Bassassin

[quote name='spacey' timestamp='1388498693' post='2322688'] They were brought out to answer the Tokai copies and pitched to match, they were very similar in construction as well. [/quote] In actual fact they were a result of Fender looking at the quality of the replica-grade copies being made by Fujigen Gakki and sold in the US & Japan branded as Greco. Fender Japan was licensed to be run by Kanda Shokai, owner of the Greco brand, part of the deal being the cessation of production of Greco Fender clones. Anecdotally the earliest JV Squiers were manufactured to be sold as Greco. Squiers were originally only available in the Japanese market, and these first JVs were branded with a big Fender logo & small Squier. A few of these ended up over here when Squiers started to be exported - them's the rare ones! J.

I've had a few Sunn Mustang Strats - the first one I had was one of the nicest-playing guitars I've owned, and I wish I'd kept it. Anyway, I did a bit of digging into them & it's quite interesting. As with all web folklore it's hard to separate fact from speculation from utter fantasy, but the early Indian-made ones do seem to be decent. The ones of interest have the standard Fender headstock, old Sunn amps logo and "FMIC" in small print under the logo. FMIC is, of course Fender Musical Instrument Corp, and it seems these are the same instruments as the US-only Squier II range, dating from the late 80s. Interestingly Squier IIs have a good reputation and are fairly sought-after. I think Sunn was UK/EU only and I don't know how long the Indian-made range with the Fender head was in production. From my experience of the Strats, necks are very nice & well-made, bodies are nicely finished solid timber, but electronics & hardware were where corners had been cut. It's all functional, however, and easily upgraded. There is a web myth, probably based on the disparity between the metal & wood bits, that bodies & necks were Japanese-made and early Sunns were finished & assembled in India with lower-quality hardware. This is, I'm sure, utter tosh. I've not had my hands on one of the basses yet but what I've read suggests they're very good too. I'm inclined to think they are the same instrument as the Indian-made Encore P copies which were around at the same time. Because Sunn is not a well-known brand, they often come up for sale on Gumtree and the like for bargain-basement money, so it's only a matter of time before I end up shelling out £40... J.

[quote name='Nibody' timestamp='1388341667' post='2321004'] In so far as an extremely brief check on the net would suggest to those uninformed that people are willing to pay well over the odds for a JV series Squier, so from someone who obviously sells a lot on Fleabay to show little knowledge, be selling it for a friend, etc etc just seems odd. So could it be it has serious issues, the seller is well aware what it is and is playing off people's wanting to get one cheap to sell on for a profit by playing dumb? [/quote] I suppose it's possible I'm sure but a lot of people will pay serious money for a JV, whatever the condition. It's certainly true of other "rare" instruments - a few years back I sold the carcass of a 70s MIJ Rickenfaker - just the neck/body, top horn cut off, badly refinished, frets ripped out - for around £200, which was about £50 less than good, complete ones were going for at the time. It was pretty much useless and I was quite clear about that, but there was still a bidding war for it. Regarding this seller, I think it's likely that if they had an interest in or knowledge of musical instruments that would be reflected in their listings. This bass is the only instrument listed, and going back over their history, all I could find was a Fenix P/J bass sold for £103 back in August: [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FENIX-ELECTRIC-BASS-GUITAR-BY-YOUNG-CHANG-/360715840538"]http://www.ebay.co.u...G-/360715840538[/url] The bass looks pretty tidy, the listing is about as informative as that for the JV, and £100-odd for one of these was a steal! J.

Rubbish listing which he's asking to get pulled if he doesn't change the title, and the price (now relisted at £250) is still loonytunes. The bass itself is a total refurb and looks like the body, neck & tuners are the only original bits. It's been stripped & refinished (bad idea considering how many unmatching offcuts it's made from), new Wilkinson bridge, pickups & scratchplate look new and that stack-knobe control panel will have likely cost more than the bass is worth. I don't think the Gibson-style trc is original, either. Jon.

There's no reason to believe the neck's warped. There's also no reason to believe it's a scam, either, in fact I'm struggling to understand exactly how it could be a scam. The seller has masses of mostly-good feedback and clearly sells on Ebay all the time - they currently have 130+ items listed. Chances are, the bass' owner doesn't have an Ebay account and just happens to know this person. Thisn is a straight-up auction for a beat-up JV that's been in someone's loft for the last 20 years, and prior to that, has had a hard life of abuse & neglect like 99% of budget, second-best, throwaway cheap JapCrap instruments. It's always good to remind oneself how these instruments were seen in their day, and why it is they're so scarce now. Most of them will have been chucked in landfills decades ago. Jon.

