Bassassin

They didn't - don't think Hohner ever made anything other than harmonicas & squeeze boxes! This'll be made by Cort in Korea, and is a bit of a cheapo, tbh. However I'm pretty confident it never left the factory with the nut & truss adjuster looking like that!

Did they spell "ethereal" wrong intentionally? Can't help feeling they didn't.

Don't think there's any mystery about this. The truss adjuster's buggered and has been horribly bodged with something that appears to have dropped out of a bus engine, and the tuner positioning is a result of a half-arsed attempt to do a 3x1 arrangement using a standard inline head shape & unsuitably small machine heads. If they'd just moved the G tuner up a few cm they could've avoided that worrying break angle altogether.

This. The last 3 places I've lived have been terraced houses and that was how I approached the neighbours. In one of them we actually had a big basement area set up as a rehearsal space (acoustic kit, small PA, etc) and the neighbours' response was - "don't worry - if we think you're sh!t, we'll let you know!" Reassuringly they never complained. Present gaff is an end-terrace & we have an upstairs bedroom on the outside wall (not adjoining neighbours) set up as a music room/home studio & happily it doesn't bother anyone. What's interesting about this thread for me is that when I'm practicing alone, I'm always unplugged - I can hear myself perfectly well & have no need to complicate things with amps & leads. If I'm learning a song & need to play along I have a little Behringer mixer/interface attached to my laptop so I can either play (quietly) through speakers or through 'phones. I think if I decided to set up my GK 401RB rig & crank it until stuff started vibrating, the neighbours would have every reason to be a little bit f*cked-off.

I apologise for asking - but someone's got to: Is this photo a record of the unfortunate consequences that arise when fashionable-at-the-time white trousers coincide with stage-fright?

Budgety Korean thing, late 80s/early90s maybe - not that common but I have seen them before. Something horrific's happened to the truss adjuster on this - can't quite make out what's going on but it makes me slightly queasy to look at it.

That's pretty cool. Not Ibanez/Fujigen though, probably closer to Columbus or Grant - it looks like a Chushin Gakki build to me. It's a bit of a myth that CSLs were "rebranded Ibanez". There's a connection because Charles Summerfield Ltd was UK distributor for Ibanez & sourced their own CSL & Sumbro brands through Hoshino, owner of Ibanez. However CSLs tend to be rebrands of Hoshino's budget Cimar range, & that's what I'd say this is. Body finish is a bit odd, might be a bitsa. Pickups (neck pup specifically) are interesting, "Reflex" rings a bell but never seen a Roto-branded one. Hour & 40 to go, still £50 with just one bid, interesting bargain for someone - might have been me if it was a bit nearer.

Bet that's good for matal.

Not a fan but it's not a deal-breaker - I recently bought a lovely late 80s Aria SB-ELT with gold hardware. Really don't like the fact it's not durable, and when it wears off the metal underneath's usually grey.

Lovely old thing but not exactly immaculate. It's a high-end early Ibby Musician, looks to be in good, original order - although that red-tipped switch might have been changed. It's a rare guitar but I'd be very surprised if a realistic price would be more than £1000. I had an MC150 (passive, a bit more modest but same basic build) and sold it on for a massive £150! Will be watching this with interest in case of the unlikely eventuality that it sells - I have a set of those pearl-top Velve-Tune tuners and calculating from the asking price of this, they're worth about £400. Arch-top? Silly boy.

I think they should reissue this: For a laugh.

Shafty all the way. Like I said on the FB page!

Update o'clock: Posted the pics on my fave MIJ FB group and after lots of (occasionally heated & fractious) discussion, it's been established that the serial number & neckplate style is a dead-on match for Tokai. This is from a 1980 JB-65N: This seems to be the standard format Tokai used on their replica-level Fender copies & it's interesting to find that they were presumably building slightly more modestly-specced off-brand instruments simultaneously. There aren't any other 100% match components as far as I can see, although the tuners (which I'd say have distinctively large backplates) are quite similar. Here's the link to the full listing: https://reverb.com/item/3703632-1980-tokai-jazz-sound-bass-very-rare-natural-finish-birdseye-maple-neck-custom-shop-quality so @steviedee, looks like you got a vintage Tokai for £75. Not jealous or anything...

