Bassassin

They certainly are - cream covered DiMarzios (or copies made by Maxon or Goto, which Yamaki/Washburn used) were absolutely de rigueur on early 80s basses! Swapping the covers would be sacrelige!

Peaches by The Stranglers. Would've been June 1978, got home with my brand new £59 bass, sat down & tried to play along until it sounded right. Had to re-learn it a week or two later after I found out how to actually tune the bass - and suddenly it was a lot easier! Also the B-side, Go Buddy Go taught me to play walking bass - which was handy. Took me 2 years to actually get in a room with a guitarist & a drummer & the first thing I ever played in a "proper" band was the Overture/Temples bit of 2112, by Rush.

Definite similarities. There was a pretty standard format for a lot of MIJ original design basses, which was basically a symmetrical doublecut body, bolt neck, 2-a-side headstock & a single P type pickup. Washburn, Westbury, Vantage, Kasuga, Aria, Hondo, Morris and various others all had basses like this. Not sure if they were an attempt to "originalise" something like a Gibson EB type, or just have consistency with their guitar designs. Or maybe just an odd affection for neck dive...

I had a Watkins Rapier 33 guitar about 13 years back, picked it up at the local car boot, cost me £12 for that and a Kay Strat copy that looked like it had been found in a ditch. The Rapier was a really interesting guitar, did a lot of reading & research about them - they were proper garden shed instruments in many ways - no truss rod, hand-wound pickups, switches cannibalised from Morphy-Richards hairdryers & so on. The finish was an odd sort of plastic coating rather than conventional paint/lacquer - very prone to cracking & flaking, probably due to age-related shrinkage - mine wasn't an exception! The one I had turned out to be a pretty early example - the features & serial put it at around '63, I think. What was good was that everything worked fine, a couple of frets needed re-seating but it played quite nicely after a clean, fettle & re-string. Sold it for around £350, if I remember - which was quite pleasing considering it cost me £6.

I sort of do - but really don't like the fake- fiddle cutouts. Do away with those & make the waist a bit slimmer and it would be a real looker. And give it a headstock that didn't look like the dog had been chewing it.

Looks like a nice example, and good (as well as unusual) to get what I assume is the original case too. Don't know as much about these as I'd like to, having owned 2 MIJ Washburns from the same era - but these were made by Yamaki Gakki, and later by Chushin. I don't think the Wing series basses - the Scavengers & Vultures - were around for very long so they're almost certainly Yamaki. This is a 1980 catalogue: http://www.matsumoku.org/models/washburn/catalogs/1980_fullline/80_wash_cat_pg7.jpg.html Serial should be dateable, the first 2 digits should be the year. If you do FB there are a couple of relevant groups: Washburn Guitars - The Golden Era Daions Online Daions were made by Yamaki - in fact the two companies were owned by the same family - and Yamaki's head designer Hirotsugu Teradaira designed the MIJ Washburns made there, so there is a lot of shared DNA.

I'm sure this one's a joy to play. As long as you don't look down.

You might find if the fence paint's just been slapped on over the original finish, it will probably come off with a bit of solvent & elbow grease. I've had a few badly refinished basses & guitars where the original poly lacquer & finish was intact under the paint.

Nah. If you took a rasp & filed down those two stupid little bumps, that would actually be a quite graceful & pleasing take on a singlecut. It's got none of the Marleaux's queasy, malformed freakiness & sheer wrongness.

It's beyond foul. It combines what to me are the two biggest insults to the eyes in bass design - that massive, bulbous single-cut hump and the twee fake fiddle aesthetic, complete with "traditional" f-hole. Surprised the headstock ended up being so restrained, although it realistically wouldn't look out of place on a £160 bass, never mind a £6750 (HOW MUCH???) one. Quite surprised at the sheer horridness of this - would agree Marleaux' styling's probably all a bit marmite when we're conditioned into thinking Leo nailed it in 1951 (and that weird thing he made in 1960 was a bit too damn risky) - but I've always found most Marleaux designs striking in a good way. This - the more I look at it, the more it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

Seen the guitar in this style, but never a bass: https://reverb.com/item/18479542-morris-hs-anderson-vroland-ii-red-natural-1982 Works better as a bass, but not sure about the fiddle-style cutouts, And the headstock (common to quite a few Moridaira originals) is just horrid! Some somewhat optimistic pricing going on there too, I can't help thinking.

Oh dear god that's ugly.

Oh, that's pretty. Wouldn't know whether to play it or lick it...

Having predominantly played original music over 39 years of gigging, playing for free (or more likely, covering your own travel expenses/accomodation to do the gig) has always been Situation Normal. Have always avoided/boycotted pay-to-play gigs, and my best situation was the original band I had in the 90s - me & the guitarist also had a covers duo on the side, & over a weekend would play 2 paid covers gigs & an unpaid full band gig. That was a good situation, would do that again.

There was a "Squizz" on Ebay a few years ago. In fairness, the logo looks more like "Squizz" than "Squire".

Those gap-tooth tailpieces are solid lumps though, not like the hollow, bendy thing that succeeded them! Doubt if they ever lift.

That or a Sunn Mustang (same bass with a different sticker) - at least that has Fender heritage! Got to be a record for both worst fake/most optimistically priced £60 bass ever!

Never noticed that on yours! I'm 99.9999% sure that's a mod - it's not on Bathiki's or my (slightly later fretted) bass. I assume if it "Does F*** All" it's not wired in, I'd guess it was a phase switch for the P pickup.

Blimey - didn't realise it was the exact same bass as @Beedster's. Clearly these are like buses, you don't see one for 35 years then two come along at once... So yes, everything I said about the other one applies to yours - made by Yamaki Gakki, looks like '81 from the serial. Original components on yours, shame about the broken tuner but the modern equivalent Gotoh would be a drop-in replacement. Is the damage at the back of the neck just cosmetic? Apart from that it does look to be in pretty decent original condition, from what I can see.

Well, yes - off the top of my head, Fender Japan was a collaboration batween Kanda Shokai (who own the Greco brand, & whose Japan-market Fender copies were the main motivation for US Fender to take the MIJ route) and Yamano Gakki, a retail chain which handled the marketing & distribution. At the time, Kanda exclusively used Fujigen for their own-brand instruments so it was logical for them to build Japanese Fenders. It's rumoured the initial JV serial Fenders & Squiers actually started their production runs intended to be badged Greco, but I'd imagine that's unconfirmable. Modern Fgn Jazzes are gorgeous but a bit out of my justifiable price range!

Early '90s isn't particularly early for MIJ Squiers, but they're excellent basses built to a very high standard, like the '80s JVs, SQs, E & A serials. There's no "Fender Japan" factory as such - "Made In Japan" denotes this one's made made by Fujigen Gakki. Later CIJs came from Tokai & Dyna Gakki.

Cool - any chance of some pics? Can probably tell you a bit about it, if you're interested. Value-wise, these are high-end instruments which are now vintage, pretty rare & starting to become collectable - there's a market for them. Not worth thousands but £400 upwards is reasonable if it's in good, orginal condition. If you want to go full geek with it, I recommend the following FB groups: Washburn Guitars - The Golden Era Daions Online The Daion group is relevant because MIJ Washburns were originally made by Yamaki Gakki, which was Daion's factory of origin & owned by the same family. Yamaki's chief designer Hirotsugu Teradaira designed the MIJ Washburn range and occasionally contributes to the group.