Bassassin

I recently got a pair of these for my very long-term SB Elite B&G resto (in many ways in worse condition than yours!) and they are excellent quality and look the part. I'd recommend grabbing these rather than fruitlessly searching for years for originals, like wot I did. Replacement pickups, if necessary, are available from Rautia and Dan Armstrong, as far as I know the Rautia versions are exact reproductions, that's what I'll be sticking in mine.

Think I've seen this, or something similar before. I wonder what possesses someone to wake up one morning with the thought, "today, I'm going to make something pointless, horrible and rubbish. And then try to sell it". Makes me think of this tw@t: I'm not a remotely violent person, but I'd happily take that and beat him over his idiot head with it until he stopped.

Seen her with Old Vince a couple of times, she's a fine player. For reasons of authenticity, not a patch on Michael Bruce or Glen Buxton though.

In my experience, too little break angle can cause open strings to vibrate in the nut - remember a fretted string has pressure holding it down. On one bass, the A has an audible overtone when played open, which turned out to be the string vibrating on the other side of the nut.

Always cut to length. Measure enough for 3 turns around the post (exact length depends on the size of the post) bend 90 degrees & cut, leaving about 15mm to insert into the post. Never, in 40-odd years of string changing have I experienced unravelling windings. Never used Newtone & probably won't, if they're fussily made and would necessitate a mess of unused string either wrapped around the post or waving around & jabbing the guitarist in the eye.

Repaired headstock and missing its original scratchplate with the MOP eagle design - but that's still a silly bargain. A bit of a tidy up, and an unscrupulous flipper (not that I know anything about that!) could probably double their money.

May be a fair point, @Happy Jack, not following Ebay listings too much these days (combination of the bargains drying up & me having a "proper" job!) but I've had a beat-up but fixable MIJ Faker on watch for a week with every expectation of it being pulled. Runs out today and still there. Not bidding, just curious. So yes, they're arguably less zealous but I wonder if it's as much to do with the proliferation of unaccountable and un - C&D - able Chinese copies around these days, which really weren't there in JH's heyday. RIC is still a small, family-owned business and if they were chasing all these they probably wouldn't have the time or the money to actually make guitars. I still maintain, if they had any sense they'd license a decent, accurate budget range with legit Rickenbacker branding. That would kill new Fakers stone dead and make them a shedload of money at the same time. Trouble is, who'd pay through the nose for a shoddy, insanely expensive US-made Rick then?

Pretty sure it's fretless. Board looks lacquered/epoxied and if you zoom in it looks like the coating's lifting around some of the fret lines.

Fretted 4 is of interest, can (sort of) justify a project 32" if it's a sensible price!

The Stranglers - why I am a bass player. Rush - why I compose and play the music I do. Big Country/ Stuart Adamson: why I compose with guitar, and my instruction manual for songcraft, melody, The Art Of The Hook, and responsible for my tendency towards the anthemic and epic.

Fair enough. Time to, erm, steer the thread back on-topic...

Not sure tbh. Can't really ac-cow-nt for it.

You lot are easily amoosed!

Ludicrously expensive dullard copies.

Cheers Andy - the finish I ended up with wasn't what I expected - didn't think I'd get as much of a coating as I did. Applied it thinly with a cloth, but once it started building up, I kept going to see what it would do. Must have had 15 - 20 coats over the course of a couple of weeks or so. Quite pleasantly taken aback at how glossy it turned out, thought it would be more subtle. So I'm thinking now of using different techniques on the through-neck, using Danish for both areas but slurry/impregnating the neck. There will be a build dairy for this, once I get around to starting.

Just wondering about the differences between the various oils. I've used Danish oil on a body with great results, but the finish seems to retain a slight gumminess, even after a couple of years - pretty sure I could scrape it visibly with a fingernail if I tried. While this is fine on the body, it does make me unsure whether it would be robust enough for a neck. I'm planning an oil finish for through-neck project & wonder if products like Tru-oil harden off better, or if they're much of a muchness in this regard.

Indeed. And therefore this entire thread, every opinion expressed herein, and even its title, is pointless. And following that rule, so are roughly 93.72% of all the topics and posts that have ever been made on BC. Anyway, I'm off to have an existential breakdown over the pointless futility of my worthless existence. Again.

Sounds to me like the rod's having no actual effect. When you're tightening it, are you manually flexing the neck back to de-tension the rod? You should be able to tell if it's reaching the limit of its adjustability before it can affect neck curvature. If that's what it is, a couple of washers under the allen nut should give you a few more turns and hopefully restore function.

Agreed. It's wilfully incongruous and quite deliberately hideous.

I wouldn't rule it out... However, while Guya/Tokyo Sound was a major manufacturer in the 50s/60s, they went bankrupt in 1969. The company was revived and the brand continued into the 70s, appearing on copy-era instruments (as you can see) - but it's not clear whether it was still a manufacturer in its own right. Most likely it was just the brand, which was well-established and high-profile in Japan, being used on other manufacturers' products.

You could look out for one of these: Aria STB-GT from about 12 years or so back. Not string-through but that would be a pretty simple mod.

Shame about the pickups - some (those made by Maxon/Nisshin Onpa) have ink-stamped serial/date codes underneath but others don't. Apart from Maxon & Goto/Gotoh it's not at all clear how many pickup manufacturers were operating back in the day & it's thought some factories wound their own anyway. Really all that would've done is pin down a year, but I think it's safe to say it's late 70s, as the neck unit's a Hi-Gain clone, earlier basses tended to have toasters.

Good question. I can tell you what it's not: Fujigen (Ibanez, Greco) Matsumoku (Aria, Kimbara, Greco, various US brands) Kasuga Yamaki (JooDee) Gherson All of the above have distinct characteristics and are easy to spot. Although I'd probably still put a tenner on someone rocking up & saying "it's an Ibanez". But it's not. I'm 99.6% confident it's Japanese & mid/late 70s, though, so probably not Giannini. The closest match I've seen is Fresher, these are thought to have been made by Chushin Gakki. Some pics on a guy's Flickr here, apart from the logo I can't see any significant differences. The problem with Fakers (and other 70s MIJ copies) is that the more accurate they are, the harder it is to ID them. Fakers tend to have brands on truss covers - which have a tendency to get binned! Lots were sold unbrabded too, and it's possible/likely this one was. Have a look under the pickups - there may well be date codes stamped on them. Won't narrow down a maker but it'll give it an age.

Fella can sing alright, but to my ears it's identikit mawk-by-numbers, headed straight for a regular Jools slot. Nothingremotelyunusual/10