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British Basses


molecule

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When I am released from house arrest, I plan to visit guitar shops to find a P/J bass that suits me; I don't have a P/J or a J/J in my modest collection at the moment.  But yesterday, the thought occurred to me: should I be looking for a British made bass to help kick start the economy?

So can anyone recommend any British bass builders?  I am aware of the luxury end of the market like Wal, Overwater and Status Graphite, but are there people building basses for the ordinary player, without exotic woods and sophisticated e.q. systems?

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Jon Shuker will do builds as simple or as exotic as you like.

Same goes for ACG although none of his body shapes are Fender copies, if that’s what you’re after.

What’s your budget range?

Edited by CameronJ
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Check Anaconda Basses. Their Essence line looks like a good value for money. 

 

Edit: Oopps, I missed the “made” part; the Essence line is made in Korea IIRC. But still supporting a small British company I suppose. 

Their J4 and PJ4 are currently on sale for £820.

Edited by ordep
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1 hour ago, molecule said:

When I am released from house arrest, I plan to visit guitar shops to find a P/J bass that suits me; I don't have a P/J or a J/J in my modest collection at the moment.  But yesterday, the thought occurred to me: should I be looking for a British made bass to help kick start the economy?

So can anyone recommend any British bass builders?  I am aware of the luxury end of the market like Wal, Overwater and Status Graphite, but are there people building basses for the ordinary player, without exotic woods and sophisticated e.q. systems?

I have to confess I'm a big fan of the good folks at Overwater! 🙂

The thing with going to an actual custom builder is that you can choose to have, or not to have, things like exotic woods and sophisticated EQ systems. They'll put just as much skill and attention into building a passive alder slab PJ as a bells-and-whistles bass. You're the client.

Of the companies who import, I've heard several good reports of the Bass Centre models which I'm pretty sure are Korean made. Someone on here just got a Guy Pratt Betsy in the last day or two.

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1 hour ago, CameronJ said:

Same goes for ACG although none of his body shapes aren’t Fender copies, if that’s what you’re after.

What’s your budget range?

The RetroB shape is definitely a nod, wink and elbow towards the Fender shape. Likewise the J-Type, although I'm not sure if Alan is still doing that style.

Beautiful basses, but not cheap. They come up in the For Sale forum quite regularly, although I suppose that kind of defeats the OP objective.

 

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ACG

Alpher

Anaconda

Ashdown

Bass Centre

Burns

Chowny

Crimson Guitars

Enfield

Everson Basses (!)

Goodfellow or GB Guitars (basses!)

Gordon Smith

JayDee

Limelight

McIntyre

Overwater

SEI

Shuker

Status

Wal

Wilcock

Wilkes guitars (basses!)

Zoot

...these have been mentioned so far...

...and here are some more:

http://jacaranda-music.com/UKGuitars.html

Edited by itu
some more...
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Jon Shuker makes the signature model for one of our famous Precision bass players, JJ Burnell. It’s sublime in both more traditional configurations and Shuker’s “carbon lyte” carbon necked, chambered body versions.

or to put it another way, Jon can and will make exactly what you want with the added input of his years of experience.
http://www.shukerguitars.co.uk

 

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