Bassassin

I bloody love these! Kicked myself for ages after I once missed out on one here for £100! Couldn't justify it now as I'm not gigging & too lazy to sell any of my bass surplus to make space. Which is a shame as I'm FB pals with the seller, who's also a BC member, or at least used to be.

Right dull, drab lot I've got. Think there needs to be a green San Dimas P/J in my future.

The Chickenbacker bridge design seems to originate on Korean-made Shine copies from the early '00s: The Shines were pretty decent basses by all accounts, & came fitted with Seymour Duncan Rick-type pickups as standard. Never been hands-on with one but I think they had conventional Fender-ish neck/scale proportions. Like a few other Fakers from that era (Indie & Wesley spring to mind!) it seems they though they could get around RIC's litigiousness with a wonky headstock shape - John Hall's C&D letters set them all straight about that, so you don't see too many of any of them!

Same pickups as yours, by the looks. I suspect that suggests this is also the manufacturer of your bass. A quick Google of Melodija Worich brings up a green version of the above bass (which looks a bit inspired by Yamaha's BX-1) on a Talkbass thread: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/need-help-p-beginners-questions.844571/ Same tuners/bridge. I think Melodija Worich probably improvised this system around existing conventional bridges.

Odd question. Realistically the huge majority of gigging musicians, whether or not they started out in original bands, will end up in a cover band of one sort or another if they want to be out performing & taking home a few quid. Not really for me - I was in a cover band which ran alongside my original band in the 90s - with the same guitarist - basically because we were getting regular gigs, OK money & it helped subsidise the 'proper' band. It was fun & we had a regular crowd many of whom ended up coming to the original band's gigs, but I've never been drawn to playing covers just for the sake of getting out gigging. Maybe one day?

Looks an awful lot like the sort of generic Fender derivative you'd pick up for £120-odd from AliExpress. Might be quite an expensive sticker saying 'from the Glorious Motherland'.

Exploring Birdsong - 3-piece female-fronted, keyboard-led progressive rock. I think they're stunningly good. Their vocalist Lynsey Ward guested on Lifesigns' last album Altitude - checked them out & I think I like her band better! They've so far released 2 EPs, waiting with bated breath for an album & tour.

Unbranded Sildenafil?

Not much from pre-internet 80s & 90s bands, but my last gigging band (2000-2014) I have pretty much everything - helps that I did the all the art & web design so it's all stashed in a folder on a backup drive.

Fretless in hyper-technical death metal? Think he gets away with it. Cryptic Shift.

Silly, silly bargain. If that was a bit closer to me, I wouldn't be able to help myself!

On first impressions I'd put my 50p on that being a hand-made one off. That bridge/tuner system appears to be basically two 4-string bridges mounted together, maybe a replacement for a missing/broken & unobtainable original part: One similar to this: ...and something like this, modified as string retainer/tuner: The string clampling solution is perhaps a little inelegant, but that's otherwise a great improvised headless system.

Great bargain - these are actually pretty decent. As long as you don't catch something from it.

"I set fire to it then got bored."

It's quite an oldie, I'd expect it's what Jim Harley did before he teamed up with that Barry Benton.

Bloody hell - another one I completely forgot! Being old really f*cks with your memory. Also this - one of the greatest should-have-been bands of the decade.

Dunno how I forgot that - loved that album!

Big Country - The Crossing, Steeltown Marillion - Fugazi, Misplaced Childhood U2 - Unforgettable Fire Level 42 - A Physical Presence Rush - Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure - bügger it, everything! Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love Skids - Days In Europa, The Absolute Game I don't think music was better back then - but the good stuff was so much easier to find. Odd, that.

There were no Roadstar 1s. Roadstar 2 was meant to be Roadster 2, the 'a' was a typo they liked & stuck with. A bit like Donkey Kong! @bottomfeed's bass looks like an RB760 - single coil/bucker, binding, 24-fret.

To be honest, dating these things - particularly Matsumokus - can be a wildly inexact science! Matsumoku have used a variety of different serial styles, & for a bit did use the same scheme as Fujigen - letter for month, first 2 digits year etc but these tend to be later 70s & not that common. Older Mats serials, the 6 & 7 figure numbers usually seen on the 'Steel Adjustable' plates do appear to be random. I've seen early twin-necks with 2 entirely unrelated numbers. It tends to be the case that dateable serials in general began in the mid/late 70s. Fujigen started accurate numbering at the end of '75 and a lot of other Japanese manufacturers (and there were literally dozens at the time) followed suit. Prior to that there's really only old catalogues and pickup date codes to go on. Fortunately a lot of manufacturers used Maxon-brand pickups made by Nisshin Onpa, which were numbered from 1972 on - and that's what are on your CMI. Those units with the 3-screw fittings seem to be exclusive to Matsumoku and usually turn up on pre '74 instruments, so I was sort of assuming it would be from that period. Of course old MIJ is sufficiently weird that there are always outliers & exceptions! Can you tell I've spent way too much time thinking about this stuff?

Not me! I just have an interest in MIJ basses from this period - certainly with the JVs (& to a lesser extent the subsequent SQ, E & A-serial instruments) the prices have skyrocketed over the last 10 years or so. People are working out that stuff that was seen as throwaway 30-odd years ago was often better than the high price stuff from the same era. I'm not really a Precision player but I have had a few - by far the nicest was an '84 SQ Squier.

What's odd about the aggrieved reaction to PT with no live bassist/PT with no Colin is that it was always a just vehicle for Wilson's own compositions, not a democracy. It's interesting that the current album's probably their most collaborative, as it does seem to have developed from jams with Harrison & Barbieri (seemingly with Steve-O playing bass) rather than him beavering away over his Tascam 4-track & presenting the band with songs to learn. To my ears, the best of SW's solo work (eg Raven, Hand Cannot Erase) isn't wildly different to Porcupine Tree.

£827. Not bad for a JV these days, have seen them hitting 4 figures over the last few years. Looks tidy enough, although the body appears to be in better condition than the rest of it so I'm inclined to think refin, but maybe not that recent.