lemmywinks Posted March 21, 2019 Share Posted March 21, 2019 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rare-vintage-80s-headless-bass-possible-Hondo-Alien-Kramer-Duke/323739290261?hash=item4b605d8a95:g:DOwAAOSwhBpcjOs- Seller isn't sure what this is, @Bassassin will probably know though! Looks shabby, non original knobs and has been refinished. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassassin Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Actually, I don't! Can't profess to be much of an expert on Dukes/Aliens, but I do know they were both bolt-neck - typically you'd be able to ID a Duke from the neckplate. If there were through/set neck versions of either, then I've never seen one before. However I'm inclined to err in the direction of Hondo with this one, aside from the Schaller bridge, hardware looks lower-end, and I think the Kramers had a hex-pole DiMarzio pickup. It's sort of cool, but a bit of a mess for £170. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Interesting this. I have a Hondo Alien. It has a bolt-on neck and no truss rod. The neck itself has an aluminium spine and aluminium up the sides under the fingerboard, with wood filling in the gaps, just like the Kramer. Bought for an '80s tribute gig and gathering dust ever since! There's a theory that towards the end of the production run Hondo turned the Alien into a set neck without the aluminium, to cut costs, and these were also rebranded as Phantom guitars and possibly other brands too. This talkbass thread has some info, and pictures. https://www.talkbass.com/threads/dukes-vs-aliens.788654/ Definitely not worth £170 in it's present condition, and without the hard case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassassin Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Interesting thread - I didn't know the original Alien also had the alu neck components like the Kramer. Someone in the thread suggests the Aliens & Dukes came from the same factory. So did Kramer outsource production to Samick in Korea? That's where the Hondos would have come from. No surprise to me that they were available with different brand names, this was common practice with Korean factories such as Samick & Cort, and also many Japanese manufacturers from this era. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Not sure about Kramer outsourcing production. If they did, they kept quiet about it. All the aluminium neck Kramers were branded as made in America. My Hondo has a 'Made in Korea' sticker on the neck, plus a quality control stamp of some kind so I think you are right about Samick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Definitely not a Kramer. It does share some similarities with the aluminium necked- Hondo Alien that I used to own - 2 screws on the neck-end string retainer (Kramers only had one). My Alien also had what looked like a Schaller 3D Bridge, but it was made of some weedy metal unlike the real thing. AFAIK All Kramers were made in New Jersey USA. The headless Duke was made simply by sawing off the headstock off their stock necks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassassin Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 4 hours ago, BigRedX said: AFAIK All Kramers were made in New Jersey USA. That's what I assumed. Interesting about the bridge, I've seen plenty of 3D-ish copies which were very similar but lacked the roller saddles, never seen a dead-on clone though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BreadBin Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 Paging @anzoid - can you shed any light on this oddity? 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alyctes Posted March 22, 2019 Share Posted March 22, 2019 I have a Duke and an Alien. The Alien has an aluminium neck, which was a bit of a surprise because I'd always been told that they had wooden necks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prowla Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 Spotted on Facebook, £150 . https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1724614328036845/ (I didn't know they had aluminium necks and a search brought me to this thread.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 Not all Hondo Aliens have aluminium necks, although it looks as though the one in the Facebook link does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassassin Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 Looks really tidy. If it was local to me, I'd be half-tempted to make a cheeky lowball offer just out of curiosity. Although I did play one of these in a shop when they were new (first headless I ever touched, in fact) and my initial impression was that it was rubbish. IIRC the guy in the shop apologised & said it "wasn't exactly a Steinberger". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prowla Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 3 minutes ago, Bassassin said: Looks really tidy. If it was local to me, I'd be half-tempted to make a cheeky lowball offer just out of curiosity. Although I did play one of these in a shop when they were new (first headless I ever touched, in fact) and my initial impression was that it was rubbish. IIRC the guy in the shop apologised & said it "wasn't exactly a Steinberger". I was half-inclined to make an offer, but I just plain don't get the idea of a headless with regular tuners at the opposite end; I thought the same about a real Kramer I saw a while back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassassin Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 1 minute ago, prowla said: I was half-inclined to make an offer, but I just plain don't get the idea of a headless with regular tuners at the opposite end; I thought the same about a real Kramer I saw a while back. Back when these came out, I had no idea the Duke existed, never mind that the Alien was a knockoff - I just assumed it was a cheap, low-effort way of making a headless bass. To be fair, I 'borrowed' that concept with my first guitar (originally a Columbus SG copy) after it had a minor accident... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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