Bassassin

My favourite book as a child, and I must have re-read it dozens of times over the years. A shame there's never been a good film version - IMO the best adaptation (despite changing the setting & era) was Orson Welles' 1938 radio version. Love the Jeff Wayne interpretation - although the Fighting Machines look completely wrong!

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/303782-how-much-for-a-westone-thunder-bass/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/303782-how-much-for-a-westone-thunder-bass/[/url]

Interesting, this. Just did a quick headcount - mostly from memory, so I will have forgotten a few - and I've owned 35 Fender-shaped basses & guitars, none of which had a Fender logo. Out of these, 22 were basses so I will have gigged with most of those. I've never owned a "real" Fender and it's pretty likely I never will. I suppose I can understand why people who aspire to "big" brands would fake-up budget copies, but this recent trend for eye-wateringly expensive knockoffs (Limelight etc) utterly mystifies me - particularly with a shonky sticker on the end.

[quote name='dmccombe7' timestamp='1491808066' post='3275418']...occasional actors / singers coming on stage dressed as characters from the movie. I actually thought the live show storyline was far better than the movies. It was set in a different time era and just seemed to work better. [/quote] [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds"]https://en.wikipedia...r_of_the_Worlds[/url]

Do as I did - scrape off all that horrid brown glop (which will take a whole 20 minutes) and Danish oil the body, so it looks a bit like this: [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Ibanez%20SR500/sr500refin01_zpsnkckqift.jpg.html"][/url] Admittedly - mine was an £80 fixer-upper, and in a dreadful state when I got it.

Simple answer to your question is to change the search to sold items: [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_nkw=westone%20thunder%20bass%20guitar&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684"]http://www.ebay.co.u...=p2045573.m1684[/url] So we can see that while the high-end, through neck Thunder IIs and IIIs consistently achieve fairly high prices, a lot of the BIN prices for bog-standard, common-as-muck Thunder Is and IAs are very, very, very ambitious. Great basses they may be, but if you pay more than £150 you've been had.

A classic example of home-made wonkiness.

Ah - the Die Nasty. Not a huge fan of 80s pointy - but I might have made an exception if it had been the 2-tone metalflake finish...

It's got that "almost, but not quite", slightly wonky look you tend to see on home-made basses. Would be an interesting & striking design if it was just slimmed down a bit - as it is it's just slabby & a bit ugly. And looks like it's made out of your gran's wardrobe.

Bridges like this (7 screw, hex adjusters) are common on 70s MIJ copies. Not suggesting that's what this bass is, as bridges can be swapped & screwholes filled, but £3700 for something that has a strong likelihood of being a bitsa - or worse - is hilarious. And not in a good way.,

[quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1490942908' post='3269156'] Looks like a heavily modified Egmond, like this: [url="http://touch.adverts.ie/electric-basses/egmond-bass-guitar/4579914"]http://touch.adverts...-guitar/4579914[/url] [/quote] I think you're right. Looks like someone tried to make it look like a Gibson.

My first thought was Eastern European, but looking closer, I'm leaning towards home-made.

No idea at all how they became decapitated, but I can say that they're not Vantages, or any other Matsumoku model. These are Kawai builds and derivative of a Japan-only Fernandes design from about 1978. They turn up with numerous different brands, and are quite common branded Lincoln in the UK. Wouldn't mind one as a headless project but no idea what I'd do with three!

A member on here called Wizbat - not sure if he still posts - had a matching pair of Rick-styled 6ers built by Jon Shuker, maybe 8 or 9 years ago: [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Rickenfakers/Shuker%206ers_zpsgbxav7rm.jpg.html"][/url]

A true originator, it's not overstating it to say that Chuck Berry sowed the seed from which all guitar-based rock & pop has grown.

Fair enough! Note to self - do some research, and/or refrain from posting when tired and irate!

[quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1489530392' post='3257761'] Didn't Gibson lose the case against PRS over their single cut? Or was the appeal repealed? [/quote] They did and that will be why the LP is not in the list. The "lawsuit guitars" thing was a dispute over headstock shapes in 1977 - Gibson's then-parent company Norlin asserting its ownership of the "open book" headstock which adorned most MIJ copies at the time. They threatened action against Elger Hoshino, US importer of Ibanez guitars, without noticing that the headstocks had been changed to a non-infringing design the previous year. No legal action ever took place.

"Weltron" = made-up Scumtree bullsh!t. If they could be bothered doing some research they could far more effectively monetise this particular piece of £5 car boot tat: [url="http://www.matsumoku.org/models/aria/catalogs/75_aria/75_aria_catalog_pg1.jpg.html"]http://www.matsumoku...og_pg1.jpg.html[/url]

That's some mental money for the "Arbiter". These are pretty common & often go for sub £100. What's mildly amusing is that it's a copy of Gibson's budget Kalamazoo KB bass, which would probably sell for a fair bit less than £485. The Ideal-branded thing appears to be a 2-pickup version of a [url="http://markcolemusic.com/teisco/Images/literature/ad1-64_66.jpg"]mid-60s Teisco EB-18[/url]. That's got to be about 3 times what it's worth, in a sane world anyway. Never heard of a "Weltron" but Ebay's full of people making up crap. These are common early 70s starter basses, and oddly the exact same design was manufactured in Korea some years later.

Well - unlike most of the rest of the bass, the bridge is a pretty accurate copy of the Gibson 2-point used on real EB-0s! And yes, they're pretty useless. There are drop-in alternatives available, Hipshot do a 2-point replacement, and there was a Schaller 3D version back in the 70s/80s. Not sure but if the stud spacing is the same, you could proibably use a Babicz 3-point too.

Might well be a proper 'bucker - some of the early 70s MIJ copies (which this is) had Maxon humbuckers the same size as guitar pickups. That's what this looks like to me - usually "fakebuckers" have round-head pole screws. Easiest way to tell is to see if a screwdriver or similar steel impliment will stick to the smooth side. Also might well have a 5-digit code stamped underneath, which can be used to date it. Anyway, this is the original ad for the bass: [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Collector-039-s-Rare-Ventura-Bass-Guitar-Right-Handed-/262877748147"]http://www.ebay.co.u...d-/262877748147[/url] I very much doubt it's a Ventura - Ventura was a brand name used by US importer/distributor C. Bruno, and they were never available in the UK. Basses like this would have been sold with numerous names (and frequently no name at all) all over the world. This one presumably did have a brand name that a previous owner objected to - sufficiently violently that it appears they did indeed kill it with fire. That reveals the interesting laminated neck construction, which is fairly common on 60s & a few early 70s MIJ guitars, sometimes known as "strip mahogany". Not beautiful but very resistant to twisting & warping, apparently. This probably would have had a black plastic veneer on the headstock face before the blowtorch attack. Pretty cool old bass & not bad for the money.

What BigRedX just said. And today I'm terribly excited about a new/old song reworking that I think I've just nailed. I've amalgamated some ideas I've been kicking around for a few months (I always have a head full of random orphan riffs & progressions) with the excellent chorus from a decidedly average song from about 10 years ago. Plus, lyrics are usually the domain of my writing partner/vocalist and I don't usually get involved - but I've adapted her original chorus lyric to work with the ideas she has for what's now the verse part, and added a few bits of my own. So while the ideas & lyrical concept aren't mine, most of the actual lyric is - and I'm proper chuffed with it! Musically the guitar parts are likely to be somewhat more challenging than the bass.

I quite like it - but I'm a sucker for a headless. Obviously a one-off but not as wonky as most home-made basses seem to be. Design would be quite nice if it was a bit less angular, imo. I usually like bold colours but that rattlecan purple's a bit grim, though. Now relisted at £150 BIN: [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Headless-4-string-bass-unique/292047671627"]http://www.ebay.co.u...ue/292047671627[/url]