Bassassin

It's definitely not! A bit late to the bickerfest (on holiday, not paying attention!) but Kawai Gakki was a manufacturer in its own right with a guitar making history going back to the mid 60s when they acquired Teisco's manufacturing facilities specifically for that purpose. The Fernandes Alembic copies (related but not identical) were also made by Kawai. I suppose it's because of the prominence of the through-neck Aria Pro basses that Matsumoku is indelibly linked with all things stripy & MIJ, but every major Japanese brand/manufacturer did them (Ibby Musicians, Kasuga Scorpions & many others) and the irony is that the entire trend was 'influenced' by Alembic in the first place! Anyway, 'nuff pedantry, absolutely delighted to see this one being given a new lease of life & the care & attention it deserves.

Cheapo early 80s Korean P copy, unless it's had a refin it's not a Satellite or a Hondo (as both were just brand names), but probably from the same factory, which was likely Samick. He's claiming it's a Satellite now (suggesting he's reading this thread), and the £80 BIN he wants for it is probably about right.

Single-pickup 4000 series & some 4001S (same bass with an added neck pickup) had set-necks. The double-neck 4080 had bolt-on necks. Through-neck Ricks are known to collapse & bend at the body/neck junction because of the vast neck pickup route, leading to the same effect. They'll insist it's because of the 'wrong strings' though.

Looks like an ambitious home-build to me. Some very nice work but the detailing doesn't look pro standard.

I didn't realise the inlays were gone, I just assumed it was 45 years of filth and squalor! Fair enough if it was £50 - but tbh at £150 I'd give this a swerve.

I had one exactly the same 15 or so years ago - these date from the mid 70s, were not made by Fujigen, and aren't really anything to do with Ibanez. The connection is that in the mid 70s, Cimar was distributed by Ibanez owner Hoshini Gakki, later Hoshino took ownership of the name and marketed Cimar as a sub-brand of Ibanez but this bass pre-dates that. Here's my old one: It's a Cimar Model 1908, possibly made by Chushin Gakki, although it's not too clear where these were from. It's very similar to the Chushin-made Columbus Jazz copies, although there are enough differences to make it probable it's from elsewhere. Fwiw I'd say £150 is a bit steep for one of these in resto condition - it's a fairly budget bass - ply body, pickups aren't great (assuming they work), the 2-saddle bridge is cheap & agricultural. Nice genuine MoP inlays, though! There's some info about Cimar & the various Jazz type basses sold under the brand here. It's auto-translated from German.

That's proper weird 60s MIJ bizarreness! Never seen one like this before but it reminds me of this Ibanez: And could almost be the precursor to Kawai's 80s era Moonsault:

It's their company & they'll make up any stories they want! They have 4 of these for sale, for some reason the P/J variant's significantly cheaper. https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/4713/i.html?_ssn=runwayproaudio&store_name=runwayproaudio&_oac=1

Great score! The original 'Hercules' tuners on these were Gotohs with a heart-shaped key - if you fancied giving it a treat a set of GB10s would drop straight in.

Lovely bass! Stop me if you already know this but Tokai Gakki was one of the two factories which made Crafted In Japan Fenders from the mid 90s until 2015, the other being Dyna Gakki. The Tokai factory in Hamamatsu has a stellar reputation, going back to the replica-standard clones of Fenders & Gibsons they produced from the mid 70s onwards. Not surprised it's a good 'un.

If only this thread had been posted a week or so ago - just saw him playing in Edinburgh with the magnificent Frost*. [/irrelevantproganecdote]

At first flashbacks are occasional, after a while they become inevitable. Eventually they're all you have. I'm inclined to think the OP has a point.

This thread will tell you everything you need to know... or will it? Where's @Bean9seventy when you need him?

Mainstream as f*** these days!

It's about 10.5mm at the edges and looks like 12-ish in the centre. Still needs a little bit more fettling to get it playing at its best, tbh. On reflection the headflap isn't the thing of stylistically coherent beauty I'd hoped for (I'd still contend it works better than Laurus' attempt!) so in due course it'll get a bit of hacking about. Not sure I want to just lop it right off but it could do with being a bit more minimalist.

Thoroughly enjoyed that! Great fun song & video and the very obvious professionalism (bet you had storyboards & everything! ) certainly shows! Thanks Paul! I'll take that! I always consided BC to be a post-punk/celtic rock band with a prog rhythm section - in their early days they even had a tendency for 8-minute multi-part epics.

Unfortunately no longer in stock but as the seller presumably is Guyker, probably worth hanging onto the link - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203735338271 I think I remember seeing these on AliExpress so probably worth having a dig around there. If you go ahead with the project, do post a thread here!

Mods - I should say I have already posted this in the 'Share Your Music' sub-sub board of the Recording sub-board, where unfortunately no-one much goes or seems interested - so if this post qualifies as spam, please delete the earlier one! This represents my first go at a 'proper' music vid - I've done lyric videos and slideshow-y montages before, but this is the first time I've used green screen, recorded performance & outdoor footage/still images & tried to make something coherent out of it. Disclaimer - the drone footage isn't mine (free-to use stock from the excellent pexels.com site) so any occasional illusion of professionalism would be that of the talented videographers whose work it is, not me! Video was recorded using my little Canon SX720 compact on its HD setting, all the bits & pieces were bunged together with Shotcut, which (as someone whose previous video editing experience was limited to Windows Movie Maker) was easy to get started with & pretty intuitive to work with, and let me do pretty much anything my limited imagination came up with. Anyway - I think I'm pleased with the result, given the obstacles of poor equipment, dubious aesthetic sensibilities and general ineptitude I have tried to overcome. It was fun & stressful in equal measure and I'm not even too horrified at my own ugly mug gurning away while I pretend to play bass! A bit about the song. This is a bit of a musical departure for us, and despite playing/programming the instruments on the song I consider myself a distant second-fiddle as far as writing it is concerned. Basically my partner-in-crimes against music sang it to me, & said "can you make the guitars sound like Stuart Adamson?" Doing so was an absolute pleasure as Stuart was a huge influence when I was learning guitar & starting to write songs back in the early 80s. For that reason the Yamaha SG and the Strat in the video are what I used in the song - however the bass you hear is an Ibanez RS924 Roadster, not the silly thing I'm waving around on screen! I also used a Riverhead Unicorn headless (with flats) for the chordal intro. Song was recorded using Reaper & mainly Reaper plugins, guitar sounds courtesy of ToneLib GFX, bass through a Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro, & drums are the MT Power Drumkit plugin. Hope you like it!

Looks like it's the latest instalment in that long-running occasional series, Curious First Posts On A Bass Players' Forum.

Carnivore were great fun. All the time you appreciate Peter's tongue was wedged firmly in his cheek. In fairness the same is true of a lot of Type O material.

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.