Bassassin

I used to buy & sell a lot of vintage MIJ stuff a few years ago so I tend to look at them from the perspective of what I'd hope to get for it in a 99p, no-reserve auction. No brand name & no definite provenance (beyond MIJ, mid 70s) makes it a slightly harder sell. Original, fully-working condition is a big help though, and if it plays & sounds good then that's a winner. This is a good-quality, accurate copy which means it's higher up the food chain than a lot of what's on the market - those Grants & Columbuses, for example. That said, these don't go for mega-money, if I was selling it I'd hope for £250ish but realistically expect somewhere between £150 - £200. If you keep it & mod it, always bear in mind you might want to sell it later, so keep the original parts - and I would advise against making irreversible mods. These are rare instruments and have become pretty collectable - don't be surprised if it's worth less with a set of expensive pickups, BA2 & a preamp than it would be with its original bits. Seen that happen a few times!

Yes, read the updated description.Too bad no-one knows anything about any of these things, ain't it? Fact is the exact same thing sells on the Fakers FB group for £400 or so, no way will he get what he wants for it. I hope.

Thought about it, decided there was no point. If he's done enough research to know an Ibanez 2388B exists, then he'll have seen enough pictures of them to know perfectly well his bass isn't one.

Squirt a bit of switch cleaner in the pots, will probably sort them out. Useful stuff to have if you own a bass (or anything else with pots & switches), tbh. It's worth remembering that the likes of Grant & Columbus are importer brand names and not manufacturers. Very few of any of the names on MIJ guitars are actual manufacturer names - and this one looks like it was sold without a brand name, as many were. Fwiw Grant & Columbus appear to mostly have been the same instruments & are thought to have been Chushin Gakki products. I don't think this is a Chushin, though - they didn't use that style of neckplate, as far as I know.

This place is becoming really odd.

No there isn't. It's a Shaftesbury. Being sold by a liar.

Is your Washy a B20 Stage? Malko's got the 8-string! Sold my T40 because it broke my back...

here's a Fender copy I regret selling: This is the Basschat Bitsa Jazz, so-called because all the parts came from BC members, with the exception of the tuners. Body was a '72 Fujigen, dated from the codes on the original (dud) Maxon pickups. Can't for the life of me remember what brand it was, got the body off an (ex) member called Tino - from an Ebay sale. The neck came from Toasted (is he still here?) so long ago I think it was back in the Bassworld days. Ashamed to say I can't remember who the pickups came from - particularly considering he gave them to me for nowt! Don't know the date of the neck or the original brand - could just about see the ghost of the original logo & thought it might be Antoria. The fact the neck was a perfect fit for the body, and the screwholes lined up near-perfectly, suggest it probably was. Anyway, after a lot of polishing & fettling this built up into a lovely looking, sounding & playing Japanese J copy, but since I already had a lovely looking, sounding & playing MIJ Jazz copy, I got rid. Traded it on a local FB group for a very roadworn Aria SB-Elite Black & Gold - which by any measure was a ridiculously good deal. But a couple of months later my lovingly restored vintage MIJ Jazz turned up again on the same board, battered, frets wrenched out and absolutely ruined. Hurt, that did.

Malko's also on most of the vintage MIJ groups, he's got a stunning collection of old Yamaki Washburns - I keep threatening to pop 'round & rob him while he's out! He does make some interesting bitsas - was very tempted by a Tele with too many pickups & switches the other day!

Hooky played a Hondo because he didn't have much money back then! The Hondos (made by Samick, in Korea, from sub-firewood grade ply) were pretty much bottom of the Faker foodchain in the 70s, apart from those horrible shortscale Kays, which don't count. Decent MIJs come up quite regularly on the Faker FB group, if you're not already a member.

Original Futuramas are a bit off my radar, but these recent Futurama-brand J copies popped up on Ebay 5 or 6 years ago, with sellers claiming association with the "original" brand and asking somewhat inflated prices on the basis of that. Doubtless a perfectly competent Chinese Jazz clone - maybe a bit of curiosity value for the name, but that's all.

That *really* doesn't matter - as far as FMIC would be concerned every single one is a violation of their registered trademark. See above. I don't know if Fender has a policy of not wasting their time on small fry, or if BC just hasn't been noticed yet - but we are allowing (and from the evidence of this thread) advocating trademark violation. Not sure how sensible this is...

Fair point about criminal law but IMO that's become a bit of a red herring in this discussion - if any sh!t (no matter how improbably) was to hit BC's fan over this it would be 100% trademark/IP violation related. As I said I don't think we should ban the sale of fakey Fender branded basses but it does seem to me that what we're doing is we're getting away with it because we're pretty inconspicuous. Just seems sensible to be very, very clear about what's for sale.

