Bassassin

One day I'm going to get a cheap Strat & take a bandsaw to it!

Thank you - but I never cease to be dismayed by how I can retain such a lot of inconsequential guff, while at the same time knowing absolutely nothing of any actual value or use to anyone! Possible - once the Japanese really started to find their groove, the "big" names did start to get worried. The copy era roughly covers the years between 1970ish and around 1978 - and the Norlin/Elger spat brought that to a close. It's worth being aware that this was strictly only for export and Tokai, Fujigen, Matsumoku, Kasuga, Chushin & all the other Japanese factories carried on producing the same, unmodified copies for the domestic market. In 1982, when Fender Japan was set up, the Japanese partner company was Kanda Shokai, owner of Greco. One of the conditions of the deal was that Kanda should drop Fender copies from the Greco line. I do know that Fender challenged a few brands over logos that bore a similarity to their own - that may well have included Tokai, considering the font style they used in the late 70s/early 80s. Gibson also had a run-in with Tokai - quite justifiably, because initially their Love Rock guitars did actually say "Les Paul" on the head!

Don't know about the white plug - the closest I've been to a real one of these was a Strat copy at a car boot that was too much of a wreck to justify the £30 they wanted! Lawsuits, then - with a large side-order of elephantine pedantry. Well - you did ask! No-one would (or should) have had a word with Mr Indabass above for describing a 70s copy as "Lawsuit era". However the only instruments that were ever actually threatened with legal actions at that time were Ibanez-branded Gibson copies. In 1977, Norlin,the parent company of Gibson at the time, sent a letter of intended legal action to Elger Hohsino (the US operation of Hoshino Gakki, the company which owns the Ibanez brand) regarding their use of the "open book" headstock shape on Ibanez guitars, claiming a violation of their trademark design. However, a year earlier, Hoshino had already modified the headstock profile to be similar (not identical) to a Guild shape - so no legal action ever took place. Despite the shrieking claims of a hundred thousand Ebay sellers, no other manufacturer either took or threatened legal action over the design of any of the Japanese or Korean copies from the 70s or early 80s - they weren't taken seriously enough for them to bother. Norlin's action however did prompt Japanese manufacturers to voluntarily change the designs of copy instruments, and ultimately move their output towards the higher-end, originals market. Wake up at the back, there!

Not sure they realistically make more than £150-odd on Ebay - the last 2 I watched went for £111 & £121 respectively. Still, £70 is a bit of a steal for this - never mind the scuffs, it still has all its original knobs & no broken toggles - amazing! If I didn't have a house full of projects I'd probably be all over this.

Cheers! Definitely a score for £40 - and yes, a lot more of an oddity thay your average 70s P copy!

I've seen a few of these before - they also turn up occasionally badged as Marlin (remember them?) with that fish on the 12th fret - although most Marlins were Korean plywood & a bit duff. The Musimas are quite interesting - there are Strats as well, which are often assumed to be MIJ. The facts that many are unbranded, and that Musima used Japanese made hardware understandably fuels this. Check out the tuners on the P - very nice torque-adjustable Gotohs.

Easy. Musima, made behind the Iron Curtain in the old DDR: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-and-Rare-1980s-MUSIMA-Action-Bass-P-bass-DDR-Japan-/253386997413 NEXT!

So you've heard it all, have you?

I you proceed - as I do - from the perspective that broadly speaking, the use of "tonewoods" in an electrically amplified instrument is a pointless load of old testicles, then anything rigid, resonant and workable is fair game. I have an aluminium bodied Tokai Talbo, an acrylic bodied P, and a luthite-bodied Ibanez EDA900. Which was indeed made by Cort. I've also had a Squier VMJ fretless with an ebonol fingerboard. Although ebonol is, oddly enough, compressed, bonded paper. I've also had various plywood & MDF-bodied cheapo guitars & always felt that any real deficiencies were in the build & components rather than the material. I do like wood but it's from an aesthetic perspective rather than any idea that it's intrinsically a better construction material, and I'm a sucker for a synthesis of wood & alternative materials - always loved the original graphite & wood Vigiers & Statuses - and what about this?

