Bassassin

I was a big Peter Steele/Type O fan, absolutely gutted when he died. Fantastic band, saw them a good few times & they were a big influence on the gothy aspect of the band I was in in the early '00s. IMO Peter's huge overdriven tone defined their sound as much as his vocals did. And they wrote the best Christmas song:

Good deal, apart from the tuners being replaced with nasty cheap pressed tin Chinese rubbish.

I think he'd approve but it's not a route he would go down - he's all about the sausage fingered royalty of guitar playing. In fact I'm sure the only thing that's restrained him from doing the exact opposite, and modifying a 5 or 6 string bass into a guitar is the unavailability of 35" scale .009 guitar strings!

Dunno how I missed this thread - +1 for the Danish oil which was exactly what my SR500 refin got! It did get a few more coats though, 10 or so, iirc.

New song & video from my current musical endeavour. Hopefully won't be removed for political content - but you can sing along & dance to it (although possibly not the 10/8 bits) whether you empathise with the separatist sentiments or not! Wilfully a bit more celtic rock than my usual prog nonsense, and it was good to indulge some of my early musical influences - Stuart Adamson was a huge inspiration when I first picked up a guitar and I enjoyed unashamedly channeling that influence throughout this piece! Recorded with Reaper using a Behringer UMD404 interface, guitar noises all courtesy of the freebie version of ToneLib GFX, bass went through a Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro, & drums courtesy of the MT Power Drumkit plugin. Some of you might be unsurprised by the vintage MIJ guitars involved - '84 Yamaha SG1500, '86-ish E-serial Squier Strat, and bass-wise (despite the silly headless Rickenfaker in the vid) an '82 Ibanez RS924 Roadster for everything bar the intro chordal parts. Those were done with a mid 80s Riverhead Unicorn strung with flats. I have a tendency to get bored & wander off once a composition gets to the 'that doesn't sound bad' point of mixing, and this song's no exception - in fact my production skills are sufficiently limited that continued meddling has been known to make things worse. Still, very happy with the clarity & definition of everything & it sounds pretty decent on a variety of different setups. It's sort-of mastered using Izotope Ozone Elements, using whichever preset it was that made it sound loud... Vid was cobbled together on Shotcut from a variety of sort-of appropriate royalty-free content & stuff we recorded/photographed ourselves. Having started out with the idea being a simple slideshow/lyric video, it did reach the point of almost collapsing under the weight of its/our ambition. But I feel that is the appropriate prog path.

This seller's entire Items For Sale list looks like his plan to make a million overnight involved going to the local car boot with £40 and a wheelbarrow: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/imola1994/m.html?item=364067011254

Laptop/PC + Reaper + MT Power Drumkit (or similar inexpensive DAW/plugin pairing) should do what you want.

Rare stealth ad for a rare & (debatably) cool old headless bass, currently £90 with two days to go. Collection-only from Nottingham otherwise I'd be telling no-one & getting ready to snipe. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185673840815

I think an immaculate, virtually unplayed one might justify £250+, but like you say, the 1 & 1As haven't appreciated like other MIJs have. It's interesting that the through-neck Thunder II & IIIs do go for quite serious money. That said, I think this one might stick around for a while!

Always worth looking at the sold items to get an idea of price - still lots of Thunders around, a few go for around that sort of money, but they still seem to be mostly in the £100-£200 bracket. This one looks OK, well-played but not abused & could do with a good hosing-down. Looks all original but I'd say a bit over the odds.

I don't know much about 60s stuff (or the many holdover 60s designs that were sold as beginner guitars in the 70s & early 80s) but I doubt this is Teisco. There were literally hundreds of little manufacturers knocking out this sort of stuff in the 60s and it could have come from any of them. That said, I've seen this type of pickup on Kawai guitars. So it might be a Kawai. Maybe.

I believe the owner of that particular imitation has it up for sale on the Rickenfakers FB group.

