Happy Jack

Carton gone. Oh well, I'll think of something.

Sad to relate, the hardcase in storage proved to be for the Magnum II rather than for this bass. Semi-rigid gigbag it is, then ...

We've all seen photos of the outrageous Magnum I & II basses with the bizarre body shape and the Jah Wobble connections. Well I have one of those too so I'm finding it hard to justify hanging on to this lesser-known Magnum III. To explain why they reverted to a more 'vanilla' body shape you really need to persuade @FlatEric to put in an appearance, but the two designs share more-or-less exactly the same electrics & sound, not to mention the very significant weight. That bridge gives new meaning to the concept of 'high mass' and was a one-off design by renowned engineer & inventor Charles Kaman ( https://www.kaman.com/our-company/our-founder-charles-kaman ), a man who is well worth reading up on. Not many people design & build helicopters for the U.S. Army and start up a top-notch musical instrument company in their spare time. That black strip up the back of the neck isn't a skunk stripe, it's carbon fibre. Less obvious is that there are another two such strips under the fingerboard. This isn't a neck that needs much truss-rod tweaking. The bass will be 40 years old this year, but is in remarkably fine condition. Very little by way of buckle-rash or random scratching. The hex socket is part of the bridge adjustment. Even the neckplate looks like it was designed to withstand combat in an armoured division. The neck is decidedly more Jazz than Precision, and it's 41mm at the nut. The immaculate decal hints at how well looked-after this bass has been. Shamelessly pinching the specs from another website: - Mahogany body and neck (but reinforced with carbon). - Ebony fretboard. - 34" scale. - Neck pickup: individually output-adjustable coils for each string! - Rubber damper - bridge vol + tone, neck vol + tone - Pickup selector switch Like all my sales here on Basschat this instrument is priced to sell, but the very low asking price also reflects the bass's one flaw - which is very hard to photograph. That very-slightly lilac hue that you think you can see is actually there, and it's more visible than these photos show. In the flesh, it's quite obvious that the finish (on the top only) has suffered some sort of 'bloom' which has stained the lacquer. It's not offensive, it's not in-yer-face, it is quite invisible from a distance or under stage lights ... but it's definitely there. That was factored into the price when I bought the bass, so I'm factoring it into the price now. Quite apart from all the on-going quirkiness, though, what makes these Ovation basses special is their truly astonishing bottom end. That enormous mudbucker at the neck does NOT sound like an uber-muddy Gibson EB0, it sounds like The Humbucker Of Doom and yes, you really can see individual volume adjustments for each string. With the neck p/u only selected and the tone rolled off, even strung with rounds (as it is now - my Magnum II has the flats) you get a magnificent dub tone. Re-string with flats and the dub becomes truly righteous. The long rail across the top of the pickups is an original fitment (even though it looks like an afterthought) and obviously provides a perfect thumbrest in every position. The bass is in Harrow (NW London) and I am perfectly happy to drive or tube a reasonable distance to meet in person. I am always reluctant to entrust high-end basses to a courier, any courier, but I will if I have to. My experience is that you should allow at least £20 for that. In storage I have the original hardcase for at least one of my two Ovations ... but I can't remember which! Hopefully it's for this one but, if not, I'll provide a good-quality semi-rigid gig-bag instead.

Using a plastic ruler (like the true pro that I am) I'd have said 45mm, but I guess it's a 44mm.

Hang on, hang on, I'm keeping the Mike Lull '54 P! A man doesn't need TWO surf/seafoam/turquoise/strangely greenish basses.

OK, here we have a bass with some history, perhaps even a chequered past. Basschat lifers may possibly remember the original story when I bought it many years ago. This was once a standard, all-original Fender Precision. By 'once' I mean 1984, if the serial number is anything to go by. When I saw it, it was hanging in the window of Wunjo's Bass in Denmark Street. Yes, it was that long ago that Wunjo's weren't in a dingy basement at the time. It had been carved about to add that '54 P-style single coil in entirely the wrong position, it had no pick-guard and the body was pretty ... erm ... distressed, the electrics were in a state, and there was a worrying stain on the back of the neck. It was so bizarre that I actually went into the shop to sneer at the thing. So Tom brought it out of the window, plugged it in, and passed it to me. Within a couple of minutes I had completely changed my mind. Despite looking like a complete dog, it actually played and sounded like les coulis du chien. The S/D humbucker was as majestic as you'd expect, and that huge single-coil added loads of rasp to the sound if required. Playing this bass through any solid-state amp instantly makes that amp sound like an all-valve jobbie. And so I bought it. Well you do, don't you? I was playing at the time in a gritty 3-piece and this bass just worked. So I took it to me old mate Andy Gibson and he came up with a pick-guard which seemed to match the look & feel of the bass, then he sorted out the wiring for me and installed a ToneStyler circuit & knob (that funny black thing). It has a bunch of detente settings, and a noticeably different sound to each 'click', way better than a standard tone knob. I think there may be capacitors involved. And that would have been the end of the story had the band not broken up, several years passed, and then I bought a bass with an even grittier tone than this is capable of. This bass has now been sitting in a hard case for three years and it seems like an awful waste of a veyr playable instrument. I should stress: This is a bass that is best played before you dismiss it. I don't mean 'first to see will buy', but I do mean that playing is believing. The bass is in Harrow (NW London) and I'm happy to meet anywhere within sensible driving or tube distance. It really is priced to sell (this is maybe half of what any other 1980s Fender Precision would cost) which makes it, effectively, a budget instrument so I'm also OK with sending it by courier. Assume about £20 for P&P. I'll have to check, but I may be able to dig out a cheap'n'cheerful gigbag for this bass.

The annual (and very reluctant) clear-out continues with this 2017 example in the now very rare & collectible (believe me, it's true ) mint green, or possibly Seafoam blue, or perhaps turquoise, or anyway a colour that is no longer available from Chowny. This is the example that Steve Chown took to NAMM (Anaheim, California) for the Jan 2018 show and then to the LBGS (London, England) for the Mar 2018 show, so clearly it's a bass that Steve trusts to sell his wares to both the trade and the public. I was lucky enough to play this bass at both shows. I nearly bought it at NAMM but the aggro of bringing it back to London put me off. When I found it on his stand in London two months later, I couldn't resist. Trouble is, I bought it for a project that I was trying to get off the ground at the time, and - no, seriously, I mean it - the project failed to launch. It's a dreadful shame and so on, but the reality is that I can't really justify hanging on to this. As you can see, the bass is in mint (see what I did there?) and flawless condition, the strings little played by comparison with a regularly gigged bass. It is also, as they say, 'priced to sell'. The bass can be collected from Harrow (NW London) or at a meet-up somewhere between there and the West End. Alternatively, and given that this is a budget instrument, I'd have no qualms in entrusting it to a decent courier. My experience is that we'd be looking at about £20 for P&P. Please note that this bass does NOT have a gigbag.