Bassassin

Some great songwriting, but for me that was the album where I lost touch with them for a few years. Maybe a production/management decision but it sounded like the album was a deliberate attempt to dilute the band for US market palatability - Stuart adopting a forced-sounding, mid-Atlantic nasal vocal style & AOR radio-friendly production wasn't what I expected, or wanted to hear. I'd seen them at the Astoria in December '87, when they played a few tracks from the forthcoming album (I remember Peace In Our Time & Thousand Yard Stare), which sounded phenomenal, but seemed so watered-down when they were recorded. Thinking about it (and apropos of very little) that was the last London gig I went to before I moved to Scotland.

To my ears BC were initially very much a post punk/celtic rock band with a full-on prog rhythm section - Butler/Brezicki were phenomenal and a massive part of the sound. Early extended, multi-part songs like Porrohman & The Crossing really show that Adamson wasn't afraid to get a bit proggy! Bit unfair to dismiss The Skids (assuming that's who you mean!) as an 'awful punk' band - while a lot of their debut Scared To Dance has its roots in that style, both Days In Europa & The Absolute Game move well beyond the limitations of the genre, and I suspect a lot of the early BC material would have made up the next Skids album had Stuart not left. I'd certainly recommend giving them another listen, particularly TAG - some superb, atmospheric songs like A Woman In Winter & Arena - and Stuart reprised the riff from Out Of Town (with a few differences) on Tall Ships Go, on Steeltown. Jobson was never a 'conventional' singer but he had a hell of a set of pipes on him (as well as being a bizarre and intriguing lyricist) and you can hear his influence on Stuart's singing.

That Aria's the spit of mine, which I had new in 1984! Apart from mine, I don't think I've seen another blue/black burst outside of a catalogue, very uncommon finish. This was my main gigging bass up to the late 90s, by which point it had developed a severe & irreparable neck twist. It's currently wearing an RSB Straycat neck which is not a perfect fit or of the same proportions, so it's nothing like as nice a player as it was originally. Still the second most versatile passive bass (after a Peavey T40) I've ever played, thanks to the plethora of switching options. I live in hope of a good replacement RSB Deluxe neck turning up!

In fairness, Bruce is all over the shop for the first 3 or 4 bars!

Seemed like a good idea at the time - my band was performing some long-ish compositions which would have benefited from fretless in some sections. Never even made it to a rehearsal as our drummer emigrated & was never replaced. Now it's nothing but a (massively heavy) albatross around my neck...

Love that massive centre stringer - like the Fujigen/Ibanez Fakers on steroids!

I was at that gig - first time I saw BC, if I remember at that point they'd only released the Harvest Home & Fields Of Fire singles. I was a massive, massive Adamson fan - he was a unique guitarist and an incredibly gifted songwriter, and probably still my single biggest influence as a composer. It's one of my great regrets that I never saw The Skids, but I saw BC many times between '83 and '96. Got to meet him briefly in 1994 (they did an acoustic set in Edinburgh HMV to promote an album release) and he seemed such a pleasant, genuine soul, appearing flattered (and a bit surprised!) when I mentioned how much I rated him as a guitarist & writer. A month or two ago I came across this on YouTube, completely by accident. BBC Radio recording of their gig at Hammersmith Palais in 1983 - the second BC gig I went to. Had no idea it existed!

More sh!t bat than batsh!t.

They are - or at least were - very much the same sort of deal as Thomann was, pre-Brexit at least. I've not used either since the UK undertook its noble journey towards third-world status, but I have previously bought a guitar from DV247. Excellent, fast service and the instrument arrived in perfect condition with a good, perfectly playable setup straight out of the box. I'd happily use them again, if they offered the best deal on something I was after.

A pack of apoplectic zombie badgers, howling out their loss and desolation through the subterranean catacombs of Pandaemonium, principal city of Hell, as they pursue their endless, eternal futile quest for the last packet of chocolate digestives in all of creation, aware yet unaware, in some impossibly deep part of their decomposed, undead brains, that it has already been consumed by the Demon Pazuzu, several millennia earlier. But with a touch of chorus.

It would be. Nice project if it was £50.

Like the ad says, beautiful. Boggles the mind that Prince never did that to his...

Easy. My £60 CSL Jazz, picked up from a pawn shop in 2004-ish with the intention of running it under the tap & flipping it for a quick profit. Nicest bass I've ever played, simple as that. It's had a few shiny bits stuck on it, but even when I gave it a quick go in the shop, with strings from 4 different sets & one pickup not working, I knew it was something special.

Knowledge is a journey with no destination, young Padawan. And I have been walking in circles for a very long time... Good luck finding one!

Paul - you know I'm going to be a pedant about this but indulge me! Broadly that's a list of a lot of of the variations, but on the whole these are what we can use to ID the factory which made a specific Faker. Factories stuck to their designs & details with only a few variations, which were either based on model level or evolution over time. A good example of the latter would be Fujigen (Ibanez, some Greco, some Electra and others), whose early basses (from '71-ish) had early 70s Rick traits like checked binding & full-width inlays, but were fitted with Gibson-type pickups, because it seems no Rick copy units were available at the time. The model was revised, probably around '74/5 to have Rick type pickups & small inlays, but kept the checked binding. The Grover type tuners were exclusive to Matsumoku and one of the ways to ID a Mat copy. They also appeared on other Mats basses, including the Epiphone Scroll bass & some through-neck ET288s. Thing is, many people don't realise how many different manufacturers (from major concerns like Fujigen & Chushin, to little backstreet woodshops), were operating in Japan during the 70s - possibly numbering into three figures. During the copy era most, if not all, will have made a Rick 4001 type. We're certain about a handful really, mostly where a brand name is known to be linked to a specific manufacturer. Obviously that's particularly tricky with Rick clones due to the tendency of orginal trcs to go in the bin!