Never played one but always liked the styling, seem to remember them being fairly common back in't day. In the mid 80s my local music shop (Frenchy's, Duncan Rd, Gillingham, if you have a long memory & know the Medway Tahns) had a fretless B301 that seemed to be in & out of the window for years. Affordable fretlesses were pretty thin on the ground at the time, & apparently various Pino-wannabes would buy it, keep it for a month or so then trade it back in! Never had any fretless aspirations myself at the time - or the £150-odd to have a try - so I don't know whether that was reflective of the bass or the players...

Holy Necrothread, Batman! Finally found a P I want to keep - battered, obscure 70s Japanese replica, black, black, maple, DiMarzios. Ruck as fock, it is:

Best place for all your Rickenfakery needs is the FB group of the same name: https://www.facebook.com/groups/78514186083/ BC doesn't allow direct discussion of where to purchase Fakers & Faker parts because we have had issues with John Hall, RIC's CEO. However there are no such restrictions on the FB group.

Not all of them. There are seemingly enough sympathetic and generous supporters out there to keep him ticking over: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/mdphillips1956mark/m.html?item=192495855877&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2046732.m1684

I approve. As you probably know, it's a very rare, high-end bass that was only made for a few years, and was technically Japan-only. I don't think Grecos were officially exported anywhere, so the number of these in the UK is likely in single figures. In other words, you're a proper lucky sod!

Did a project P based on an Axl acrylic body a few years ago. Original scratchplate but different everything else, so required plenty of drilling for bridge & pickups, plus filling existing holes if they were close to where I was drilling. I used a hand drill, after marking/starting each hole with an awl. The material removed from the holes came out in nice little spirals, and there was no cracking around the tops. Old holes I filled with superglue, which was left to harden. It did a reasonable job of making them a bit less obvious too, but they were all hidden under hardware anyway. Weighed a metric f*cktonne and the neck was awful, but it looked awesome.

For B2A etc but it's the same hardware: http://www.hohner-cshop.de/en/Guitar/Headless-Bass-Series/Basses-Bass-Headless-BB/Hohner-B2A-Headless/

I would not replace anything on that unless the component was completely unusable.

I'm not convinced it looks in any way upmarket enough to be a custom build. That ugly, mismatched, cheapo scarf joint is the worst offender, and those tuners appear to be generic & unbranded rather than Gotoh - there would be a visible name or symbol otherwise. Not familiar with Basstec puckups but a quick Goog seems to suggest that some Fernandes basses were factory-fitted with these. Fernandes is predominantly a Japanese home-market brand & they have made a bewildering range of sig models for probably hundreds of different domestic artists over the years - the manufacturer has a pretty comprehensive catalogue archive here: http://www.fernandes.co.jp/catalog/ Personally I wouldn't be surprised if this is in there somewhere - may take a fortnight to find it though!

The bass is a Cold War-era East German Musima copy - the irony is that the original hardware on these was decent - the original tuners would have been torque-adjustable Gotohs. Wonder if the seller binned the old bits just because they were old, & "upgraded" it?

Excellent! Patience is a virtue!

It should! Been on before & had a thread of its own back in January: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/318773-double-edge-ibanez-musician-copy-£295/ Looks like an alt account from the same seller - price dropped to something far more reasonable (still about £50 over the odds IMO) but the same apparent inability to read plain English. Quite a cool bass, might be a bit more tempted if it was P/J.

Says "22 frets" but it looks suspiciously like it's been defretted to me. Pity - when they turn up it seems like 3 out of 4 of these are factory fretless anyway. Bloody shame someone's been at this with the pliers.

Dunno how come I know anything about these as I found them ridiculous even when I was a kid - but the problem with the original was the straight/vertical seat-stays, which made them highly unstable & prone to tipping over backwards! Subsequent ones had a bend in the seat stays, presumably to move the rider's weight far enough forward to make this less of an issue. Of course the comical banana seat meant riders all gave their mates backies, leading to double the brain damage when the whole lot fell over backwards. Probably explains a thing or two. Anyway, that's why the reissues (like the one in the OP link) had single seats with fake sissy bar backrests. Also had a conventional handlebar gear change for the preservation of genitalia.