[quote name='Annoying Twit' timestamp='1388210670' post='2319479'] Yamaha BB1200 [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-BB1200-Bass-Guitar-/321284942605?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item4ace132b0d"]http://www.ebay.co.u...=item4ace132b0d[/url] <fast show Jazz guy voice>Nice!</fast show Jazz guy voice> [/quote] Definitely is, but a shame about the "upgrades". Good job he hasn't binned the old bridge, the sensible buyer will tidy that up & re-fit it & flog the Badass. J.

I'm going to say Ibanez RS840BK with a replacement neck. It's not an Ibby headstock & it has a rosewood board with what appears to be position dots near the bottom edge - fretless Roadsters were all maple boards with no dots or lines, as far as I know. Control layout appears to be just 4 knobs & 1 toggle, suggesting it's a passive 800 series - but it is hard to see clearly. The black body would've been a standard finish on the 840 too. Jon.

Never played one but it's probably not dissimilar to my Westbury Track 2, same spec, factory & era. In which case, yes on both counts - fairly hefty mahogany body and shallow Precision-width neck. I'd expect it to be pretty neck-divey too. J.

£75 Matsumoku-built Hondo Pro: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hondo-Bass-Guitar-Made-in-Japan-70s-80s-Low-action-/321283739270 Original DiMarzio Model P is long-gone but still a damn good price. J.

Stupidly overpriced, both of them and the descriptions are drivel. These are Korean-made (as were ALL Satellites, no matter what Ebay "experts" pretend) and unfortunately not particularly good. I remember these when they were new, launched in about 1980 and cost £99. Quite fancied one but, little snob that I was, wouldn't have been seen dead playing anything with Satellite on the end! I had curiosity-motivated GAS for one and eventually picked up a fretted, maple-board project example off BCer Geoff Byrne. This is it after a bit of tidying: [sharedmedia=core:attachments:53512] It was monumentally heavy, neck like a club, frets were horrible (ragged ends, uneven height) and the only way to achieve an action you couldn't stick your arm under was to excavate a 5mm+ deep route for the bridge to sit in! Looks like this was necessary due to a very low/thin fretboard, so I'd assume they're all like this. Someone had had a go already so I tidied up the resulting crater a little. Construction in general was pretty shoddy - the body wings were made from lots of what looked like random bits of plank, presumably stained dark so it wasn't too obvious! If you look at the top horn in the pic you can see what looked like a hole drilled through the wood, roughly filled and varnished over! No idea what the wood is, but it ain't mahogany. I wouldn't pay more than £100 for a decent one. Actually, having had one, I wouldn't pay that. J.

That's bloody lovely! Never seen this before - although I know the Vester brand (and their historical run-ins with Fender over their logo & the Fender copies it apeared on) and have some GAS for a Vester Argus. It's good to see a take on a Jazz that's not a slavish copy, Vester had a reputation for decent quality instruments and a Platin I is now on my GAS list! Jon.

Want it. Can't afford it, can't justify it. Serious bargain, though. Is it just the pics or has that had a dubious refin? Jon.

Judging from the 6-bolt neckplate and the fretboard - the only un-repainted bit of it - it's an old Kay KB-24 P copy, and would've looked like this: I've had a couple of these - very solid, very heavy, not exactly sophisticated but perfectly useable & playable P clones. And both of mine sounded great and were very loud! Strip off the rattlecan spray job and there's probably a bit of nice-looking wood underneath. The necks are odd - ply laminate made from hundreds of thin mahogany strips. Quite common on 60s Japanese guitars (although these Kays are early 70s Taiwanese) and make for a very stiff neck. That's a good vintage plank for £30! Jon.

We played our last gig with our current drummer last night so this is a fantasy wish-list for a replacement! Gavin Harrison Mark Brzezicki Danny Carey

Clearly someone's had a go at making a copy of this: This is a guy from a Danish band called D-A-D - this bass is apparently also a 2-string home made job. Looks like it's a cover in front of the neck so it's accessible. Cant see it being particularly comfortable to play, but people sometimes do go to remarkable & impractical lengths to look like an utter gonk. Jon.

From what I know based on old catalogues & other JapCrap geeks, Maya & El Maya were both Rokkoman brands, with El Maya being the high-end copies & original designs. That said, I'm sure I've seen the same original instruments branded both as Maya & El Maya. Apropos of nothing much, am I correct in thinking that Kobe is in the vicinity of two mountains called Rokko & Maya? Maybe I just hallucinated that. I should probably get some sleep. J.

Excellent work - any chance you could translate the gist of the responses for the hard-of-Japanese? I should have mentioned that Rokkomann are still a going concern: [url="http://www.rokkomann.co.jp/"]http://www.rokkomann.co.jp/[/url] I suspect someone there might know if they ever had a factory... J.

