Bassassin

They're nice enough basses for what they are - Fujigen model 2365B, same thing with Ibanez on the end is probably in the £400+ in good nick. The Status thing's a bit odd - until that acoustic turned up I'd only seen the J copies - and those actually appeared in an early 70s Jedson blurb:

Blimey. 1981, aged 19. I'd been playing bass for 3 years & jamming with various mates but nothing came to anything. I knew my way around the bass reasonably well by then, so joined a local originals band looking for a bassist, was out gigging within a couple of months.

Could be related to this: But not related to anything of Rob's.

Theses are, apparently 'BUMPONS'. Bumpon. I had no expectation of learning any new words today, but there you are. Bumpon. BUMPON. BUMPON. BUMPON.

Well, I wasn't - but I have had a bit of a hankering for a guitar with a partucular spec - Strat-ish hardtail, Fender neck dimensions, 3 pickups with a coil-split bridge 'bucker. Preferably maple board & nice-grained or vibrantly coloured top, just for fun. Seems to be a broadly non-existent format (apart from a version of Charvel's San Dimas, which is about £800), until a few days ago I quite accidentally happened across this: Which, from this morning is in the G4M Black Friday sale for £139. Needless to say, there's one in the post.

Another miseryguts masterpiece. Cry, damn you, cry! 'Ere we go:

May not be the answer the OP was expecting, but that's the answer. Through-neck, 2x humbucking soapbars - Gibbo T-Bird IV, 1963.

I don't tend to be drawn to the happy-clappy, saccharine nonsense of most love songs. For some reason it's the existential angst & misery of loves lost, spurned or unrequited which seems to resonate with me. What an old goth pal of mine used to call 'slash-wrists music'.

I somehow never managed to nab a single Deko, despite checking regularly. Really wanted one of their T-Bird clones for £40, before they changed the body shape.

That's £200 more than it's worth. £30's probably OK for that old set of Schaller M4s.

Nasty late 70s Korean-made cheapo, would probably originally have been branded Satellite. Horrible plywood rubbish - I picked one up from Crack Converters for £25 a few years back. In fairness to them they had it up for £50 but happily gave me a 50% discount because one pickup wasn't working. This is still £142 with an hour left to go so fortunately it's not fooling many people. Will be bleakly amusing if it leaps up to £500 in the last 30 seconds.

Found a pic of the 2-pickup version body - the filled-in route is the right place for the neck pickup but the rest of the routing's totally different. Even if it started being routed for 2 pickups, you'd wonder why they'd bother filling it, considering a pickguard was going to cover it. Looks like veneered mahogany to me, solid rather than butcher-block.

I want a blue one. Shop in Thailand selling them, can't find any shipping info on the English version of the site but 9600 Baht = £220. https://www.musicplant.co.th/en/product/82298-80664/sqoesebs990

Strange one, that. Wonder if the routing template got put on the wrong place initially?

Just had a look at these on GG and if I was in the market for a passive J, I'd be down there tomorrow morning. https://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/product/230811411491027--sqoe-sjb800-sunrise-fade £189? Get in the bin, Harley Benton. Unfortunately no sign of that headless, though.

Probably did. My mum would have the radio on a lot so I was exposed to whatever was chart material at the time (mid 60s/70s) & she also was a bit of a classical music fan. I hated the light opera she sometimes listened to but the more bombastic orchestral stuff made a connection. I'm quite fond of a bit of bombast as well as a memorable hook, and I doubt that's a complete coincidence.

There's a short & not particularly in-depth 'making of' thing about the song here: Seems it's McCartney playing the slide guitar.

Good detective work! It's also a close relative of the Mats-made Epiphone ET280 - basically the same thing with a 4-inline headstock & single pickup. It's possible if you can get the paint off the original finish underneath will be restorable. I've had good results with a healthy dose of T-cut & elbow grease on similarly Dulux-ed basses & guitars - once you get the paint off, the original poly tends to be pretty bomb-proof.