In fairness, RIC didn't exist in the 70s! No-one got litigious about anything much back then, the big US companies didn't see Japan as a threat until it was way too late. Hence Fender & Gibson losing exclusivity to the body shapes of their instruments, and Fender ultimately being so spooked by the quality of MIJ Strat etc copies (compared with their own CBS-era tat) that they contracted Fuijigen Gakki to build Squiers & got Kanda Shokai - owner of Greco - to run Fender Japan. RIC trademarked their designs in the 90s/00s at a time when Rick copies were practically defunct, and up until very recently (when Big John stepped down, or got locked in a padded room, or whatever) protected their IP with extreme hostility and prejudice. So yeah, BC definitely got more of a shoeing than anyone involved in making or selling Fakers in the 70s!

Hell's teeth - what's wrong with some people? Failed firewood.

Can't add much to that list - although I have seen one (can't remember if it was real or copy) which had been converted to string-through-body. IMO Hipshot's the best choice, unless you're one of the .0005% of players who make use of the mutes. As well as giving you individual string height & spacing, lack of the mute assembly makes pick playing easier and allows for palm muting, which is borderline impossible with the standard tailpiece. It's also the only option which doesn't require drilling new holes or any other mods. Put one on my Kasuga Faker & it's a great piece of kit.

Same tuners on the black one, part of the reason I think it's possibly Chushin, like the CMI. Thanks, much better pics, @HK. - it's possible to see the finish deterioration & binding delamination on the black one. Could be a sign of possible water/damp damage, but without different images it's not possible to tell how severe - or hopefully superficial - the damage is. It may well be the bass is structurally sound. Actually I'm now wondering if the black one's been refinished at some point - I've seen similar paint cracking on old spraycan refins, and like I said, I'm confident that white stripe's been added. I'm less concerned by the high-ish action on the FG one now I can see there's plenty of adjustment left to lower the bridge - makes it more likely to be just a truss rod in need of adjustment. These two basses will have conventional single truss rods, not the strange dual strips of bent steel used by Rickenbacker on 4001s at the time! On the whole the FG bass looks very tidy, aside from the (very common) tail-lift, I can't see a great deal wrong. Question for @prowla - d'you think those look like genuine plexi trcs on these basses - particularly the FG, with the additional text? If so those would be pretty sought-after these days.

Depends what you mean! There were no 100% accurate copies, and all of them can suffer from the same issues (the 'banana-neck' syndrome @prowla mentions above) to a greater or lesser extent - as can real Rickenbackers. What's good is that if we're right about the two you're interested in being Chushin-made examples, these appear to be some of the sturdiest and most aesthetically accurate - they very seldom suffer from the neck bending issue, and are built to accurate Rick proportions, unlike some of the others. Worth mentioning that the bolt-neck copies suffer less from neck issues, as the construction means necks can be shimmed to rectify/minimise problems in that area. If you're a Facebook user, you should join this group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/78514186083 Basically a repository of knowledge & info about Rick copies across the world & the ages!

Ibanez & Univox came from two separate manufacturers, both are easy to ID, and these basses aren't the same as either. Two main differences between the Ibanez you linked (a model 2388B) & the FG bass you're looking at - first the Ibby's a bolt-neck, secondly it has checked binding which the other one doesn't. Ibanez Fakers were made by Fujigen Gakki & there were many design tweaks during the life of the models, (through-neck & bolt) which ran approximately from 1971-1978, but they all featured the same tight-patterned checked binding, which was unique to the Fujigen-made basses. There are other differences but they're hard to point out in the pics you have. There's unfortunately no way of knowing what the original brands were - I presume you're not in the UK, so what's most likely is that they will have originally had had a name used by an importer/distributor local to you. Very few brands on 70s MIJ guitars are anything to do with the manufacturer - and that includes well-known names like Ibanez, Greco or Univox. The basses you're looking at were sold under potentially hundreds of different names worldwide - I've seen them as Shaftesbury, El Maya, JHS, Cimar, CMI, & various others. You mention a lawsuit - this is a massive myth in the history of 1970s Japanese copies, and the truth is no lawsuit ever took place. What happened was that in 1977, Gibson's then parent company Norlin made threats towards the US operation of Ibanez' parent company, Hoshino, regarding the headstock shape of their Gibson copies. No legal action took place as Hoshino had changed the design of their headstocks a year earlier. Absolutely nothing else happened, no-one sued anyone, no other manufacturers were involved - and don't believe anyone who tells you different!

Nothing to do with Ibanez - those have features that make them really easy to ID that neither of these two have. Although that doesn't matter, the MIJ copies are all desirable/collectable & all similarly good quality. Agree with @prowla that the FG is likely from the factory which made Shaftesbury - these are thought to have been made by Chushin Gakki & probably date from the mid 70s. Harder to tell with the black one but if it's through-neck (looks like it has the binding gap so 99.5% it is), I'd be inclined to think it might be the same bass in a different colour - the tuners on that are the type you'd expect to see on the Chushin basses - I'm inclined to think they've been swapped on the FG one. The white stripe is not original - I'll stick my neck out & say no Fakers had that. If there's any chance you could provide clearer/better pics then me & @prowla could probably give you more info - although from what I can tell these both look worth getting hold of, if Rick copies are your thing!

Boggles the mind how someone can attempt to assemble a Fender-style bitsa - possibly the one of the least challenging challenges in the history of challenges - and get absolutely everything quite so cataclysmically wrong. That in itself must be a unique talent.