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Maddest headstock I've ever seen


Newfoundfreedom
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Hm. Jedistar.com says the acoustic guitar above was made by Karl Redlich in the 1990s.
Personally, I still can't see the difference between the "W" in WOLF and the one on NFF's bass, unless the lower left on the "W" on NFF's bass is rounded.

Still bewildered.

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Karl Reidlich may have been the name behind Mazeti. I'd heard that they were built in Germany. How Frenchman Thomas Bruneteau got to make identical guitars is a mystery right now

 

By the way, yes BT i see what you mean now about the similar W. It's all got a bit odd and confusing.  One W is rounded and curvy, the other is very sharp and angular, but there is a similarity

Edited by fleabag
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1 minute ago, BassTractor said:

Hm. Jedistar.com says the acoustic guitar above was made by Karl Redlich in the 1990s.
Personally, I still can't see the difference between the "W" in WOLF and the one on NFF's bass, unless the lower left on the "W" on NFF's bass is rounded.

Still bewildered.

Yup. That makes 2 of us. 

Either way it's a quirky looking thing. As I said earlier the payability of the neck is great. The only thing that puts me off slightly is the rest of the components look quite generic and low end to me. 

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1 minute ago, fleabag said:

Kind of strange ...Years ago,  I used to see Mazeti basses for sale on Ebay a lot.  Then they disappeared. I was so tempted to buy one, and never did.

There's a Mazeti guitar on there at the minute. Totally different style though. 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F253041915631

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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.

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Right. Now it's starting to make sense. I think we've probably cracked it. I wasn't playing or even looking at basses 10 years ago so these totally passed me by. I've genuinely never seen anything like it. I agree the luthier connection is most likely coincidental. All the gear, this bass included, came from a music shop closure. The guy who owns it all he's lived here in Bulgaria for 7 years and his shop was in the UK prior to that. So the timeline would fit. It's basically brand new but has been sitting in storage since the shop closed so now he's selling everything off cheap to get rid of as much of the gear as he can. 

I must admit I'm tempted to buy it on the feel of the neck alone, maybe strip the body back to bare wood, replace the electronics and bridge, and create something truly unique. 

If I told you I could get the bass for around £100 would you say it was worth a punt? 

Edited by Newfoundfreedom
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Don't think this has been mentioned yet, and all y'all are probably way ahead of me, but just in case:

I've tried to study the pics carefully, and in my mind the "W" on NFF's bass in the OP is exactly identical to the "W" from WOLF. However, it appears to be not a mother-of-pearl inlay but a shiny sticker that has been damaged. The roundness, AFAICS, is just lacking shininess. The patterns in the wood seem to indicate that. Also, the widths of the lines and the whole composition make it seem like an exact copy.

The logo beneath it, some type of scorpion, seems identical to a logo used by Mazeti on different models.

I wouldn't know what that all means, and I don't understand the thread anymore, but deemed it OK to mention that.

Edited by BassTractor
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1 hour ago, BassTractor said:

Don't think this has been mentioned yet, and all y'all are probably way ahead of me, but just in case:

I've tried to study the pics carefully, and in my mind the "W" on NFF's bass in the OP is exactly identical to the "W" from WOLF. However, it appears to be not a mother-of-pearl inlay but a shiny sticker that has been damaged. The roundness, AFAICS, is just lacking shininess. The patterns in the wood seem to indicate that. Also, the widths of the lines and the whole composition make it seem like an exact copy.

The logo beneath it, some type of scorpion, seems identical to a logo used by Mazeti on different models.

I wouldn't know what that all means, and I don't understand the thread anymore, but deemed it OK to mention that.

Yup. I concur. Although the logo and Scorpion we're definitely inlays. I scratched then with my thumb nail to see if they were stickers.  I've kind of got past the point of caring now anyway. I agree it's most likely one of the cheapo eBay basses having listened to what everyone else has said. Although I still maintain the neck was a thing of beauty regardless. I briefly considered buying it just for novelty value, but it seems it's not quite as unique as I had previously thought. 

Oh well, it's only a matter of seconds before my GAS takes me in another direction. In fact I have my eye on something on eBay as we speak. 😂

Edited by Newfoundfreedom
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Crikey, that's a blast from the past :lol: 

From what I remember, it looked like this pic except that the body wings were a pale wood (ash? Maple?). I bought it for absolute peanuts because the 3-band electrics were totally fkd. I bought a no-name 2-band EQ off ebay, turned the switch and third pot into a passive bypass & tone control, sold it on for a handsome cash profit although I did put some hours in. Perhaps I should have gone full-on MDP and turned it into a wide-spaced 4-string for players with really big hands. ;) 
As I said, it played very nicely and sounded really good, but the neck dive was huge thanks in part to its colossal headstock. I remember the build was surprisingly high quality though.

px-G15ES3861f.jpg

Edited by Rich
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53 minutes ago, BassTractor said:

@Rich, do you happen to know anything certain about the brands Mazeti and Wolf? Are they the same? Is this a cooperation?

 

Not the first idea, sorry. That bass is/was my only experience and knowledge of the brand(s). In the past I've seen identical instruments on fleaBay wearing either Wolf or Mazeti branding, they seemed to be interchangeable.

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1 hour ago, BassTractor said:

@Rich, do you happen to know anything certain about the brands Mazeti and Wolf? Are they the same? Is this a cooperation?

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.

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