[quote name='artisan' timestamp='1387556699' post='2313356'] ....it plays very well,it just looks a c*nt. [/quote] Archetypal spit-coffee-over-keyboard moment! If the refin's poly, chances are acetone won't do anything, but it might be worth a try. If you have a hot air paint stripper, that might soften the refin so it can be peeled off. Might take the original finish off as well so take it easy if you try that. The serial number on the neckplate of 1975 & later Ibanezes consists of a letter followed by 6 numbers. The first 2 numbers are the year so yours should be 78 or 79, which were the years the Siver Series was available. The letter refers to the month (A - January, B - February etc) and the remaining number is production number for the month. Got any pics of the bass? J.

Silver series was a bit later (serial number gives you the year, if it hasn't got one it's pre '75) and it's probable proportions were more accurate. However, I wouldn't write off the original body - copy-era Ibbys are pretty collectable & IMO best left original if possible. How has the body been refinished? If it hasnt been stripped, neat acetone (cheap off Ebay) will quickly remove a lot of shonky refins, and a bit of T-Cut is great for getting a shine back on the thick poly lacquer that's probably underneath. Jon.

We did this quite intensively a few years back - got us to various places around the UK and eventually as far afield as Prague. Unfortunately the live scene up here in Edinburgh was pretty awful at the time so the gigs we were able to offer other bands were pretty hit-or-miss. Unfortunately we'll be drummer-less from January (little sod's emigrating!) otherwise we'd be up for talking about it. Jon.

Maya was a brand owned by Rokkomann, a distributor based in Kobe. Anecdotally they owned their own manufacturing facility which was apparently destroyed in the Hanshin earthquake in 1995. I haven't found any documented confirmation of either the manufacturing plant or its demise but this is the prevailing mythology on the various JapCrap & related forums! Interestingly, if you look at Maya & El Maya branded high-end original designs, they are very unlike anything coming from the better-known factories & I feel this gives some credence to the idea of a Rokkomann factory. That said, it's entirely possible that Rokkomann outsourced to other manufacturers, like Tokai outsourced to Kasuga, but looking at this P copy I see no particular reason to think it's a Fujigen build. I'd say it's a bit of a refurb job anyway - that white/cream pup's not original & the tuners look like cheap recent ones. Seriously doubt very many 70s P copies will have original ashtrays, either. J.

Keeping it to 10 might be tricky. Dennis Dunaway Steven Severin Peter Steele Geddy Lee John Entwhistle JJ Burnel Tony Butler Nick Beggs Mark King Lemmy In no particular order. Jon.

The actual same bass or one like it? Seems to be some debate over whether the bass came from the factory with a lizard! Jon.

[quote name='Annoying Twit' timestamp='1386355177' post='2299295'] I'll look forward to seeing it all nice and sparkly. [/quote] Well - it's suitably sparkly now, however lacking a little structural integrity: New nut from Ebay took a little longer to turn up than I'd hoped and other projects & activities have got in the way, so it's still at the box-of-bits stage. They're very shiny & sometimes remarkably new looking bits, though: Most of it's scrubbed up seriously well - often the plating on these old MIJ instruments isn't the best, but I've had 5-year old basses with more corrosion & wear than a lot of this. The finish on the body's the biggest giveaway of the thing's antiquity - very thin lacquer with loads of chips, scuffs, cracks & wear & tear. By comparison, the neck's almost like new. Speaking of the body, turns out it's a 5-piece sandwich - 2-piece font & 3-piece back. Lazy routing's a bit disappointing but unsurprising on this sort of early pre-replica era copy. The body's very thin as well - 38mm depth. Those odd-looking pups are clearly meant to be hidden under ashtrays, but I think a couple of bits of black scratchplate plastic drilled & cut to size will tidy up the looks, sit flush with the poles & provide a thumb anchor point. Hope they sound OK, though... Anyway, looks like I'll have something to do while everyone else is Christmassing! J.

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1387356536' post='2310938'] Interesting pups Jon? [/quote] They are - seen these before on early Matsumoku J copies, and I suppose reflect the fact they're supposed to be hidden away under ashtrays. Quite a few Japanese J copies had odd-looking pups for the same reason. Anyway these are just plain brown plastic bobbins with a taped-up coil - they do look a bit grim but I'm going to cut & drill a couple of bits of black scratchplate plastic to put on the tops. Should tidy up the looks and make a more useable thumb anchor point. As yet no idea what they sound like as the bass is still in bits, but output is a healthy 7.6k for each. Hope they sound OK because I doubt there are many drop-in alternatives! J.