Didn't expect much, didn't get much. I'm broadly of the opinion they've not done anything worth getting excited over since Justice For All, and Metallica were always at their best when they sounded bleak, hostile or both. This is just safe, tame and a bit dated, and probably the best thing I can say is it sounds quite sprightly for a band in their late 50s/60s. Better than the turgid Load/Reload era (I remember a pal who'd been a fan since Kill 'Em All commenting "They should change their name to Licker, 'cos they're not f**ing metal any more!") but I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy the album.

Never had an FGN but have owned many, many Fujigen Gakki - built basses & guitars. My current faviourite recording bass is my recently rediscovered Ibanez RS924 Roadster, which has the punchiest, best-balanced PJ growl of any bass I've ever played, and if I need a Strat my £70 car-boot E-serial MIJ Squier remains the go-to. Apropos of nothing, Fujigen was the factory originally contracted to produce MIJ Fenders & Squiers when Fender Japan was established. Fender Japan was a collaboration between Kanda Shokai (owner of the Greco brand) and Yamano Gakki, and Fujigen was used because of the existing relationship with Kanda to produce Greco guitars - which were the instruments that sufficiently impressed FMIC to want to manufacture in Japan in the first place. The contract lasted until the mid 90s, after which most Japanese Fenders were made by Tokai Gakki & Dyna Gakki, labelled as CIJ to differentiate them from MIJ Fujigens.

My partner's away at the moment so not available for consultation - but she is at the same time the best and the worst person in the world about this sort of thing because I know for a fact she'd say BUY IT!!! ...And I probably will...

Struggling with my trigger-finger over a Shimano 105 7020 hydraulic groupset for £499 over at Wiggle/Chain Reaction. About half what it was 18 months ago... Bugger, for a moment I though this was BikeChat.

Hard to tell much from the pics, but based on the bridge (screw in each corner) & the domed string retainer, I'd say it's Korean. I've never seen these components on an MIJ bass but most late 70s/80s MIK Fender types have them.

J'arrive! I've actually got the guitar version of this, which means I've ended up finding out quite a bit of info about these. These are among the earliest Japanese copies and probably first appeared around 1969-70, and were likely available for three or four years around that time. As was mentioned upthread, they're quite common in the UK branded as Jedson, also sold as Vox, plus numerous other names. Like many old MIJ instruments, plenty were sold unbranded. Most names on instruments like these are just brands, not manufacturers, but these also come up labelled Sakai, which was a 60s/early 70s Japanese manufacturer.

HW builds some incredible basses.

Ric was Rick until Rick became RIC. See?

'Short scale Rickenbacker International Corporation copy' is an odd sales description, particularly considering that the company did not exist at the time this instrument was made. [/pedant]

BC needs a 'Weirdest First Post' thread.

Repro Guitar Parts in the States do one. I've had a few bits & peices off them before (Ibby Musician trc & Aria SB knobs) and they're excellent quality, fast delivery & reasonable postage. https://reproguitarparts.com/#!/Westone-Thunder-II-Bass-Truss-Rod-Cover/p/356714735/category=1385115

There is - would have popped in sooner if I'd had a notification that I'd been tagged here. Will have to have a look at my settings... Anyway, while I don't have any specific knowledge of these, I'd say either date - '78 or '80 - is feasible (I would be inclined to think the headstock number is the dateable one) and they definitely pre-date 1985 whatever the manufacturer thinks now! Very small images but here's a 1980 Kawai catalogue showing the range. It's also understood that that Kawai made Alembic copies for Fernandes, and these appear starting in their 1981 catalogue (p.18). They may have been around earlier but there's a bit of a gap in the fossil catalogue record! Now - about these pics...

I played bass for about 3 years & had reached a reasonable standard before picking up a guitar - I was having musical ideas I couldn't really express properly on bass & wanted to start to compose my own stuff. I never got that good on guitar - not consistent enough to gig with it, but I can play anything I can think up & with enough takes can (IMO) sound reasonably convincing! That's maybe more of a reflection on my compositional skills than my playing ability though. Having spent various long periods over the years out of gigging bands (like now), I definitely play guitar more than bass, although I'd never consider it my main instrument. I've been told both that I play guitar like a bassist, and that I play bass like a guitarist. Which obviously means I'm doing everything wrong...