Bassassin

Way too much for a bass with an unadjustably dodgy neck. Maybe worth the £60 I didn't pay for one!

If you're interested (and I understand if you're not!) there's another one here, better quality pics from different angles - genuinely hard to see any differences from mine, including the neck/body joint position: https://www.richtonemusic.co.uk/product/tokai-breezysound-thinline-telecaster-butterscotch-w-hard-case-2nd-hand-ytokai88700/ The scratchplate is interesting - when I first got Tele GAS I spotted a lovely SX Thinline someone had up on Ebay for about £100, natural finish with a pearl scratchplate. Missed out on that, and weighed up a new SX (£200) against the J&D, which was £113 but with a tort plate that I wasn't too keen on. Anyway, I put the detail aside & pulled the trigger, thinking I could pick up a pearl plate later for a few quid. Having got the guitar & looked into it, it turns out the proportions are quite different from a standard Fender fit plate - and the screw position & count is also different. The Fender plate (and the SX copy) have 4 screws along the top, between the front of the bridge/pickup surround & the neck pocket. The J&D - and the Tokai - both only have 3. Combine that with the very yellowy butterscotch finish, identical detailing and near-identical hardware, and to me they do look too similar for coincidence. My "thing" is old 70s/80s Japanese guitars, often Fender & Gibson copies & I'm aware how Japanese factories made generic instruments for various overseas importers/distributors, sometimes with slight variations but usually identical, and those instruments were sold with different names and often with vastly different prices. I have every expectation modern Chinese factories are just the same & I'm pretty confident the J&D Teles come from the same factory, if not the same production line, as the Tokai. Hope you'll excuse my banging on like this, but I do find this sort of thing unhealthily interesting! I suppose it only matters because the same guitar (if it is) being sold for 3x more makes the J&D seem even more of a bargain!

Genuinely curious - what differences are you seeing other than the headstock shape? The only thing I can see is that the neck might be set a couple of mm further back on mine, when you line up the 17th fret with the neck/body junction. Anyway, really amazed by how good a guitar it is for so little money - I bought it expecting it'd be a bit bit shoddy & I might have to do some work to make it play properly, but it really needs nothing. Even the shop setup was spot-on, the only thing I had to do was tweak pickup heights to balance their outputs. I might well have just got lucky & landed a good one but I'm tempted by some of the other J&Ds now. Got my eye on their shortscale Jazz, might be fun & a fraction of the price of the new Sire shorty.

It's an LBX60 - this is an '85/6 catalogue: A few years ago one of these came up on the local Gumtree for buttons, I think £60 or so. Me & another local BC member spent too long coming to a gentleman's agreement over who should go for it, and we both missed out!

Bizarrely enough, that's why I ended up with Tele GAS. Couldn't really get into the album (a massive step back/down from Hand Cannot Erase imo) but loved that big, brash guitar sound.

Late to this thread, otherwise would have very strongly suggested grabbing one of these for £118: J&D Thinline Tele Had one for about 18 months, quality is ridiculous for the money, and I've barely played anything else since I got it. And what's interesting is if you dig around, what looks like exactly the same guitar only with a Fender headstock & vintage style tuners can be had for 3x the price. That extra 200 quid buys you a Tokai sticker.

Exactly what I thought. I really, really like it but I'd have to buy this neck for it.

Hardly a Fender expert but I know a little about the MIJs & CIJs. Not seeing anything at all here that points to Japan.

That's an Aria 1720, from around 1970 - '72 or so, and looks, apart from the missing bridge cover, to be in original & unmolested condition. http://www.matsumoku.org/models/aria/catalogs/e70s_aria/e70s_aria_cat.html I'd be inclined to leave it as is, just give it a stripdown & thorough clean up - looks like there's very little corrosion to the metal parts, and all those knocks and bumps are its history. These are rare instruments these days, and pretty collectable - although not worth a fortune, they aren't without value, and are becoming more sought-after.