Maybe. But if I told them I might have to kill them. You know how it is.

I know many things.

Just had a listen - not a Beatles fan (although my Mum was) & it's OK. Sound like a Lennon tune, nothing particularly cringeworthy about it, it's 4 mins so doesn't outstay its welcome. The tech used in its creation sounds interesting. If nothing else, it's better than the recent new thing by the Stones. Won't listen to either again though.

Not knockoffs as such - probably design licensing considering the apparent relationships between Japanese & Korean manufacturers - this is an MIK version from the mid 70s to (probably) early 80s, different pickups make these easy to spot: There's also a variant with a 2x2 headstock, MIJ, seen branded as Dynatone & Zenta, not sure who made these, possibly Guya. Although these do raise the question of ripoffs... These weren't anything to do with Teisco (too late) and weren't sold branded Kay. Interestingly they also turn up in a 1975 Aria catalogue, alongside a couple of Sakai-made Kalamazoo KG/KB copies. https://vintagejapanguitars.com/aria-1975-catalogue/

This is interesting! It's early/mid 70s & probably made by Sakai Mokko. Originally one of those Burns-inspired things & would've looked a lot like this: These turn up (like loads of old MIJ stuff) with a bewildering number of names & variations, but there are Sakai-branded examples which 99% confirms the manufacturer. I expect (if you do refin it) you'll probably find the screwholes for the top horn scratchplate & quite likely the old finish under the red. Looks like a cool project - for me the worst bit is the fretboard varnish which might take care to remove without damaging the binding. Frets don't look too badly worn & should tidy up OK. Do the pickups work? Not sure about these (never been hands-on with this type) but if they don't, it might be possible to re-use the chrome covers over replacements to keep the look. I'd expect the original bridge (if you have it) will be a pretty crude 2-saddle job, so if you intend to us a more conventional replacement, check the string spacing/neck width. Not too sure about these basses but a lot of the earlier original-ish MIJ stuff has pretty narrow spacing. Anyway, looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

My profoundest apologies and best wishes for a swift recovery! I perhaps should have mentioned that the visual experience requires no additional chemical enhancement... Dunno what your band done, Mush - but we been an' done a new vid, ain't we?

Bumping this thread because my band done another video! This is a little different to the previous one, visually and musically. The song's around 7 1/2 minutes long (it's prog, what ya gonna do?) and in two distinct sections, the first 3 minutes or so instrumental. My aim was to create (by manipulating free-to-use clips, mostly) the sort of visuals I'd want if we were able to perform this with back-projections/video screens onstage. Part two (the proper song bit) is a lyric video with visuals appropriate to mood/words (well, as far as I can tell - I only pluck the strings & press the buttons!) with a bit of green-screened performance. Recording-wise this is a bit of an oddity - we started this 3 or 4 years ago when we moved from using an old standalone digital multitracker to a PC based setup. For some reason I'd been using Tracktion as a DAW, but had terrible latency issues that I couldn't sort, which ultimately resulted in this song being shelved. Having moved to Reaper & doubled my RAM (whereupon latency problems magically vanished!) we carried on with other stuff & this got pretty much forgotten. I remembered it & dug it out a few months back & we decided it was worth salvaging, and that involved importing everything one track at a time into Reaper & then creating a tempo track (there are one or two time signature & tempo changes!) to get the MIDI drum parts working. All the instrument audio had to be lined up & that's when the consequences of the latency became apparent! Anyway, it was all salvageable (if you don't listen too closely!), a few bits added in to extend part of the instrumental section, and new vocals recorded. As I recall, I played my CSL (1980, MIJ) Jazz with DiMarzio Model Js, plus Yamaha SG1500 & Squier Strat. There's also a brief cameo from my Sire V7 fretless - which may or may not qualify as a bass solo... Anyway, if you enjoy bombastic self-indulgence, pretentiousness & melodrama you might like this, and if you don't - have a watch/listen anyway!