Bassassin

That looks to be a remarkable - and desireable - collection of high-end basses you have inherited. You're in the best place to find information about them - what the BassChat hive-mind doesn't know isn't worth knowing.

Hazy Shade Of Winter. Not difficult to make that rock.

Bought a cheapo G4M brand guitar in their Black Friday sale, arrived very slightly bashed up & they were very happy to offer a replacement or a decent discount. They seem generally well-priced & I was very pleased with their customer service.

And, as if by magic, a Guyker clone of the Hipshot bridge appears, courtesy of Google reverse image search. Yours for $75 if you shop around, guv. https://www.ebay.ph/itm/204348946002

Interesting! Got a link for a UK retailer? My other half/musical co-conspirator would be into this - and it's her birthday in March...

Pretty! Reminds me of my old '83-ish SQ Squier. And I do like a lolipop. Matron.

Or just play it - it'll gloss up naturally at the contact points. Just like factory satin finishes do!

The Hipshot system in real life is £400+, so there's no possibility that you'd be paying $72 for a real Hipshot. However I recently discovered that Hipshot's £100 hardtail guitar bridge has a visually-identical Chinese clone for around £13. I'd be erm, interested if it turned out the headless system had a similar proportionally-priced cheap Chinese counterpart.

Use a nylon/plastic scouring pad rather than wire wool. The good thing about thick poly finishes is that if you don't like the result dulling it down, it'll T-Cut back to the original gloss with a bit of elbow grease. Just had a look at the JVX pickups out of curiosity, and it does look like you may be missing a thing or two! https://www.emgpickups.com/jvxset.html

Had to Google that one. Looks like Tagima was founded in '86 so would have been a contemporary of Giannini during production of Brazilian Fenders. They're still around now.

That's properly interesting. Same era as the made in India FMIC-licensed Sunn Mustangs (which were sold as Squier II in some territories), and also when Fender started production in Mexico. Wondered if the factory was Giannini before I read the article - they're well-known (in some quarters!) for their very nice quality Rickenbacker 4001 copies, and also made Fender clones (called 'Stratosonic'!) in the 70s/80s era. It's odd that they used that wonky headstock shape on licensed instruments, but I wonder if that's what they were tooled up to make already?

So, was it assembled into a working bass when you got it? Do you have a pic? As far as I know the original Ibby Studios are really heavy - wonder if the decision to graft everything on to what I'd guess is a much lighter body was to do with that? I think I'd do a bit of body routing to space the pickups sensibly, make a Grabber-ish scratchplate to cover the mess & put the bridge somewhere it would intonate properly. Dunno what you'd call it though - an Iblody Grabdio?

It so happens I have a Schaller 460 in my spares box, awaiting a 2-point bridge bass that appears to be unlikely to ever arrive, considering it's been waiting 10+ years. It's in new/near-new condition & complete, apart from the 2 intonation screws which act against the posts to adjust overall string length. Those should be straightforward to replace. Give us a shout if you're interested!

Looking at the routing, definitely an Italian-made Melody body. I think all the MIJ copies had 3-point post mounted bridges. The Ibanez Studio neck & components are an absolute steal for £25 - there's a big collector/restorer community out there who'd fall over their wallets for rare, out-of-production parts like those! Wonder what on earth happened to the original body?

Old proggers' take on an even older progger's classic.

Probably, G4M was my cheapo guitar, the £30 discount was proportionate & reasonable - would've been a p!55take on a £1000+ bass though. Also they refunded my account, rather than issue some credit note I'd never use.

Ooh, you rotten tease!

That's pretty poor for a brand-new £1100 bass & to suggest 'minor imperfections' (that look a lot like damage to me) are somehow to be expected is taking the p!ss. I recently bought a cheapo (£140) guitar from cheapo guitar purveyors Gear4Music, which arrived with the box looking like it'd been kicked here rather than driven in a van. The guitar had survived pretty well but had a bash on the bottom end of the body & minor lacquer cracks around the neck pocket & end of the headstock. They straight away offered me an exchange, or a £30 discount - which I was happy to accept as it's minor cosmetic damage & I bought the guitar to mod & mess with anyway. I might be willing to acept similar 'minor imperfections' on a high-end bass if they knocked, say, £100 off the price.

That's a thing of beauty - I do love a through-neck BB. I don't really do Ps but I'd be all over that - I'd probably just lick it or something.

Me! Me! Me, Sir!!! Well - nearly. There's a guitar version of this which has a built-in synth module & I almost bought one, until pragmatism talked me out of it & into a far more functional & versatile Fishman MIDI pickup. I still feel a bit cheated - I do like an unconventional instrument, & sort of wish the bass version had some silly gimmick to justify buying one!

If anyone ever needs an exemplar for the maxim 'just because you can, it doesn't mean you should' - just send them a link to this! That said - it's a wonderful example of utterly scatterbrained bodgegeneering, and the video's hilarious! Can't help thinking if they'd sat & thought about it for five minutes they could have forseen a lot of the (really obvious) problems & eliminated at least three prototypes! Wouldn't have been as much fun to watch though.

I'm incredibly shallow and first-impression aesthetics are very important to me. With the exception of the U7 (which is quite pretty) I've seldom seen such an impressive collection of vileness, ugliness & just plain wrongness gathered together in the one place. Me and my bank balance are quite relieved about that.

Nah, not diggin' it.

I always thought that Venom - widely held to be the band that kicked off an entire plethora of extreme metal sub-genres - sounded like a sh!t Motorhead knock-off with added Satan. That doesn't mean that I didn't quite like them.