently various Pino-wannabes would buy it, keep it for a month or so then trade it back in! Never had any fretless aspirations myself at the time - or the £150-odd to have a try - so I don't know whether that was reflective of the bass or the players...

Holy Necrothread, Batman! Finally found a P I want to keep - battered, obscure 70s Japanese replica, black, black, maple, DiMarzios. Ruck as fock, it is:

Best place for all your Rickenfakery needs is the FB group of the same name: https://www.facebook.com/groups/78514186083/ BC doesn't allow direct discussion of where to purchase Fakers & Faker parts because we have had issues with John Hall, RIC's CEO. However there are no such restrictions on the FB group.

Not all of them. There are seemingly enough sympathetic and generous supporters out there to keep him ticking over: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/mdphillips1956mark/m.html?item=192495855877&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2046732.m1684

I approve. As you probably know, it's a very rare, high-end bass that was only made for a few years, and was technically Japan-only. I don't think Grecos were officially exported anywhere, so the number of these in the UK is likely in single figures. In other words, you're a proper lucky sod!

Did a project P based on an Axl acrylic body a few years ago. Original scratchplate but different everything else, so required plenty of drilling for bridge & pickups, plus filling existing holes if they were close to where I was drilling. I used a hand drill, after marking/starting each hole with an awl. The material removed from the holes came out in nice little spirals, and there was no cracking around the tops. Old holes I filled with superglue, which was left to harden. It did a reasonable job of making them a bit less obvious too, but they were all hidden under hardware anyway. Weighed a metric f*cktonne and the neck was awful, but it looked awesome.

For B2A etc but it's the same hardware: http://www.hohner-cshop.de/en/Guitar/Headless-Bass-Series/Basses-Bass-Headless-BB/Hohner-B2A-Headless/

I would not replace anything on that unless the component was completely unusable.

I'm not convinced it looks in any way upmarket enough to be a custom build. That ugly, mismatched, cheapo scarf joint is the worst offender, and those tuners appear to be generic & unbranded rather than Gotoh - there would be a visible name or symbol otherwise. Not familiar with Basstec puckups but a quick Goog seems to suggest that some Fernandes basses were factory-fitted with these. Fernandes is predominantly a Japanese home-market brand & they have made a bewildering range of sig models for probably hundreds of different domestic artists over the years - the manufacturer has a pretty comprehensive catalogue archive here: http://www.fernandes.co.jp/catalog/ Personally I wouldn't be surprised if this is in there somewhere - may take a fortnight to find it though!

The bass is a Cold War-era East German Musima copy - the irony is that the original hardware on these was decent - the original tuners would have been torque-adjustable Gotohs. Wonder if the seller binned the old bits just because they were old, & "upgraded" it?

Excellent! Patience is a virtue!

It should! Been on before & had a thread of its own back in January: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/318773-double-edge-ibanez-musician-copy-£295/ Looks like an alt account from the same seller - price dropped to something far more reasonable (still about £50 over the odds IMO) but the same apparent inability to read plain English. Quite a cool bass, might be a bit more tempted if it was P/J.

Says "22 frets" but it looks suspiciously like it's been defretted to me. Pity - when they turn up it seems like 3 out of 4 of these are factory fretless anyway. Bloody shame someone's been at this with the pliers.

Dunno how come I know anything about these as I found them ridiculous even when I was a kid - but the problem with the original was the straight/vertical seat-stays, which made them highly unstable & prone to tipping over backwards! Subsequent ones had a bend in the seat stays, presumably to move the rider's weight far enough forward to make this less of an issue. Of course the comical banana seat meant riders all gave their mates backies, leading to double the brain damage when the whole lot fell over backwards. Probably explains a thing or two. Anyway, that's why the reissues (like the one in the OP link) had single seats with fake sissy bar backrests. Also had a conventional handlebar gear change for the preservation of genitalia.

Have you tried flexing the neck back to remove tension from the rod when you try to slacken the nut?

If you were 12 in 1974, perhaps. But not if you were a snotty little road bike snob, like I am I mean was. Real ones in good condition (the proper 70s death traps) go for seriously stupid money these days. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/raleigh-chopper-mk1/183147735002

That'll be similar, but not identical. Korean, made by Cort, like this one: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/322758-tried-to-buy-this/

Branded Kay, made by Cort. Cort did a whole bunch of guitars & basses based around that through-neck template, all identifiable by the (rather sexy) triple dot brass inlays. These turn up branded Cort (obviously) but with plenty of other names - Targa, D'Agostino & Lotus are three that spring to mind. Speaking of which, I'd love to add one of these to my collection of neck-divey, symmetrical body, single-P basses that I never play: Cor(t) blimey!

Blazers are getting a bit scarce & prices are going up as a result - I'd be keen to keep it standard if it was mine. Blazer necks do come up but not very often. Have you tried stacking washers under the truss nut to give it a bit more scope for adjustment? I've had good results doing this with maxed-out rods. As far as replacing it's concerned, I think all Blazer necks were one-piece maple, so the truss will have been fitted under the skunk stripe. Don't know if this makes any difference to actually replacing it, but would think some refinishing to the back of the neck would be unavoidable.

Appears to be an abandoned project that's had a lot of work put into it - stripped & looks like an oil refin, new hardware, very nice looking wooden control cover. Wonder why it's been abandoned? I had one of these which would've been lovely aside from two things - the neck was twisted, and the bridge (standard BBOT) was unadjustably high & would have had to be routed into the body to lower it enough to be properly playable. The pickups, on the other hand, sounded great. Wonder if it's my old one?

It's not - it's a (fairly) recent reissue. Two-part seat, no stick shift, alloy cranks. Ain't no Mark One. The idea of some hipster converting this into a fixie is genuinely hilarious, though.

Brutally expensive unfortunately - these (under about 15 different brands) usually go for around £150. Nothing to do with Matsumoku although the jury's out among MIJ aficionados who the guilty party was. A version of this appears branded Fernandes, a brand apparently made by Kawai and Tokai Gakki at different times. I think the construction & some of the detail looks like Kasuga. Really nice-looking basses, would be very tempted to grab one at a decent price. Although I should know better - I've had way too many neck-heavy, symmetrical body, single-P Japanese basses already!

The Thunder came in passive & active versions & both basses used the same pickup - the spec refers to it as an HF600B. A lot of the pickups in older MIJ guitars were made by Maxon or Gotoh. http://www.westone.info/cats/82/12.html