Bassassin

If there's any doubt whether the so-called SB300 is a genuine SGC Nanyo, rather than one of the reissues, the hardware - specifically those early 90s Gotoh tuners, strongly suggest it's 90s MIJ. The way prices of these seem to be going, that looks like a pretty good deal for £200 delivered.

I have no reason to imagine I would ever have picked up an instrument if it wasn't for punk. In 1978, at the age of 15, me and a bunch of schoolmates sneaked into a pub to watch a punky/pub rock act who'd been making a bit of a name for themselves locally. On the way home, ears ringing, little minds comprehensively blown, and emboldened by a pint or two of shandy, we formed our first band. None of us could play or had ever thought about being in a band before, but we chose our instruments and (eventually) went ahead, bought them & learned to play. I chose bass because I didn't think I'd get away with asking my parents to help me buy a drum kit - and because I was a big Stranglers fan & wanted to make "that" sound. Me & my schoolmates never played together (although we all carried on playing) and I've never played punk rock. Some of the music was great (at the time, I'd say) but more than anything else it was a gateway. The bands weren't "rock stars" or millionaires, they looked the same as the kids in the audience & spoke the same language. The music was straightforward and accessible - previously I'd been into the likes of Alice Cooper and The Who, I would never, ever have entertained the idea I could ever pick up an instrument and actually play Halo Of Flies, or The Real Me - but thrashing along to Pretty Vacant or Peaches was no bother. I always struggled (and still do) with tribalisation of music & genres - good music's good music whether it's 2.33 of three chords and shouting, or whether it's 17 minutes of existentialism arranged in four movements, with varying time signatures derived from the Fibonacci Sequence. And my metric of what's "good" is what I happen to like. Doesn't make anyone else's taste wrong but I do question some of the entrenched attitudes.

20 years of regular roughhouse gigs should do it... Funny - I'm absolutely fine with used basses that have signs of a well-gigged life, in fact I think it does give "character" (or summat) and I quite like it on an old instrument. However if I buy a new instrument, I hate it to get damaged or worn-looking in any way. It's like I don't mind someone else having kicked the crap out of a bass, but I'd feel like a monster to treat it that way myself.

Very nice - Matsumoku-built Ripper, looks like it needs a wipe & a squish of switch cleaner, but otherwise tidy & complete. Someone very probably got a bargain there.

Highly unlikely. They will just be brand names used by distributors, probably completely unconnected to each other, who bought mass-produced instruments from the same factory. They will have coincidentally ordered the same instruments from the manufacturer's range, and had them badged with their own logo. The luthier branded example (and tbh I've never heard of him) is 99% likely to be the same - whoever owns or uses that trade name just bought some guitars from the same mass production factory. Worldwide there are likely dozens of different names on these instruments.

Slipped through a wormhole from a parallel universe where perfectly good & inexpensive headless hardware does not exist. Baffling.

Like it a lot, looks way better than the standard cheap-looking white. Puts me in mind of the original 1950s 4000, which had gold plastics. IMO works really well with Fireglo.

These basses with that headstock, and the 3-part laminated neck with the stripe up the fretboard were all over Ebay about 10 - 12 years ago. I remember this P/MM hybrid thing and an LP-shape too, which might've been a semi-hollow thing with F-holes. The brands were indeed Wolf & Mazeti but as they were about £200 brand-new, I seriously doubt they were luthier builds. I suspect that either the neck designs are straight copies of Thomas Bruneteau's, or that the luthier himself imported some of the same Korean/Chinese/Taiwanese (or wherever they came from!) mass-produced instruments with his name on. Much as I like a bit of oddness in a bass, I really don't think that headstock works, either aesthetically or in any practical sense. On the other hand the maple board with dark centre stripe looks great, IMO.

Until next time...

Looks well enough executed to me. Controls could've been better thought-out, by the looks. Don't really get the guitar/bass double-neck thing, but this looks pretty decent.

My old rock covers duo (bass/vocals, guitar/vocals, pre-recorded backing. F-off big PA) got a booking in a dodgy, out-of the-way little pub we'd never been to before. Small but decent crowd, went OK. During the 20-minute break between sets the two shadiest looking punters in the room came over and started chatting - and ended up offering to sell us the gear they'd robbed from the last band that played there! Needless to say, afterwards we packed the van in shifts, and never went back there again.

Excluding import duty nonsense (and ignoring CITES nonsense!) this one would be about £800 shipped!

Always loved the look of the Surfcaster and that one's gorgeous. Only wish they'd used the same snowdrift inlays on the bass that the guitar had. Someone on here was selling an utterly stunning Surfcaster guitar a year or so ago, bit of a bargain too. Anyway - purveyors of overpriced Chinese knockoffs Eastwood now do an overpriced Chinese knockoff Surfcaster bass. You might want to be sitting down before you look at the price. https://eastwoodguitars.com/products/surfcaster-bass /

A few less strings & some cheat lines and it might! Reminds me quite a lot of the "One Bass To Rule Them All" design idea I knocked up about 10 years back: Having since owned a twin-neck in real life, I'd scale down the body a lot to reduce weight. Done right it could be quite manageable...

Aria have previous for this sort of thing: 1985-ish SB-R60, unusual but original finish. I think it looks great. Apart from the bodged repositioned strap button.

The ad describing it as "very little use" might have put a few people off...

Funny thing is, that body shape & minimalist design would work really well on a full-scale headless build. I did say "99% of singlecuts".

Having one of those "wish I hadn't looked" moments.

Contracting elsewhere - Aria have never had their own factory. No idea who makes them now - most of the Japanese manufacturers who were prolific & respected in the 70s & 80s are long-gone. From memory, Fujigen, Iida, Dyna, Moridaira, Tokai, Terada are still going, and there will be others. The classic MIJ Arias were predominantly from Matsumoku but examples have turned up that are from Kasuga & Fujigen. After Matsumoku closed in '86, apparently some high-end MIJ production went to Tokai, while midrange & lower went to Korea.

If I remember the first listing did describe it as a Fender. That was pulled & it was relisted after the "error" was pointed out by several on here. So even if he doesn't know what it is (which he does, because I told him exactly what it is), he knows perfectly well what it isn't. Interesting that it's "sold" previously, been relisted and immediately bid up unfeasibly high for a beat-up copy. IMO quite obviously shilled to buggery.

I find 99% of singlecut basses absolutely foul to look at - would not be seen dead playing such a thing - even if it was a £15000 Fedora. Really don't know why theses vile, bulbous, lumpy things, with their extra 2kg of unnecessary wood, seem so popular with people who spend huge money on luthier-built basses. Likewise basses with more than 5 strings - which funnily enough seem to go hand -in-hand with a massive exotic-wood body-plank shaped like Snoopy's head. You just know someone's going to pick it up and start endlessly noodling out anaemic, bloopy-sounding, atonal "solos" don't you?

I think I've seen the document you're referring to, someone (can't remember if it was here or one of the FB guitar groups) linked to it quite recently. I've had several Hohner-branded instruments and was interested in researching them - but found two of them (an HVX-45 guitar, MIJ and from around 1982, and a slightly later Korean-made HTB-3B bass) did not appear in the list. I'd imagine it was collated from whatever existing records they still had, so various models were not included. As I say, I bought my B2A new in '85 - both the active & passive versions launched simultaneously. I remember drooling over them in my local guitar shop for a while before I could afford to get one!