Bassassin

Simple fret dress & setup will have it looking & playing like new - if that's the worst bit, that's really very little wear for 30-odd years' use. Some hamfisted oafs (such as me!) can achieve worse than that in a month!

So - finally got around to nailing this thing back together, and to be honest it doesn't look a whole lot different: [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Crack%20Converters%20Headless/CCHfinal01_zpsge66owt5.jpg.html"][/url] [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Crack%20Converters%20Headless/CCHfinal03_zpsplsv9cmt.jpg.html"][/url] [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Crack%20Converters%20Headless/CCHfinal05_zpsq9rgrfge.jpg.html"][/url] What [i]is[/i] different is that the tailpiece now fits & isn't falling off, the fretboard's no longer peeling away, the neck twist is largely gone, and the whole thing plays & sounds halfway decent. I've replaced pretty much every screw apart from the neck screws, and after leaving the neck untensioned for a fortnight the initially alarming twist is now negligible, and I don't think affects its playability at all. And it does play surprisingly well - I'd intended to level & dress the frets as a matter of course but after realising there might be irrepairable neck issues, decided to just sling it back together & see what the neck was like with string & truss tension on it. Turns out it's solid, neither the strings nor that alarmingly off-centre truss rod affect its stability and as a bonus, the fret job's halfway decent, meaning it's perfectly playable without any work. Definitely could be made better but playing-wise, I'd happily gig it as it is. So after a bit of bodging the bass is certainly worth what I paid, and I still think it looks cool as feck. Of course, there's a "however"... And that's the whole bridge/tuner assembly, which, in addition to being pointlessly complex & heavy and absurdly over-engineered, is moronically ill-thought through to the point of making it borderline useless unless you're prepared to mess around and struggle with the thing. One of the advantages of a headless system is to make string-changing & tuning quick and accurate - but the design of this thing conspires to achieve the exact opposite. [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Crack%20Converters%20Headless/CCHfinal08_zpsildqyn73.jpg.html"][/url] The strings wrap around narrow brass winding cams, which are drilled through the centre in order to thread the string through - so broadly similar to conventional tuner posts. Now as any fule kno, you need to wind your string around a couple of times in order to make it secure so it doesn't slip or pop out under tension. Here the problem is, as soon as you do that, the string wraps over itself, effectively increasing the gearing of the tuner, both making it awkwardly inaccurate and increasingly stiff as the string becomes taut. To help compensate for this, the tuners are designed to pop out to make them more accessible - and presumably allow room for the mole-grips you'll need to turn them! [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Crack%20Converters%20Headless/CCHfinal09_zpsws3nchua.jpg.html"][/url] OK I may be exaggerating a bit for comic effect but it took me a lot of faffing & string-trimming to get these to work reasonably easily - and I wouldn't relish the idea of being onstage with this thing & trying to tune accurately & quickly between songs. As it is, the E & A have [i]really[/i] stiff spots, and the winding action is the opposite of more conventional headless systems, making the whole thing annoying, counter-intuitive and awkward. And it doesn't end there. The sockets for the ball-ends on the headpiece are tiny: [url="http://s1276.photobucket.com/user/LanterneRouge/media/Crack%20Converters%20Headless/CCHfinal06_zps8scqojwg.jpg.html"][/url] If I opened the holes out enough to accommodate standard-size ball-ends, there wouldn't be enough metal left to hold them securely. The strings on this are the second set I tried, the first set had half-wound sections on the E & A which ran over the saddles - the ball-ends were exactly the same. Thinking about it, I'd expect strings wound with silk would be pretty useless on this. Anyway, 'nuff moaning - aside from wondering if I could put a Hohner type bridge/tuner on this I'm now pretty happy with it. Dunno if it's a keeper - I have way too many basses & no gigging band, so have zero need for any more - but pretty glad I picked it up. One way or another I think I saved it from going in a skip!

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1478807668' post='3171855'] That's OK Jon, the builder clearly couldn't place them either. [/quote] Pretty sure they're not original - they look from an entirely different era to the rest of the thing - so an ID wouldn't tell us much anyway.

[quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1478789170' post='3171653'] Pickups look a little like Maxon humbuckers from the '70s but painted black. [/quote] Same sort of layout but they're a different shape (longer), the adjuster screws are on the tops rather than tabs, and the pole pieces look to be cross-head. Plus they probably are 'buckers - which the Maxons ain't! [sharedmedia=core:attachments:69930] Odd pickups - they do look familiar but I can't place them.

I still think it's Eastern European, or (at a pinch) 60s Italian. Hardware's weird & unidentifiable, string spacing is that strange narrow, parallel setup that Rickenbackers or early Italian & Soviet-era things always seem to have. Pickups I would say are swapped - their design looks much more recent (80s?) and the strings are nowhere near the poles as a result. The whole thing's had B&Q emulsion slopped all over it and the headstock "decal" (over the paint) is so inept the letters aren't even lined up.

I don't know if I'm in a band or not any more. I have just pressed "indefinite pause" on the band I started with my partner/vocalist about 17 years ago, effectively to try & get back some sort of control over the music we write together. Looking back over 15+ years as an "active" band, it really feels like 99% of everything we've done, or tried to do, has been to satisfy the needs of various people whose only contribution has really been to learn songs if they could be bothered/liked the music enough, and to turn up for rehearsals or gigs if they happened not to be otherwise occupied. That sounds terribly bitter - and on a personal level it's really not because all the people we've worked with have been genuine good friends and fine musicians. However I am left feeling we've let ourselves down, and neglected the most important part, which is the music we create. It's always been on the table for band members to get involved creatively but no-one (even three different guitarists, believe it or not) has been interested. It's all been about playing live for them, and with a couple of exceptions everything we've recorded has just been the demos that the two of us create. We've played hundreds of gigs over the years and I'm gutted that's over. While the live band never really properly represented my vision of how the songs should sound, we were good, always made a big impression and I loved every minute of it. But gigging relentlessly has been at the expense of being creative and developing creatively, which is really what it was supposed to be about. I dearly hope there's a future for our band but I really don't know right now.

Lacking (as I do) any knowledge of the formative era of the Birch brand, I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. However if I judge it solely on appearance, it looks like an emulsioned, dessicated and abused bit of Soviet-era Eastern European junk with Letraset on the end.

[quote name='yorks5stringer' timestamp='1478378998' post='3168780'] They've included message at the bottom where someone says it is not genuine... [/quote] Well they're correct in that part of their assessment. Everything else is random rubbish they just made up. Why would someone do that?

As far as I know, these were Fujigen builds, I think Roland promoted their various guitar synth controllers as a collaboration with Greco, a brand exclusively built by Fujigen at that point. I did think they were sort of cool back in the day, and in a way I still do... Not at £600, though.

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1478154426' post='3167113'] 2- it has to be original; unique to you, no spouts of the old mantra "Leo got it right" [/quote] Unless you're talking about the original Boroadcaster/Tele, Leo pinched it off Bigsby & just simplified it a bit: As far as different designs go, I like the old Yamaha SB/SG and their variations & derivatives. Elegant & functional, to my eyes - if I was designing a 4-inline I'd rip that off.

[quote name='AndyTravis' timestamp='1478133705' post='3167101'] Ugliest headstock ever. But, I would. [/quote] In with a shout but Lindert would have it with one arm tied behind its back: That Laurus flappy paddle is a great way to ruin an otherwise awesome-looking bass - but I'm not sure it's really a headstock...

Looking at that's giving me GAS for a FenderBird. Goddamn it!

Interesting. Old 70s/early 80s one-off or bitsa, and that would make it pretty much a cert that the pickups will be DiMarzios. Betweem them, the Schaller 3D bridge & the Ibanez Hercules tuners, it's worth more than £100 in parts. Buy it!

