Bassassin

Saw the title & assumed - 'black metal ABBA covers'. But no - obviously that'd be Abbatoir.

I've had this sitting around for years, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. It's not really a Rick copy beyond the body shape but that meant that the retailer, a fairly short lived UK online brand called Wesley, rapidly got a C&D letter from Old John Hall & panic-flogged all their stock of these for £99. And I bought one. It's called a Wesley Europa, and used to look a bit like this: It's a nicely-made through-neck bass with a 3-band active preamp, 2-way truss rod, flamed top & wooden body binding. It's also got one of the most inappropriate afterthought headstocks I've ever seen on a Rick-style thing - and I've seen a few. It's a nice-playing & decent-sounding bass, meaning I did gig this quite a lot when I first got it, which quickly highlighted a significant problem - the finish that's been used everywhere other than the nice, shiny top. It's basically had a thin coat of matt black applied onto bare wood over the entire body & neck - and this just comes off, on your hands, on your clothes, anything you lean it against - everywhere, any excuse! I don't have any pics of mine at the time but this is one that turned up on Ebay quite recently - mine looked just like this after a few weeks of use! So I temporarily retired it with a view to refinishing it and maybe making that headstock a bit more palatable. Dismantling it & removing what was left of the black 'finish' revealed a rather pretty neck-through construction underneath: It also left me with a dilemma regarding the headstock - I've re-shaped a few before with pleasing results but there's so little space to improve this, the best I could come up with design-wise was pretty much an Ibby Soundgear lookalike, which hardly seemed worth the effort. Hacking the bloody thing off was a more appealing idea but way more complex than I'd originally planned. So as is my wont, I got bored & wandered off, and years passed, as they do. Converting this to headless stayed in the back of my mind & probably about 10 years on, I started seeing affordable & potentially useable headless hardware in the form of cheapo Chinese individual bridge/tuner units. I'd previously thought about that 'Overlord Of Music' Hohner clone system, but that would involve routing (I don't have a router) and relocating or abandoning the battery compartment, which is directly behind the bridge. Anyway, I recently came across some nice looking individual units branded 'Guyker', hit the buy button, and this is what turned up in the post a few days later, direct from Weifang, China, for the princely sum of about £45 delivered. They look halfway decent & seem to be pretty well-made, I think the machined components are brass under the paint, not sure about the cast saddles etc. The lack of thrust bearings is a bit of a disappointment but with a sufficiency of lubricant they should hopefully be functional. Setup is likely to be a bit of a fiddle with the saddles needing to be positioned by hand then locked in place with small & inaccessible allen screws, but likely to be a do it once then forget it task. The head-end string retainer won't win any prizes for stylish design, but it's very solid & the two clamps per string certainly mean business. The plan is - obviously, I hope - to lop off the ugly bit (which I accept might be subjective) and re-shape what's left to be functional and not look like a complete bodge/mistake. I've previously been nonplussed by, and critical of 'headless' basses that retain a sort of vestigial flap where the head should be (Laurus springs to mind) but paradoxically, that is exactly what I intend doing with this! There's an element of necessity - the string clamp requires a bit of 'head' to be mounted on, and I also need to leave space for truss rod access. While it's tempting to make this as minimal as possible, the proportions of this bass mean that the tuners will overhang the end of the body by a good 2-3 cm so it's going to have to live on a wall hanger or neck-supporting stand, rather than be bunged in the corner. So my necessary flappy end bit will keep enough of the 'flare' of the old headstock to do that. Assuming I can cut straight. So now we come the the nailing stuff together & hacking bits off part - I haven't done anything like this in some considerable time and it's a bit daunting! First things first - position the tuner units accurately. I marked saddle travel positions from the original bridge on the body - the new units have a little more range and will be a few mm closer to the bridge pickup, as G string intonation was at the limit of its movement on the old bridge. Measuring from the 12th fret after marking the new saddle positions, the mid-point between them turns out to be bang-on 17". Which is reassuring! Having measured everything (hopefully!) accurately, I made a template for screw hole positions for the individual units, giving 20mm string spacing, same as the original. Using the same template I made a plate to sit under the tuners to conceal the old bridge mounting holes and the earth wire which will link the units. It's less than 1mm thick and should not adversely affect string height. A minor irritation with the tuners is the presence of a screw which sits proud of the base of each unit. It limits the travel of the ball-end retainer to stop the unit falling apart - but also stops it sitting flush on the top of the bass, which is irksome. So in order to make them screw down properly, I'll have to create a row of rebates for the heads to sit in. Lacking suitable tools it'll be down to my ancient Dremel knock-off, a steady(ish) hand and a sense of relief that the resulting mess will be covered by hardware. OK, time to work some wood - out with the blowtorch and nailgun, and onward!

To be fair, nothing's screwed together there - it's just the parts laid on the body.

Not a DA, but I just posted this in a different thread. It's so heavy it generates its own gravity & weather systems.

Need to dig this one out & stick it on the wall, maybe with some colour changing LEDs behind it. It'll never be played in anger - it's utterly back-breaking and the neck's a piece of trash the shape of the fat end of a baseball bat. It'll look great hanging up though. Assuming it doesn't pull the wall down.

Misplaced decimal point, Shirley? Although £7.50's pushing it a bit.

The bridge is the same one on many headless Washburns, for some reason (pointless overengineering?) there are 2 intonation screws per saddle. A Force 42:

I see where you're coming from - but the answer's not at all. The 8-string was a through-neck build, while this (and possibly all the B20s fitted with humbuckers rather than P/Js) is set neck. What it most resembles is the Steinberger-y Washburn Bantam with a B20 body. The same's true of other headless MIJ Washburns, like the Force 42, giving the impression they're all based on a similar template as far as hardware, controls & pickups are concerned. Anyway, for the sake of argument: I think that's the thread well & truly derailed!