Great info - wonder which version of SB-1200 came first then?

That's certainly interesting, I have a catalogue scan featuring an SB-1200 which has P/J pickups: Found this image whilst ID-ing my own SB-ELT (the one in the middle) - this is from 1989-ish, making these basses post-Matsumoku. I've read that Tokai Gakki built high-end Arias at this point but no confirmation. The Ebay bass looks like a mix of SB1200 and SB-LTD, having the dot neck, control layout & Gotoh bridge of the 1200 and the Alembic soapbars from the LTD. I'm tempted to think it's a different model and the name the seller's giving is his best guess.

Whistling. Every second advert seems to be soundtracked with plinky ukeleles overdubbed with this anaemic hissy hooting. Makes me want to amputate lips with a rusty razorblade.

No sh!t! I've posted some pics on the Vintage Japanese Guitars FB group, to see if any of the minds greater than mine will have an idea what it might be. Tbh it might not even be MIJ - could be top-end Korean, or even Italian - some of the Melody copies were very similar to MIJ stuff of the era. I'm inferring from what (little) I can find that Yasuki was a UK importer rebrand and like most of them, they probably imported from a number of different sources.

Good to see some pics - that's interesting, a couple of things I wouldn't expect on an MIJ bass of this era. It's definitely a bit different to SH73's Jazz. First - the neckplate - not seen one like this on a 70s MIJ before, s/n looks sequential & a low number. The body looks like mahogany, from the grain, the natural ones are usually sen ash on this sort of thing. Did a bit of searching for Yasuki & was interested to see that many of the results are guitars with built-in effects. These are pretty common branded as Fresher, and this is a brand strongly associated with Chushin Gakki. Looks like a one-piece neck with an unbound fretboard. Quite unusual too. If it's OK, I might steal your pics & put them on the FB Vintage MIJ page I use, see if anyone there knows about Yasuki.

Gawd. No idea. Bunch of wishful thinking: Sell some basses. Sell some more basses. Finish the f*cking album. Get a gigging band together, if I can find a drummer with no major mental health issues. Getting to the point that actual ability's looking like a distant second place.

Unless there's another Bognor Regis in Nagano Prefecture, I don't think it's in Japan. Which is a pity when you think about it - because these days the seller needs to obtain the appropriate CITES clearance to export it, so chances are it'd end up getting impounded and subsequently destroyed by UK Customs. Which would be a relief.

First things first - it's not a Jedson, is it? This is fairly elementary stuff, Jedsons will say Jedson on the pointy end, and this one doesn't. Having cleared that up, I do know a bit about these. Probably made by Sakai Mokko, early 70s, pretty common. It is a low-end, budget starter bass and probably would have cost about £30 new, probably out of someone's mum's catalogue. It won't be very good - this is not dissimilar to the sort of thing I was unfortunate enough to start with (actually, it's further down the food chain) and that nearly put me off playing at all. If you want a playable, useable musical instrument, then buy one of those - not this. If you want a piece of ugly, overpriced trash for striking hipster poses in the mirror or hanging on the wall to try & impress friends who don't play instruments - knock yourself out.

I know the body wasn't from an Antoria but can't for the life of me remember what it was, possibly an Eros. What it is, is definitely a re-badged Fujigen 2365B, the exact same thing as Antoria, Ibanez and a whole lot of other 70s importer/exporter brands. The body dates to 1972 from the codes on the original pickups. Thought the shadow of the neck's logo looked like Antoria but it wasn't clear enough to be certain, but the fact it was a near-perfect fit for pocket & screws confirms it was from the same factory & made to the same template. It's a later neck because the maple-board Fujigens with correct nut & heel-adjust truss rod didn't appear until about 1974, along with the correct type of pickups. I quite like these chrome Maxon pickups, they were very common on various 70s MIJs & I've had several sets in different basses. They are variable in output though and later ones do seem to be a lot hotter. I have one in a R*ck*nb*ck*r copy bitsa which reads 11k or so - typically early ones seem to be around 4 or 5. Despite the double rows of poles they're single coils. I think they're in lots of old J copies because they pre-date accurate Jazz-type pickup clones, and in the 70s J copies, they were all hidden under ashtrays anyway.