Fujigen used the lower-half stamped plate (the same as on this bass) up until late 1975 when they introduced the use of serial numbers. The (more common) upper-half stamped plates were never used by Fgn and don't seem to be used by one specific factory. Like many MIJ details it's often easier to define who didn't do something rather than who did - so we know Fujigen, Matsu, Kasuga, Moridaira, etc didn't use them. We also know Chushin Gakki definitely did, but so did a lot of others. There's very litle that's exclusive to any one manufacturer though, certainly during the 70s copy era. I mentioned that Cimar was owned by Hoshino, but Hoshino's not a manufacturer but a trading company - they contracted Fujigen to build Ibanez and some post-copy era Cimars but I don't think they made the copy stuff - they're all indentifiably different to Ibanez copies - which were all generic Fujigens anyway, and were available with different brands from other importer/exporters. Pickups on the bass here appear to be originals, these round-end types appear in a lot of MIJ copies.

Why didn't BC's owners just tell John Hall that & send him away with a flea in his ear? I think that's rubbish, tbh, a trademark's a trademark.

I kind of understand why Prowla's a bit nonplussed about BC's multiplicity of standards here. The moment scary Mr Hall pops his chubby little pate over the parapet we ban all sales of anything even remotely Rick-ish (just in case, ooh, can't be too careful) - but carry on freely flogging fakey Fenders like there's no tomorrow. And then get all indignant and defensive when it's pointed out that using imitation Fender logos flouts the exact same trademark laws.

Ebay take down "counterfeits" when reported/spotted. Why? They don't want to be involved in litigation from brand & copyright owners, and they can be very anal/absolutist about this. Trust me, it's really tricky to sell a 70s MIJ copy of a Gibson LP (without a fake logo!) when you can't say what it's a copy of! I don't know specifically about Fender but a lot of manufacturers (RIC is one) take individual complaints very seriously, in order to protect their brand reputation.

It's very close to this Cimar: Obvious difference is the trussrod adjuster position but details like that had a tendency to change over production history. Looks like this has been sold unbranded, as very many instruments from this era were - where a logo has been removed there's inevitably some marking or ghosting on the headstock, often leaving an identifiable silhouette. The headstock finish looks original. Could be a Fujigen but I don't think so. The lower-half stamped neckplate is not an identifying factor - Fgn used them but so did Moridaira and Kasuga, and doubtless others did too, it's a generic part. I'm also pretty sure that copy-era Cimars (if this is/was one!) weren't Fujigens, despite the brand being owned by Hoshino Gakki. I've never seen a confirmed Fgn with those round-end J pups. It's absolutely *not* a Matsumoku - all copy-era Mat Fender clones either have the "Steel Adjustable Neck" - stamped plate, which was exclusively used by Mat - or a Matsumoku-branded plate. I'm also pretty confident that Mat didn't use these pickups. I've seen and owned a positively unhealthy number of 70s MIJ copies and the reality is that an awful lot of them are unidentifiable and will remain so. This isn't helped by the fact that they do sort of have a tendency to look quite similar! There's interesting evidence appearing about how a lot of these things were put together too - it's often unrealistic to assume one factory made a complete instrument, a lot of mix & match assembly went on with necks, bodies, hardware & electronics all being sourced from different workshops. There's even a school of thought (which is interesting but I'm a bit skeptical about) that some of these "salvage" instruments were built in Korea from various exported Japanese parts, because domestic Japanese regulations & taxation actually made that more affordable.

Yes - probably. But suppose that member had got angry about it and reported BC to FMIC's UK operation for allowing the sale of counterfeits. Might well result in a C&D letter. Also BC has a good reputation as a instrument marketplace. Someone with an axe to grind on social media could do damage to that if they chose. I certainly wouldn't prohibit sale of copy-logo'd basses but an absolute clarity policy wouldn't hurt.

The point I'm trying to (probaly clumsily!) make is that copy sales on the likes of BC do not threaten their business, in the way they potentially would to Rickenbacker.

Pragmatically, I think it would be good if any fake-logo'd bass sold here was *very* clearly labelled as such. The fact one member has bought a Limelight assuming it wasn't a copy does demonstrate that it is a potential issue.

It's important to remember that John Hall's RIC is actually a small family business whose protection of their trade dress (or IP, if you will) is vitally important to their continuing to market their brand and products succesfully. They also rely strongly on a rabid & largely all-American fan/customer base to help them do this. Fender, on the other hand, is a wealthy multinational who don't need to waste energy on small-fry like BC sinced they intelligently managed to corner the market on decent licensed copies in the early 80s - which is why we have Squiers. Gibson did the same thing with Epiphone. Not sure I'm right in thinking that Limelight no longer flog their expensive knockoffs with Fender logos, but if so it's presumably because FMIC had a little word. FWIW, not sure if it makes me a whiney, first-world-problems, boo-hoo snowflake or whatever - but I do consider copies with fake logos to be somewhat akin to that kid in the 70s who scraped the "Satellite" logo off his plywood LP copy and daubed "Gibson" on, with white Humbrol model paint. A tiny little bit tragic.

Couldn't agree more, with the exception of the Vantage (which is both well-made and rare in the UK) this is a sh!tshow of horrible, borderline-unplayable throwaway trash. The Grant J-type thing is the exact bass I started with - if I hadn't got something slightly better after a couple of months, there's no way I would have carried on playing.

Wow - this thread's certainly kicked off since I last checked it! Fwiw I'm in the "tonewood = bollox" camp. Strings, pickups, and the monkey plucking the strings are the things that make a difference.