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Gibson grabber copies


javi_bassist
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Hello guys! I looked for a similar topic but I dodn't find anything. 

I've always liked the Gibson Graber (why no reissue??). In any colour actually. And the moving pickup. It has something. Of course, I'd love to have one and I will eventually (I hope). However, in the meantime, I've seen some brands which make good copies and some brands that made more budget friendly copies. I'm looking for some info about good copies. One of those popped up in my area but when I wrote the seller, it was already gone. I don't remember the brand. Do you guys know some good Gibson Grabber copies?

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70s Japanese copies were sold with various brands - Maya, as mentioned by @Grahambythesea Avon (which I had 10+ years ago) and various other names. These all seem to be rebrands of the same bass, thought to have been made by Chushin Gakki, and were very accurate copies. A bit hefty, certainly, but well-made & a good player. If I recall the neck profile was P width but quite shallow, pretty high output & a reasonable range of tonal variation moving the pickup.

grabfront.jpg.2a2b65ac40fa00d146b0be65a03d9312.jpg

Quite hard to find, like a lot of old MIJ stuff now, wish I'd kept mine! Some better pics of a nice one in this old TB thread:

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/70s-gibson-grabber-copy-incredible-orig-cond-sliding-pickup-maple-neck-orig-hsc.1164324/

There was also an Italian-made copy, made bt Melody, these turn up very infrequently & as far as I can tell were good & pretty accurate. Never seen one in the flesh, but some decent pics here:

http://guitarz.blogspot.com/2018/06/gibson-grabber-bass-copy-by-melody.html

The recent Epi version is probably easier to find than either of these, but (someone correct me if I'm wrong here) not a true Grabber as it didn't have the sliding pickup, iirc it had a standard split P unit.

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1 hour ago, Skybone said:

I'd love to see Gibson do reissues of the Grabber and Ripper basses (and the Victory), but I doubt it'll happen.

They have done "modern" remakes in the past -

Grabber - 2009 as the Grabber II
Ripper - 2009 as the Ripper II
G-3 - 2012 as the Grabber 3 '70s Tribute

I can't imagine you'll ever see the Victory again - it wasn't a great success when it was out and unlike the Grabbers/Rippers/G-3s, no subsequent artists of note were seen with them to generate the kind of nostalgia buzz required.

That plus right now you'd need to stick some dynamite under Gibson's behind to get them to do anything interesting in the bass sphere right now...

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  • 8 months later...

In fairness you'd probably be better selling the Hipshot sparately, assuming you still have the original bridge. These old MIJ basses have slipped in to collector territory, so non-original parts & refins will have a tendency to discourage a lot of that market, and devalue the instrument regardless of the quality of work & parts.

 

Value is hard to estimate because there's a distinct lack of examples of these to compare to. I used to buy & sell a lot of old MIJ stuff 10-15 years ago and I tend to look at what I'd hope to get for it if it was mine. In original condition, with what I know of the market these days I think I'd be hoping for maybe £250-£350.

 

And if it was mine I'd be getting the acetone & T-Cut out, hoping the original clear lacquer's still there under that matt black.

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