Bassassin

I wonder if that depends on which Skids album is your reference point. I never liked Scared To Dance (too naive & basic-sounding) but got them properly them with Days In Europa & Absolute Game. To my ears The Crossing sounded like the natural follow-up to Absolute Game, & would suspect a lot of the music was written around the same time. Kind of agree about BC subsequently to that, Steeltown & The Seer lacked the cohesion & inventiveness of The Crossing, and by the time Peace In Our Time came out they were plainly being pushed to make music aimed squarely at US radio airplay.

Used RS66s for years, imo all the negative things about them are true - cheesegrater feel, they chew big divots in your frets, dead in a week. After I bought two consecutive sets with A-strings dead out of the packet, enough was enough. Strings of choice for me are Elixirs and have been for about 15 years now, and I always make sure I've got a few cheap 3-sets-for-a-tenner Ebay special packs lying around for emergencies. They're typically better than I remember Rotos being. Oh - and I hate that horrid red hairy crap they insist on wrapping around the ends.

Shillsville.

Great timing - going to be away until next week. I'm sure it'll be fine left in next door's bin!

I agree the way he treated his bandmates is pretty despicable but I can't help but be a bit impressed by how he managed to simulate an entire management/label/PR ecosystem, and convincing evidence of a fanbase & successful gig history. Maybe what's unique about Threatin is that using the web to do all this would be fairly inexpensive - I've known/known of a couple of bands who tried to play the system in somewhat underhanded ways, but broadly by chucking huge amounts of money around to see what would stick. One, in the early 80s, got picked up by a management company who thought a good way to launch a completely unknown band with no recorded material was to book the Hammersmith Odeon for their first gig & publicise the show with full-page ads in the big music papers of the day. I think about 20 people showed up. About 8 years back, a drummer mate got offered a US tour with a band, which he did. It wasn't quite a Threatin-level disaster, but he discovered that the bassist had received a massive compensation payment for an injury of some sort - and with that money financed the recording and manufacture of his entirely unknown band's album. He then decided the best way to publicise the album would be to (somehow) singlehandedly book a 15-odd date US tour, as well as TV & radio interviews & live appearances along the way. My pal, and a couple of guitarists got offered the gig as the original drummer & guitarists immediately jumped ship as soon as they realised that the whole thing was the bassist & his girlfriend/singer's vanity project. The gigs were all pretty much unattended, the TV appearances were local garden-shed cable TV stuff, they sold a grand total of zero CDs & t-shirts - and to add insult to injury managed to write-off the RV they hired for the tour before they got to the first show! The trip even involved stopping off at the Fodera factory in Brooklyn so the guy could pick up his new custom-order fretless!

It'd be a shame to re-purpose your Jack, @anzoid I'd just pick up a cheapo P, headless hardware set and power tools of your choice! Clone Hohner/Steinberger hardware is about £35 a set, including the headpiece. I've had a headless project in mind using this for some time...

Snap - well, kinda! Got mine as a bit of a beater/project off a BC member about 6 or 7 years ago, the finish was somewhat the worse for wear so gentle application of a heat gun persuaded it off. Interesting to find there's a clear basecoat with quite a nice satin finish over the wood, so no need for a refin. Yours is interesting - I've never seen an active Cort before, the electronics do look to be the same as the Hohner's. I have a B2A as well as the Cort, and the original Hohners were from the same Cor-Tek (Cort) factory in Korea. Curiously though, the necks are entirely different, the Cort's being more of a flattish Precision shape, while the Hohner is narrow at the zero-fret and very round-feeling. I'd assume the Hohner is modelled on the original Steinberger, as it's a licensed copy. This might interest you - Cort were clearly determined to get as much mileage as possible out of that Steinberger licensed hardware!

Looks like a P, but there are loads of old P copies around. And's that's a lot of money for a faked-up MIJ (maybe) copy with all forms of possible identification swapped for new, tacky knockoff parts. £150, if it's lucky.

Don't know the Korean ones particularly but IMO that's what this is. The SQ series MIJs have differences aside from the headstock - maple board, small, white split pickup, different scratchplate etc. A quick Google confirms the tuners on this - look like 2-screw Gotoh Resolites with hex-nut ferrules - appear to have been used on MIK Bullets. I've never noticed them on any other Squier or Fender.

