Bassassin

Did some Googling & reading, and according to Frank Meyers' 60s MIJ guitars book it's a Hoshino Stagemaster, and (unsurprisingly) not really anything to do with Ibanez.

There's only one pic both online & in Meyers' book - and it's this:

The bass in question is a resto, clearly identified & rebuilt using this pic as a reference:

https://www.guitarscanada.com/threads/1962-ibanez-stagemaster.279600/

Not sure what it's worth but a lot less than he wants.

8 minutes ago, Ralf1e said:

The headstock on my Steven Hart bass. Minimal! But you still need to truss adjust.

 If I do it (and it's a big 'if'!) I'd probably just re-shape around the existing string clamp position & still use the same truss access. Could re-visit the idea of having the clamp on the back.

4 hours ago, Ralf1e said:

Like that. At first I thought the head stock (whats left of it) looked strange but seeing it in context with the body it fits in with it. Looks organic like something that came out of the sea. Blue eyed sea monster!

I'm having second thoughts about the headstock/headstump/headflap. I don't particularly like it & having found a stand which has tuner clearance & doesn't need neck support, there's no longer much of a rationale for its existence. It'd look a lot better with something more minimalistic, and reshaping it/refinishing it would be easy enough given it's an oil finish - so watch this space...

That said, I am a spectacularly unmotivated creature so realistically, I'm unlikely to get beyond the side-eyeing it and tutting phase. There's always something more important to avoid doing.

Was very pleased with the cheap Chinese rosewood/maple knobs I put on my recently completed Whatthef*ckenbacker headless project.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194295605683

They turned out to look better in real life than the pics in the ad. Push fit so may not work with solid shafts.

9 hours ago, cetera said:

Apparently it's a 4 string bass and a 6 string bass (maybe diff tunings?) - who knows why....?

 The 4-string neck looks like it's a lined fretless.

Dunno if the music's back or not, but the enormous flappy trousers definitely are!

Suddenly, a wild American noob appears!

etc.

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Also has the control plate been broken at the top?

You might be right - it does look like it should mirror the shape of the lower part.

1 hour ago, LukeFRC said:

Meterora bass?

Got to be.

I think the Schaller tuners (M4, by the looks) place it at 70s rather than 60s. The pickups are Baldwin, (Google tells me 60s Italian-made single coils with double rows of poles) with bits of the lettering looking deliberately removed to make them read 'ALDW'. Odd. Bridges look of similar vintage but not ringing any bells.

I'd hazard a guess it's early/mid 70s, and probably inspired by some of the oddities played by the likes of Squire & Rutherford at the time. Very likely a one off by a luthier or talented 'visionary' home builder! Proper prog bass, that is.

11 hours ago, asingardenof said:

I prefer no pickguard and no control plate, but am contemplating taking the guard off my Sire V7. The one thing that stops me is the holes left behind, but putting the screws back will look even worse. Decisions decisions...

 Clear acrylic worked a treat on mine.

It's one of these:

https://www.bax-shop.co.uk/pickguard/boston-m4v-110-tr-1-ply-pickguard-for-sire-marcus-miller-v-transparent

But be warned - it's a poor fit & the pickup hole & heel cutout needed lots of careful filing to get it to fit. Looks great now but took hours of fiddling to get it right.

Another Essex Recording Studios stone cold bargain, right there.

6 hours ago, Rib13Bass said:

 

 actually, both of those are in my video in Post #1   

 1 - Didn't watch your video, soz.

2 - Posted them as a reference to the grotesquely expensive Jerzy Drozd ClownBass which @TheGreek linked to, rather than to just say 'look at these ugly basses'.

I stopped buying Roto Swing Bass after 3 consecutive sets with dead-from-the-packet A strings.

A long time ago now, and quality control may have improved - but yes, it certainly happens.

Was never a massive fan, but they were one of a few bands I picked up on because of a cool album sleeve (Obsession) in the £1.99 bargain rack. Turned out to be a pretty damn good album & I bought Strangers In The Night & a couple of others off the back of that.

Never saw them back in the day but they played Edinburgh when they toured back in 2012 so it would've been rude not to pop down.

No Schenker or Way (tbh I can't remember who was in the lineup at the time) but it was an excellent night & Mogg was on great form. One of the great unsung (lol) 70s/80s rock vocalists, imo.

16 hours ago, TheGreek said:

Where do people stand on this Jerzy Drozd? I really like the colours. I don't think that the colours would work with black pickups 

 

https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Jerzy_Drozd_Obesession_Soul_5.html

 

Almost works, but the melty, exaggerated shapes & toontown hardware make it look like a hedge fund manager's version of this sort of comedy tat:

Buy a P if you want a P, however the basses you already have are perfectly adequate, the BB will do anything a P will do and both are far more versatile.

