Kowad

Wow! Fantastic provenance! So glad you found this. It plays beautifully!

I would buy that bass!

Lower pickup cover there is bang on! As is the neck join. I'll add, the bolts on the back are f***IN MASSIVE! 😂 I'll get a picture of them sometimes, they are chunky! Perhaps that is a Yamaha thing (that was a part of the appeal tbf, I have a decent selection of basses but nothing from Yamaha). The body gets very fruity compared to this - the knobs are way out of whack, and the foremost of them is *behind* the bridge. This is a LONG bass (though the scale is certainly not long / outlandish). I don't think the body could have been shaped from this - no signs of joins, smooth and continuous grain (from the looks of it) etc. I'm currently trapped under a very small Labrador, I'll have a closer look later!

Regrettably, I like both of my kidneys.

Perhaps worth adding that this definitely checks out. I could have done more due diligence but did at least check the serial number. I doubt this is going to add much / anything useful!

IDENTICAL!

HA it turns out it is! My reverb feed is set up for interesting fretlesses, this pinged through and I had a bit of a SHALL I SHAN'T I but tbf the indecision did NOT last long 😂

Pickup selectors! (On / off).

Good morning! This arrived today. A MYSTERY YAMAHA FRETLESS. 1988, LOOK AT THAT FRETBOARD oh my goodness, never seen one of those before! Very little further info, just unpacked, played briefly (plays beautifully!) and I'm into meetings all day, eurgh. Curious - has anyone seen one of these? Any ideas of provenance / history / context? Others like this? Bought from reallygreatguitars, who thinks it may be a one-off / prototype. ANY THOUGHTS OR INFO WELCOME, what a stunner!

Oh I’ll add to this. I was responsible for dual fuel at a house for one week. I got start and end readings. You’d think it’s that simple right? Only they f***ed up the start and end dates and then closed the account with estimated readings. They were then (they said!) unable to change the dates on a closed account. I worked out what I owed cost per unit, daily standing charge, VAT), I’m going to guess it took 3 months to sort out with perhaps 40 emails and a good few phone calls. And multiple - multiple! - photos of the meters. They even denied that the meter in the photo was the meter they had the serial number for in the house at one point, I can only quote my response, “that is a you problem.”

Bought a heavily edited Jaco Pastorius signature from @Lukasz Chyla, the editing was much of the appeal! Very responsive, very swift shipping, robustly packed, very happy to recommend all round. Cheers Lukasz!

Cheers for this, actually my intro to cissy strut. Went and found the tab, have been playing it for a solid week. Greatly enjoyed. reminded to post bc I’m in the gym atm, listening to apple’s essentials The Meters playlist 😂 Cheers!

Spent my last £1k on a top end Dell that was meant to see me through a masters and PhD in 2006-7. Timing was peak Vista, it crashed about once a day, and had the blue screen of death needing a full factory reset at least once a week! Before I bought it, other students had recommended macs, and I was fully “nah! Look how much better the specs are on this dell!” But within 12 months I’d bought my first Mac and I still buy my own macs so I can continue to avoid my employer’s freely provided windows machines 👀 Windows trauma. I swear.

I have this problem back to front, I'm convinced the riff going through my head on repeat for the past 5 weeks is ACTUALLY QUITE A FAMOUS TRACK, but I've come to think it actually isn't. Because it's none of the things I thought it was. So, thought I was hearing non-new music, may have accidentally composed what should frankly be a phenomenon.

Or Poultry in Motion. A lot of them have hidden text on the rear of the panels too, often referencing obscure Aussie films and / or mid-90s gabber. There's one of everything he's designed in that rack (apart from the most recent releases, which are on my desk but haven't yet been built). It became a bit of a lockdown mission / obsession 😂 I haven't used it for anything bass related, though it should be possible to do so in principle 👀

A scout of reverb was showing one of these at $4180 (or so) preorder in the us. Not that I was looking. 👀

Replaced a flat tyre myself. Took the wheel to Halfords. £20 puncture repair check, £20 off a tyre if it’s unfixable. Called within an hour; unfixable, we can put on a £210 replacement tho. I’m between meetings, sounds steep but running, so ok. Check Halfords website. They don’t sell any tyres that fit for north of £170, and that’s a specialist winter tyre?! Seek clarification later; it’s a £156 tyre. If you book to have your tyre replaced, it’s £156. However, this was an unbooked replacement following a puncture check, so that’ll be £210 minus the initial £20, thanks. I kicked up enough of a fuss that i was “only” charged £170, but what a scam! Never again.

Appreciate all of this, similar to some of the truss rod content I’ve been reading up on 😂 I have a p bass that I keep on parking. Even when the truss rod is fully tightened (and locks), there’s still more of an 8th fret gap than I’d like. There are indications that the previous owner also struggled with it - both pickguards that came with it are heavily chipped around the truss rod adjustment access point. I’ve thought, several times, that I should get a luthier to do a professional setup. I’ve spent the weekend tinkering with pretty much everything and it is currently playable. But the truss rod limit nags at me. Is it usual to have a bass that may be just about right when the rod is fully tightened? I feel there should be more play in it. Haven’t had anything like this much beef from any other bass!

The Diva was my second bass. I figured, if I’m going to be shit and out of my depth on an instrument, I might as well be shit and out of my depth on something that is both gloriously beautiful and unnecessarily hard (ie, fretless). That it is so utterly lovely also convinced me to spend a lot more time with it. My very first bass was a 4003s. And I loved that bass very much, too. Tbf, I loved the 4003s and the marleaux so much between them, that when I discovered fretless rickies existed i couldn’t resist. I absolutely 💖 both of these (tho if I’m entirely honest, the 4003 slightly more). The 4003 was also my intro to tapewound strings, which was yet another a very lovely introduction indeed.

I'm only aware of this thanks to eurorack! I have a few WMD bits upstairs (but not one of these. Which I still don't fully understand 😂)

I think this may be an autism thing (or tbf a 'ways of learning' / not knowing what I'm doing & learning on my tod thing) but I moved from trying to play bass like a guitar - reverb, delay, chorus - to wanting pure tones and just throwing in a bit of EQ / filter, to now being much more interested in fuzz, grit, distortion and drive. I have a darkglass vintage ultra microtubes, I wonder if I would have gone for something more aggressive if I'd bought it a year later.

I picked up both of these on weds. Haven’t had much time with them yet. I’ve had a look at the c4’s interface and, whilst I’ve built a tonne of eurorack, am currently baffled (but enjoying a few presets). I want to get an adapter so I can connect it to my phone. I am enjoying the big muff! But want a proper chunk of time with it (and the manual). First new pedals in some months.

Can I ask, what are the shelves? Keen to establish something similar, I've been cluttering my pedal board for too long, and tbh I need a better solution than sticking unused ones to the side of my Minimark with board tape 👀

Ok so not my only fretless, but oh my god. Is it absurd to say I was expecting just a touch of buyer’s remorse? Not even a smidgen. Just glorious in every way. I have been lost in it since it arrived - I think only a couple of weeks back, but it feels like a year 😂