That's absolutely stunning. Never owned a Bass Collection & had no idea they did a through neck... Will leave this one be though - best of luck @Roger2611

You 100% sure it was a Hondo? The 70s copies were made in Korea, by Samick - these all had blank neckplates & weren't great quality. J copies seem to be pretty uncommon compared to Ps but they would've been MIK too. Some later Hondos were MIJ, original designs and some better-quality copies in the Professional & Revival series. These were early 80s (& possibly very late 70s) and probably wouldn't have had Fender-style headstocks. I've seen Precisions but never a J in these ranges. Would assume they probably made them though.

Thanks! I tend to see it as a rather pitiful borderline obsessive-compulsive psychological disorder - but at least it doesn't hurt anyone...

It's a Japanese copy - an old one, but actually not a particularly cheap or low-quality one. It's a Fujigen Gakki-built model 2365B, which would have likely been sold badged as Antoria, but might possibly have been Ibanez. This can be ID'd with a pretty high degree of certainty by the 3-part quartersawn neck construction and the neckplate, which has the MIJ stamp on the lower-half, as did all Fujigens from this era. The full-size tunes (Gotohs) point to Fujigen too. Sadly it's a wreck in its present state - usually when these get repainted, it's over the original poly 'burst, but the finishhas been stripped from this one. In this condition it's a sub-£50 project & fingers crossed the truss rod's not bu99ered - too bad people don't Google what a Fender should look like before they bid! Btw @Roger2611 - you won't find a Hondo Jazz with MIJ on the neckplate - because they weren't!

I hate these things. I hate these things to the extent that I find myself being a bit alarmed by how much I hate these things. The only possible good use for a thing like this is for smacking the person that thought this was a good idea in the head. Repeatedly, until they see sense. Have I mentioned how much I hate these things?

Nothing bass-related, then! Wouldn't mind a maple board/lined fretless J neck off a Sire MM V7, for a project. And whatever kind soul gives it to me can re-shape the headstock to a Tele style, to save me doing it myself, cheers.

Outrageous bargain. A truss rod tweak will probably fix the neck bow, amazing how many people are superstitious/reticent about simple jobs like that.

All in all, that's one of the strangest listings for a mundane instrument that I've ever read.

Nail >>> Head.

He sells mostly drum stuff, apparently. Looks like he uploads these template listings and subsequently edits them to sell specific items. https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/funklefester/m.html?item=153237956986&hash=item23adb1a97a%3Ag%3AKbMAAOSwxyJbhHTT&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562 Maybe makes sense if you're listing a lot of stuff and don't mind what the run & end times of your sales are.

That's a rarity - early example, passive, single-pickup & 22 frets. Can't remember seeing this version come up before.

That is completely and utterly off its t!ts. I'm almost reticent to admit I sort of like it. Sort of. Some thought's gone into the shape of the body, and that looks like it's been fairly well done, certainly as far as the shaping's concerned. Don't know my Hofners at all, so I don't know what the neck/electronics are from, but I think this has originally been some sort of lefty conversion, hence the control positioning. Does look like it's had a few changes (mostly unsuccessful) in its life after that though. Not exactly sure it can be saved now, either.

Despite my being part of the half-century+ demographic, one of the bands I've seen this month (twice, in fact!) is Lifesigns, who are relatively new - their first album was released in 2013 and they've only been gigging since 2014. Not sure though if they count, being not-exactly youngsters themselves - their bassist (the delightfully batsh!t Random Jon Poole) is their youngest member at 49! I do think though, a perfect example of the irrelevance of age in music & creative arts, IMO Lifesigns are by far the best new(ish) band I've heard in years, and quite joyous (not to mention hilarious) live.

And they use UPS & DHL - which might not be good news for some.

Fortunately (for the future of the species), I'm a bassist not a guitarist, so there's little chance of that! However - it's been in the studio and was used on an album a band I was in made a while back. Because it has single-coil mockbuckers wired directly to the output, it's very, very bright-sounding, and contributed some very brittle, shrill-sounding harmonics that the guitarist couldn't coax out of a Strat or a Tele. Since then though, it's just sat in the corner, looking funny...