If you want one for the 'image', be aware it's a boring, nondescript bass that no-one in an audience will notice, either visually or sonically. Each to their own, though.

On 04/10/2022 at 15:40, SpondonBassed said:

 

Not something I was expecting to read in a Build Diary but I do like what you've done with the bass.

 

Probably best not to post this:

 

That's gonna cost you. And not just your sanity. 

Anyway - it plays OK as it is but will need a bit of work to get the best out of it. The saddles on the bridge/tuner things don't have the height adjustment range of the original (and bunging the lot on a bit of plastic hasn't helped) so I'll need  to do a bit of filing to get the action a little lower. The saddles sit in slots on top of the slidey intonation adjusting bits (I know all the technical terms, me) so it should be straightforward enough to take a mil or two off the bottoms of each. If that's not enough, I'll need to rethink the plastic baseplate, maybe a thinner material, or cutting holes for each tuner assembly so it's more of a surround.

As it is, it looks quite nice hanging on the wall & seems perfectly happy there, so there's a realistic possibility that I'll just get bored and wander off again.

1 hour ago, nilorius said:

Body form is ok, but the colors.....................................?!?

The exact opposite for me - it's not quite as foul as most Ritters (still a bit of a moose though) - but the colours are amazing.

Well - I think I mentioned that I have a predisposition for getting bored and wandering off, or (more specifically) succumbing to my innate tendency for existential ennui and spiraling into the depthless, howling abyss of my own internal hellscape. Or something.

Well - whatever it was, it happened, quite predictably and my Stupid Headless Bass Project got ignored for the better part of a month.

However!

Having eventually succeeded in prising my head from between my own gargantuan, corpulent and quivering buttocks, I cracked the f*ck on and levelled & dressed the frets, tidied up a few scratchy fret ends, foil-lined the cavities, bunged all the wires & pots back inside and then glued the lot back together.

Before:

And after:

I bet some of you contrarians won't think that's an improvement.

Anyway, in detail:

The shoddy budget tuners! The cheap Chinese knobs!

The stupid, wonky headflap! The Really Very Convincing inlay stickers!

The much more aesthetically pleasing back view!

And that (apart from minor details like a proper setup & plugging it in to see if it actually works), is a wrap. Over to you...

Always fancied one of these (and a Quantum, and a Super Headless!), really wish I'd picked one up when they were all over the place for £50-£60.

Silly money these days, if they ever come up. Which they almost never do.

This has been discussed at length of the FB Rickenfakers group. It's a mess, it has the collapsing neck pocket issue which affects many through-neck Rick copies and real Ricks. Someone has tried to remedy this by roughly routing the bridge into the body - but it still looks like it has an action you could stick your arm under. It's had an amateurish-looking refret which has hacked up the neck binding, and probably had the lacquer stripped from the fretboard at the same time.

With an obviously replaced scratchplate, it's also not unlikely the trc is as well, so it might not even be a Maya. The price is idiotic considering the issues, £300 would be pushing it.

Can only echo what's already been said. The neck's not original and has been de-fretted. The body is from a generic midrange 70s MIJ bass, it's ply or butcher-block, as the black oversprays which cover the laminations indicate. It was very likely made by Chushin Gakki, who turned out thousands of these under hundreds of different names. Those round-end pickups appear in quite a few low to mid-level MIJ basses and in my experience are quite thin-sounding & low output. Best thing about it's the tuners.

€200 is too much for that - for a little bit more you could likely pick up a used Sire V7 fretless, (I have one, they're phenomenal basses), or for a few € less, Thomann will sell you a very nice Harley Benton Jaco clone.

23 hours ago, Almost Simon said:

Thank you, date wise i could only see one post online of someone saying late 70s but 80s seems likely. Yep its the 6 figure ID on back of the headstock

 

Any view on value? I wont sell, its a lovely bass but always nice to try and guess a price.

Value's always tricky but I'd guess at least £200-£250. These days MIJ prices can be surprising in both directions.

Late 70s, IMO more likely early 80s, but definitely not '86, though. These were made by Moridaira Gakki (same factory that made Prince's famous MadCat Hohner Tele) and the serial sticker's a 100% ID. £50 was daylight robbery!

As yet it's not possible to date a Mori from the serial number, although there does appear to be a pattern to them. There are 5 & 6 figure variations, 8- prefixes are the most common although I've seen some starting with 7 and 0. I actually bought an 86- prefix Hohner guitar in 1984 (new old stock, so a couple of years old by then) which I hope confirms the number's not related to the year, unless I've been sponaneously time-travelling again.

Lovely bit of flame on the fretboard.