Bassassin

We are ALL Melvyn Whittaker!!! Anyway, I presume that Melvyn Whittaker was a customer with enough spare cash to commission a bunch of instruments from Zemaitis, and end up with a collection of 'unique' ones. His name on the trc of this bass says he bought it for himself rather than 'collected' it..

Look like someone's already removed the neck & used screws rather than glue when refitting it. Which is sensible. I've had a couple of bolt on guitars which were like that from the factory. No idea why it's black, though!

Arguably for that kind of money you could buy a time machine back to 1982 & get Tony Z to build you one for £500.

The original MIJ SBs have wide nuts & narrow spacing (although I think wider than a Fender at the nut) but if weight is an issue they're probably not the best option.

Eh up! That's pretty cool, 1980-ish, original-ish design. I don't know much confirmed info about the brand but this will be typical nice quality & if it stays around £200, a decent price for an unusual bass. I don't think these were Fujigen - possibly Chushin Gakki, & I think there's even been some speculation they came from Kiso Suzuki.

A word of warning about the bolt-neck on these. On mine, and on at least one other version (a 'Northern' branded Kasuga for the Canadian market, with maple-leaf inlays!) the neck tenon's glued into the pocket as well as screwed. If necessary it may be possible to remove it but will take a lot of care. This is further complicated by the detail that the Maxon neck pickup is an accurate copy of the toasters used in 60s/70s Ricks, in that it's actually a guitar pickup with 6 poles. In order to mitigate weakening the neck joint, the tenon is drilled for each individual pole, making it potentially fragile if you're attempting to dismantle it. This is that Northern Kasuga - look at the little maple leaves! Anyhoo, mine has actually had a repair at the neck joint at some point, either the result of a 'normal' accident or a bodged neck-removal attempt. Fortunately it's rock-solid and the bass is ridiculously playable, action as low as you want without fret buzz. Mine's pretty convincing-sounding - I've never had a 'real' one to compare it to but it's not hard to coax a late '70s Geddy Lee growl out of it. Worth mentioning that the circuitry's accurate to the original 70s basses, and they have the .0047 treble cap fitted. I bypassed mine which gave it a bit more depth & guts.

Vintage do have a reputation for good quality at sensible prices - but the custom shop 'Inspiration Gallery' does lean heavily on belt-sandered mashups of random Fender-style components. Was hoping for a bit more inspiration - I think if I wanted a belt-sandered Fender mashup, I'd probably make my own.

Actually, early 70s, he probably did. Was probably a JB after all!

That's probably this very one, then! Also have an idea that Jim Lea played a shortscale Faker made by JayDee, although that was probably a one-off. John Birch's Fakers were enough of an irritant & an infringement that they got a C&D off Big Johnny Hall, back when Big Johnny Hall was stomping around chucking out legal threats left right & centre. Also, I seem to remember the Rick type actually having 4001 as its catalogue model number! I think they deserve to be on the list. Unfortunately I'm far too mentally disorganised to write a book about MIJ basses - there are several reasons, the main one being there's not enough definitive info to fill more than a short pamphlet, and half of that will have been revised by the time it got to print. I am also a sufficiently undisciplined writer that I fear there would be a tendency to veer away from a detailed comparison of typical through-neck constructions across three separate manufacturers, into a twisted hellscape of eldritch horror pornography where the shrieks of the damned and doomed echo across an apocalptic wasteland of blackened, creeping, undead flesh, beneath a leaden, burning sky as a baleful and bloody moon rises. Although that might serve to broaden any potential readership demographic. And yes, @WHUFC BASS - they are pretty rare. I've had one for nearly 20 years & I think I've only seen 2 or 3 (including yours) come up since. I do need to get some new pics of it.

Custom's a weird one - first time I saw one was a 70s LP Special copy which turned up in Edinburgh, maybe 15 years ago. After doing a lot of digging, they mostly seemed to be in Holland, Germany - or here in Central Scotland, although mostly in Holland. I post on a number of MIJ-related FB groups (no surprise!) and someone fairly recently connected Custom to a particular retailer in the Netherlands. Hopefully I have a note somewhere, if not I may have to trawl through several years worth of posts! I think the Scottish connection may well have been Grant Music in Glasgow & Edinburgh, run by the highly entrepreneurial Jimmy Grant in the 70s & 80s - they had their own Grant & Grantson brands, which had full UK distribution, and imported/distributed various instruments. So I wonder if Grants may have re-imported surplus Custom instruments from the brand's owners, or something like that. Gerritsen/Gerrinez came up years ago on the old Ibanez Collectors World forum - seems they weren't Fujigen, or anything like Ibanez quality - according to Dutch posters, the name was just an attempt to make an association. The same thing happened with brands like 'Isonez' & 'IBZ' - both nothing to do with Ibanez!

J'arrive! Eventually... And you'd be 100% correct! And you'd be 100% incorrect! Well - maybe 75%. Several brands you mention did source at least some of their instruments from Matsumoku - but the OP's bass isn't one of them. That one's a Kasuga EB-750, made by Kasuga Gakki in 1975-ish, at their own factory in Nagoya city. Of the other brands, Ibanez was made exclusively by Fujigen Gakki, Custom (a local brand from the Netherlands) sold through-neck Fakers made by Matsumoku, and *possibly* Yamaki Gakki. I've not seen a Pearl-branded Faker but the sub-brand Vorg By Pearl sourced their bolt-neck Rick copies from Matsumoku. Aria & Aria Pro II all came from Mats, and the Aspen in the pic has Grover copy tuners, which only appear on Matsumoku Fakers. Just to bang on a bit more, aside from the factories mentioned, both Chushin Gakki & Kiso Suzuki made their own versions, and it looks highly probable that the 70s manufacturers' co-op Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai may have had both through & bolt-neck examples. On top of that, there are a slew of MIJ Rick copies that don't come from any of the aforementioned sources (there are always detail differences) so must have come from Moridaira, Kawai Gakki, Terada Gakki, Iida Gakki, Daina and so on and so on. And that's without taking into account 70s & 80s Fakers from Korea, Italy, Brazil, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, and even right here in the U of K!

Exactly that. At first glance I thought it was a luthier build, but those old MIJ Gotoh tuners give it away. Reshaped headstock, & look closely enough & you can see where the original 3-point bridge mount holes have been filled.

There were some 90s MIJ Squiers (Silver Series?)- so I expect if the serial checks out & it's labelled as MIJ it's genuine. These don't go for as much as 80s E & A serial basses (never mind JVs or SQs) but they're well-regarded. I might be MIJ-biased, but aesthetically I'd definitely go for the Squier - black & black pickguard is the best look for a P.

Does it sound anything like a Rick? Looks like, with the limited space that 24 fret neck allows, pickup positioning's closer to a Jazz than a Rick.

No personal experience but yes, Fernandes Fender types from the late 70s/early 80s were probably made by Tokai Gakki in Hamamatsu. Fwiw these aren't 'lawsuit' instruments - that's a term only really applicable (and even then, there's some debate) to Ibanez-branded Gibson copies which pre-date the 1976 headstock redesign.