Bassassin

Forgot all about that one! I had the 4-string T-34 - bought it off someone on BC about 8 or 9 years ago for the exact same reason. Amazing finish but incredibly hard to get a good pic. Never got the chance to gig it but it looked lovely hanging on the wall in direct sunlight! Lost mine in a partial trade for a concrete garage/workshop base when we moved house a couple of years later.

Aria STB-GT, from about 15 years or so ago. Basically a P/J/MM hybrid. Think these were £250/£300-odd new, found mine on Ebay for £100. Absolutely unmarked, but had an issue where the battery drains if not removed, presumably an issue with the jack but I couldn't find the fault & ended up wiring it passive. Should maybe stick a Retrovibe Stinger pre in it one day. They were never particularly common so not many around these days. If I remember there was a 5 string version too.

That's quite eye-catching at first glance. Realistically, you can't help but have some (possibly misplaced) respect for that level of ambition in both the execution and the marketing of a £90 bass with a Dulux refin. Edit - what the actual f*ck is going on with that bridge???

No question the neck's genuine - although that string tree's not original! The only way you'd be able to have much idea about the body would probably be neck pocket fit, and whether the neck's had to have new holes drilled - it's unlikely the originals would line up correctly with a replacement body.

It really doesn't have a single original idea - P shaped body, skinny maple/blocks J neck and Stingray pickup & EQ! Somehow it all works though, it's a lovely thing to play & really doesn't look or feel like the budget bass it is. Yeah. That's what I thought - this was a Crack Converters blag where I thought - a Laurus/Marleaux lookey-likey for £150? How bad can it be? As it turned out, very!

All the time, probably my main criterion for any bass purchase ever. And that's a lot of basses. Couple of examples, one good: And one absolutely bloody awful: The Lottery Of Functionality aspect might well be a factor in the whole thing, but I don't know. I just like shiny stuff.

Closest I came was a pair of 90s Ibby SR800s, fretted & fretless. Both lovely basses I shouldn't have sold.

Certainly is - a slightly later CMI with the logo revised to reflect the cursive 'M' from the Marshall logo. Much as I like my old MIJ copies, that's as close to a piece of low-end junk as they get. I've had similar, if not 100% identical, & if I was flogging that I'd consider myself lucky to get £100 for it. Seller deserves some recognition for possibly the most delusionally ambitious BIN I think I've ever seen!

You might have to modify your own running order - the Rick 4003 dates from 1981, its predecessor the 4001 was first available in 1961, and the original single-pickup 4000 appeared in 1957. The first Ibby SRs appeared in 1987.

Indeed - everyone has influences (it's hardly overstating to say we all learn by copying) but to suggest there's little left but plagiarism, or at best subconscious recycling seems like a massive expression of negative defeatism.

I've noticed a tendency to bin perfectly good torque-adjustable tuners because they were slipping, & the person didn't understand that they were perfectly good torque-adjustable tuners & they could have just adjusted the torque to stop them slipping.

If you're expected to just note-for-note a pre-existing bass part & not have any input of your own, I suppose it amounts to the same thing. Is that all original music, or just that produced by sad little wannabe local artists? 🤔

Originals, by a big margin. The caveat is that for most of the bands I've been in, I've been the main writer/co-writer - so obviously I have an attachment to & belief in the material that probably wouldn't be there if I was just playing bass on someone else's songs. On the other hand I find covers sets hard work - learning & rehearsing them feels like a chore and gigging them rapidly becomes stale and repetitive. I suppose it's only reasonable though - 99.9% of paying gigs I've had have been covers so it's only right it should feel like a job!

AFAIK the Hi Flyer was the same as Aria's Diamond Mosrite wannabe, but with different pickups. Tried one of these reissues years ago, nice bass, like most modern Arias. Wasn't any £600 new!

Far more wrong than right - the body & scratchplate are great designs, but that's where it ends. Aesthetically the bog-standard Fender headstock looks wrong & is lazy, imo a Tele shape would work better, and certainly not that wonky 80s Ibanez-looking thing above. No issues with the pickups, but they need single-coil & passive switching. For me, I'd like a bound maple/pearl blocks (pearl dots at a pinch) neck & a pearl scratchplate. Also a Squier logo & £399 price tag would make the biggest difference.

I'm not quite there yet, then. Fortunately! 😉

Nah, not for that sort of money. If there's ever a £250 Squier version then I might be tempted to mod one & sort the various ugly & pointless details!

I've been playing for 40+ years and in that time have owned basses that by now must number well in to triple figures - likely double that if you consider the guitars I've owned as well. I have never owned a Fender (or a Gibson, for that matter) and the only US-made instrument I've had was a Peavey T40. This is not something I have any motivation to change. I have easily made a far better living from buying cheap s/h guitars & basses, wiping them down & flipping them for way more than I paid than I ever did (or will) from actually playing them. That's despite, for a few years in the 90s, making most of my income from gigging. I can't read either notation or tab, and have only a very vague grasp of any element of musical theory, despite being a fairly prolific and (some have said) competent composer* of various genres of music, latterly predominantly prog rock. *When I say 'composer', I mean I sit around noodling & sometimes a few bits stick in my head for long enough for me to crowbar them together & make what I loosely think of as a 'composition'.

Thinking about it, the possible rationale for something like this would seem right up 'his' street. As a continuation of 'his' acts of creative charity to the tragically fat-fingered guitar players of the world, simply relocating a bass' tuners to the end of the body will clearly provide similar endless convenience and benefit for the shorter-armed bass player. Was that what Ned S was really thinking, all those years ago?

So, someone looked at a Marleaux Contra & went - "I can make that even more foul!" Winner.

Pretty sure this - or something pointlessly mutilated and mutated in the same way - has been on before. Things that make you go - "why?"

I have the guitar version, always fancied the bass so I had a matching pair. These were sold with various brands (including Jedson & Zenta, as mentioned) but very common unbranded. These were most likely made by Sakai Mokko around 1970/71 (they turn up branded Sakai) but the same German-carved SG body appears on instruments made by Teisco Gen Gakki from the same era, so there may be some element of collaboration, or use of post-factory closure salvage parts, one direction or the other. The vandalised neck on this one shows it has a strip-ply construction, like many MIJ guitars from this era.

I bought a PC specifically to build a recording setup around - I found a useful guide about optimising Windows (I assume you're running 10, not 11) for music: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-10/ Interesting (if long & a bit dated now) SOS article: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/windows-10-musicians As my PC's not for anything other than recording, it's permanently offline unless I need to download or update anything relevant.