This is the only one anyone's ever seen! Among the vintage MIJ geek community, this bass was known of only from one small cutting from an old magazine, where a tiny image with a 'coming soon' type caption appeared under the main Washburn ad: This was though to have never been launched, and never appeared in any catalogues or brochures, until the one above turned up a few months ago on Reverb. It's slightly different, the changed hardware suggesting it's later & possibly from a different factory, but likely a prototype or part of a very short production run. Odd MIJ Washburns do turn up - a UK shop recently advertised a headless version of the 80s B20 Stage bass (I had an original when i was in my teens) which has never been seen before & appears in no catalogue: Most people who've seen this insist it's a modified standard bass, but the construction, components and proportions say otherwise. Weird!

That's beyond shameless! The prevailing opinion among Washburn nerds (yeah, I know...) was that the Taurus borrowed its rather exaggerated proportions from a thing known as a Washburn Condor, a prototype/extreme rarity from around 1980-ish: But evidently not! Never seen that Jackson before, possibly even more shameless than the Washburn. Appears that Marleaux issued a C&D shortly after it appeared, making it a very rare bass these days. Wonder why Jerzy Drozd didn't do the same - those Washburns are everywhere.

I'd theoretically pay A Lot for Jaco's Bass Of Doom - conditional on A Lot being a) within my ability to afford it, and b) A Lot being half or less than half of what I could sell it for.

Polyurethane finishes are pretty thick, and incredibly hard - T-Cut's a mild abrasive but all it will do is polish the top of the lacquer. Would take days to wear through! And yes - if definitely works.

Re: the satin finish - it will gloss up after a bit of playing, if that's not quick enough, go at it with T-Cut, & it'll be gleaming like a very shiny thing in about 20 minutes.

I can play a bit, and for me it's massively important for songwriting, meaning I'm able to program realistic (and physically playable!) drum parts & fills on my own stuff. It's always good to be able to hand a finished song to a 'proper' drummer and hear how a musician who really understands the instrument interprets & changes it - but it's pretty cool when they decide to play that fancy fill exactly how it was programmed! 😎

Only just saw this thread - apropos of nothing in particular, 64 Spoons was the second live band 16-year old me ever saw, some point in the summer of 1978, at the White Horse on Chatham Hill, Kent. The local punky pub rock band we'd gone to see had cancelled & these guys filled in. Their weird brand of proggy jazz wasn't at all what I expected, but they were nice guys & happy to chat to me & my mates about music & the band we were planning to start. They were fronted by a prodigiously talented youth called Jakko Jakszyk, who went on to do various interesting things including playing with Level 42 & currently fronting King Crimson.

I've seen plenty of necks with cracking like that & I'm confident it's had a knock to the headstock, maybe even a drop, which had caused the glue joint between neck & fretboard to separate. If I'm correct a fix would involve simply easing the gap open sufficiently to get adhesive into the crack & then clamping. There's no way on earth anyone could know from the pics that it's not structural. Cracking like that doesn't just happen, in fact it appears to be gaping fractionally at the nut, which is likely truss rod tension pulling it open a little.

It's in lovely condition but that price is delusional to the tune of about £800. Spectacular wishful thinking there.

'Made In Japan' indicates manufactured by Fujigen Gakki, 'Crafted' refers to Tokai & Dyna Gakki, mostly late 90s onward. The 'E' prefix serial on this (mid 80s) is correct for Fujigen. I think these are original - I don't know MIJ Fenders as well as I could (working on it!) but I've seen this type before. The smaller units are Gotoh GB-1s or GB-10s and very common but not exclusive on 80s MIJ Fenders & Squiers. This does look like a very tidy mid 80s P.

Quite cool to see a proper Tony Z rather than the licensed or knockoff Zemaitises that turn up. Don't think he made many basses.

The final generation of Musician (1986) had the body shape of the SoundGears which launched the following year. Still going strong!

Kasuga Scorpion, a lot like this one: Never seen that clip before, always had a soft spot for The Shamen.

If the neck is a poly finish, the gloss will restore easily with T-Cut. I'd suggest something like a plastic scouring pad to get the satin finish - less chance of stray bits of wire wool ending up in your pickups/electronics...

Where to start? First off - you've shown a pic of 'an' Aria SB, and 'an' Ibanez Musician. Both basses were part of quite extensive ranges covering numerous features like pickup number & types, active or passive, number of frets & in the case of the Arias, physical proportions of the necks. The SB1000 & MC900 you've shown will sound and feel completely different - chances are if you're used to a conventional Fender-type neck, the near-parallel, wide-at-the-nut shape of the Aria SB series will feel very odd & possibly off-putting. The Aria SB-R & SB-Elite basses have a conventional neck shape but tend to be passive, in both single and twin pickup versions. There was an active version (SB-R150) but these are ridiculously rare. I'll have to admit my playing experience is limited to the Arias & my preference is for the SB-Rs & Elites, as I really don't get on with the SB necks. However I do know there were both passive & active versions of the Ibanez Musicians (passive defined by an 8-prefix rather than 9) and 22 & 24-fret versions. The pickups/electronics and aesthetics of the Musician basses changed quite radically over the lifespan of the range, and early ones likely sound quite different to the mid/late 80s basses. Someone who knows the MCs better than me will likely chip in, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone with experience of both ranges. These basses are all pretty rare these days - particularly the MCs - and as high-end vintage instruments, prices can get quite eye-watering too.

Same with mine - stuffed with foam & fine at low volume. At gig levels it really didn't like my standard aggressive/toppy mildly overdriven sound. Was tameable, but hard to get the grit & growl I was after.