Depends. My favourite basses are mostly 70s & 80s MIJ relics and I love their decades of wear & history, so if I occasionally add a few new knocks & scratches that just add to the provenance. These are the ones that get out of the house most often and see the most use. However, I have a few I've had from new, and one or two older instruments that have survived the decades unscathed - I [i]really[/i] don't like the idea of these getting damaged. I have a 1981 Ibanez RS924 Roadster in near-new condition, and it occurs to me it hasn't been out of its case in about three years! Things like this make me seriously question the point of owning some of these instruments - but the alternative is to sell them to people who will probably beat the hell out of them!

[quote name='MoJo' timestamp='1477660389' post='3163672'] Any idea what it might be worth Jon (other than being useful to start a bonfire) ? [/quote] In fairness, like most 70s copies its value is more curiosity than monetary! There are collectors of old Italian guitars but I suspect (like with MIJ stuff) there's more interest in original condition, branded instruments. These aren't common enough for there to be a recognisable resale value, but I always look at things from the perspective of what I'd hope to get for one if selling it - and I'd say probably anything between £100 & £150 would be a result. That said, I am a bit out of the loop these days!

From the long-lost era of glued-on maple fretboards! That aside, the body does look like a proper thin nitro finish rarther than the thick poly (usually over ply or butcher block) most old copies had. Don't make it pukka though.

I'd say (based on what little I can see) it might be an Italian-made Melody, probably mid 70s. Some pics [url="http://www.fetishguitars.com/castelfidardo-recanati/melody/melody-solidbodies/"]halfway down this page[/url]. If it has a 3-piece neck & the same skinny neckplate then that's an ID as far as I can tell. The same truss adjusters were used on East German-built Musima P copies from the early 80s, but these tended to have nasty ply bodies.

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1477569002' post='3163018'] I was tempted, but I know I'd only get 2/3 of the way through the process... [/quote] That's the glaring flaw in the plan. It's happened to me, probably about 30 times now. [quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1477569263' post='3163020'] Yeah I bought and sold mine for about £20! [/quote] Shame you didn't sell it to me. I'd have cleaned it, polished the frets, re-strung it, all the while feeling smug about the massive profit I'd make. Then I'd look at it occasionally, maybe play it a bit, thinking "I really should sell that".

[quote name='bartelby' timestamp='1477316383' post='3161337'] There's a white Aria Pro II Laser Heritage in Cash Generators in Coventry city centre for £80. if I hadn't just bought a bass I'd have snapped it up. Looked in pretty good condition [/quote] Bargain. I'd buy it, give it a wipe and flip it. Like a proper gyppo.

I spotted this a few days ago - it does look like it would be very nice after a bit of fettling. Kind of nice that there are still a few neglected, badly set-up survivors of the 70s out there, reminding us why "JapCrap" once wasn't quite as ironic as it is now...

If it's got proper routing for the neck pickup - none. If not, probably black would work best.

A third option (which might not be practical since I presume it's a carbon graphite neck) might be to modify the heel by undercutting the fretboard & creating an overhang for the additional fret(s).

Those with long memories might remember these on Ebay probably 10+ years ago, think they were less than £200 new. I do like the body but that tort's pretty horrid. Wants a maple board too, IMO.

£150. Which is £100 too much considering the issues. I took the neck out of the clamp to give myself room to work on the body routing & was somewhat dismayed to find the neck also has a slight twist, which wasn't at all apparent before I glued it. I'm hoping this is a consequence of the off-centre routing & extreme tension it's been subjected to. Hopefully it will relax a bit now the rod's slack. If I can make a player out of it I quite like the idea of throwing some decent pickups & electronics into it. If the neck turns out to be a bust I can probably pick up a cheap s/h 24 fret one on here or off Ebay, & lop the headstock off...

Got my replacement today - excellent! So having got a nice new one, I felt I could have a go at seeing if it's possible to clean up the old one. It appears that what's happened is a soft coating on top of rigid plastic is what's gone sticky. Using acetone, I was able to remove the sticky stuff without causing damage to the hard plastic underneath. I didn't have time to do the entire thing but I've successfully cleaned the smooth part opposite the lever. I think it'll be quite time-consuming and tricky to get all of it off cleanly and I think I'll try scraping as much off as I can first before hitting it with industrial-strength solvent again.