There was a radio version with different lyrics - interestingly changed to 'bikini'. I'm absolutely sure they weren't trying to be ambiguous or provocative at all with the original, though! 😄

If it's got original Rick pickups & electronics I'd think it's fairly authentic, the placement's fairly close to where they'd be on a Rick body. Although that in itself is variable as Rickenbacker specs & dimensions have changed over time - in the mid 70s the neck pickup spacing was moved to 1" from the fretboard end from the original 1/2", and also the position of the neck itself changed relative to the body wings (and therefore pickup position) at some point. Compare @prowla's '72 to a modern 4003 - on a current bass the fretboard heel aligns with the lower cutaway, whereas on Paul's bass the 20th fret itself is at that position. And speaking of @prowla's basses, I'd think his Rickenberger might be a good test case for whether it's pickups or pickup position that contribute most to the tone - it's a 24 fret, 34" scale bass & it looks like the pickups are largely occupying the original routes - so if it sounds like a Rick, then it's all about the pickups. Probably!

Oh, go on then, any excuse to recycle a very old joke: The PRick. ...sorry.

My Kasuga (MIJ, 1975) bolt-neck is 33.25". I'd guess the manufacturers that did both bolt & through-neck versions share the same dimensions between them, eg all Matsumokus are 34", Kasugas are 33.25" etc. Not 100% sure but I think it was only Hondo (MIK, Samick) that didn't have a neck-through variant. Apropos of nothing, the Rickenbacker 4080 twin-necks were bolt-on.

I have a maple board 4 string V7 fretless, on mine the dots are near-invisible, being sandwiched between the binding and the timber. Never gigged with it but under stage lighting they'd offer no reference point at all. You get used to not relying on them surprisingly quickly.

I used to make some of my income from buying, tidying/restoring & selling on, during that time the local car boot provided me with: 1962 Watkins Rapier 3 guitar: £7.50 1960s Jem Crybaby wah pedal: £10 Westone Thunder I guitar: £5 Squier Strat, E-serial 80s MIJ: £70 (the most I ever spent at a car boot) Antoria EB-3 copy - £30 As well as literally dozens of other less interesting projects and clean-up jobs, mostly budget 70s MIJ & MIK. Some cool stuff from Ebay, Gumtree & local Crack Coverters & pawn shops too: Squier Precision, early 80s SQ serial MIJ: £70 Squier Precision, mid-80s A-serial MIJ: £30 Ibanez MC150 Musician guitar, 1981: £70 Washburn SB-40 bass, 1983: £95 Westbury Track 2 bass: £50 Westbury Standard guitar: £60 And loads more not interesting enough to mention, plus some I've doubtless forgotten! 10+ years on, I regret not having a full list of this stuff - I lost most of the pics of everything pre-2011 in an unsalveagable hard drive incident. Such is life! If anything's the best deal I ever had though, it's this: CSL Jazz copy from 1980-ish, cost £60 from the pawn shop. I had every intention of doing a quick wipe-down, setup, new strings then flipping it for double what I paid - until I played it. It was, and remains, the best-playing bass I've ever laid hands on. It's been significantly pimped, this is what it looked like the day I brought it home: A few in the list above have been keepers but this is the one I'd grab in a fire.

Wouldn't have thought it would carry so far, me being out in West Lothian these days. Sorry, I'll knock it back to 10.

I've always thought it's because the Precision is sturdier and constructed more robustly, in order to afford the player an advantage in the event of an undead apocalypse.

I can tell you - despite appearances the Mudbucker, and the 8-pole bridge unit, are both single coils. Would expect they'll have numbers, date codes on Maxon pickups are thought to go back to 1971.

As I understand it, most crackling is dust/muck/contamination on the track, the noise is what happens when the contact passes over the dirty part, interrupting the signal, so it's a bit of both. Cleaner removes the contamination, but persistent crackling that doesn't respond to being cleaned suggests damage to the track. There should be enough gaps or openings in the back of the pot to get cleaner inside and onto the track.

Been using the same can of Servisol lubricating switch cleaner for about 15 years now. Always works, cost about a fiver.

Maybe he's 12, which is how come his dad's had it for as long as he can remember. Hard to believe anyone's really this dim.

He picked up the bass & started soloing, so they left the property & headed for the nearest bar.

In case anyone thinks no-one in their right mind would actually do this, then of course, you're completely right: However - it's been on this wall for nearly 6 years, and about 3 years at my previous place . And that Daion P weighs a ton. Apologies for the Indian restaurant wallpaper - no time to decorate properly when we moved in, and now it's fallen off the bottom of the list...

Correct - it's a shim for height adjustment, if you don't need it, don't use it!

Can't find much but MonoGram appears to be a budget current/recent Japanese brand, and their Fakers do look like generic MIC stuff.