Bassassin

From what I can see it looks like a real one - most of the copies were designed in the early 70s & don't have "modern" Rick features like one-piece neck (no skunk stripe) and the 1" spacing of the neck pickup. That looks like a recent design real Hi-Gain in the bridge position. Although selling for £300? A guitar shop would probably give him 6 or 7 and still make a tidy profit. My one concern about this is that its owner might be missing it. :ph34r: Jon.

[quote name='noirpunk' post='247544' date='Jul 25 2008, 09:28 AM']I was actually thinking about making a TRC myself... not a Rickenbacker one. a NICKenbacker one, since I'm a Nicky Wire fan haha That Fresher is a Nickenbacker in Wireglo[/quote] Should be pretty easy if you go the paper under perspex route - all you'd have to do is Photoshop an N onto a Rick logo. J.

[quote name='noirpunk' post='247053' date='Jul 24 2008, 05:15 PM']How difficult is it to obtain a convincing looking truss rod cover?[/quote] I'm pretty convinced by the one that's on it. It's JapCrap. Get over it. J.

[quote name='noirpunk' post='246939' date='Jul 24 2008, 03:16 PM']I got that Fresher off ebay... *braces self for shooting down*[/quote] Why?? Fresher stuff: [url="http://www.sk.aitai.ne.jp/~luesan/AI13.htm"]http://www.sk.aitai.ne.jp/~luesan/AI13.htm[/url] Too bad the pics are so small & it's in Japanese, but well... Was that the one with the slightly lifted fretboard? If so, it looks like it should be an easy fix, and the price was pretty good too. J.

What did you get? Of my two, the Matsumoku is a replica of the real thing, incredibly thin & delicate and weighs next to nothing, while the Kasuga has a bolt-neck, thick "sandwich" type body and is so dense it has developed its own gravity well and sucks light into it. Admittedly I didn't help matters by bunging a brass Hipshot on it - still at least I can have good intonation with my spinal damage. J.

Interesting, both of them. The first one's a late 60s Teisco, these do come up occasionally, they were probably sold in the UK under the Woolies "Top 20" brand or somesuch. Anyhow, there's a pic & not much else on the Teisco site - bottom row, left: [url="http://www.mark-cole.co.uk/teisco/bass.htm"]http://www.mark-cole.co.uk/teisco/bass.htm[/url] The other one's very curious - it's got a Made In Korea sticker on it, but it's otherwise identical to this Japanese-made Aria A-100, from the early 70s: [url="http://www.matsumoku.org/models/aria/bass/a-100_200.html"]http://www.matsumoku.org/models/aria/bass/a-100_200.html[/url] Quite a lot of these turn up unbranded, it's always been assumed they had the same origin as the Aria - seems that's not necessarily the case. J.

[quote name='bassman2790' post='244091' date='Jul 20 2008, 10:20 PM']I see he's added some more photos since my original post. At least we know it has a neck. [/quote] I strongly suspect that what it has is a "kneck". :ph34r: Jon.

It looks OK - I really don't know anything about the brand, the [i]Guru's Guitar Guide[/i] (geek bible) just says good quality mid-80s Fender copies, so no idea who made them - or where, to be honest. Most Japanese factories weren't exporting copies in the mid 80s. J.

Ten quid for a cardboard box? Music shops fling thousands of these things in the bin every day - go to a different shop. And how, in any sane world, are you competition to them? In what way has your private sale on BC demonstrably deprived them of a customer? In my experience guitar boxes are usually pretty flimsy, when I've used these I've always felt I needed to add more reinforcement anyway. Go to your local Lidl & grab 4 of the flat, open boxes they have fruit & veg in, get a hot-melt glue gun & stick them together to make a bomb-proof bass/guitar box. Pack it out with newspaper & cover the holes with gaffa tape, bubble-wrap the bass, neck removed if it's bolt-on. Jon.

[quote name='fillerbunny' post='241776' date='Jul 17 2008, 02:22 PM']Oh, and to avoid posting to three different threads about the same basses and to contribute to the porn content - your Matsumocker project isn't the only one with discolored binding. I was just offered the bass in the attached pic for a very reasonable price but decided to go with the Fernandenbacker in the end. Looks identical to yours, complete with a fake RIC trc... [attachment=10908:matsumocker.jpg][/quote] That's the twin of mine - I've even got the toaster to go in the neck position now! Don't know if you've seen the thread about mine in the builds forum (still not put it together yet - lazy sod!) but mine was sold as a genuine Rickenbacker, to a friend of the guy I acquired it from, dressed up in real Rick parts & truss cover. Wish I had some way of knowing what brand it was originally sold as, but I've seen these under dozens of different names. J.

Heerby was a Kasuga brand - Japan only as far as I can tell, sometimes the Japlish translates it as Herby - which is even stranger! I'm guessing the catalogue you've seen is the one with the lunar landing scene on the front - seems to be the only one out there! Good to get a decent look at what appears to be the through-neck version of my bass. You've done the right thing getting that Fernandes, I think, it looks stunning! It even has "proper" knurled Rick-type strap buttons - never seen that on a copy before. J.

I've had two of these - been quite impressed with the pickup on both. very authentic & pretty powerful. You'll probably have to shim the neck to get a decent string height - you may find that as well as the massive 6-screw neckplate, there's glue holding it in too - so be prepared for a bit of a scrap getting it off. Don't worry, though, you won't break it! These are the most solid basses I've ever seen, they are massively heavy, and the neck's a weird sort of ply known to vintage guitar geeks as "strip mahogany" - about 90 layers of wood... I'd also recommend a proper bridge - these are fitted with crude 2-saddle things, more agricultural folk-art than hardware! Even if you can get decent action & intonation with it, there are 4 evil, sharp, ragged overlong screws, waiting to take a chunk out of your right hand... Not sure these are technically JapCrap - neither of mine had any country of origin - but one of these was on Ebay a while back described as made in Taiwan - seems it had a sticker. Anyway - you won't find a more robust vintage P copy for £45! Jon.

Ooh, I'd have been at that like a rat up a drainpipe... J.

[quote name='Geddys nose' post='240469' date='Jul 15 2008, 11:17 PM']Did anyone get the £95 BIN Aria SB1000? I was half tempted even without the actives installed.[/quote] Err... [i]what[/i] £95 SB1000?? J.

These are the best-looking current copy imo - have you seen the other finishes? [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?s=&showtopic=270&view=findpost&p=180460"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?s=&sho...st&p=180460[/url] I particularly like the white with tort plate - :brow: and I like the fact they have [i]nearly[/i] full-width inlays. J.

[quote name='fillerbunny' post='240028' date='Jul 15 2008, 01:59 PM']Any info is appreciated! Thank you and feel free to delete or move my post if necessary.[/quote] That's stunning - buy it! :wub: OK - knee-jerk reaction out of the way - thanks for posting the pics, I've never had the chance to get a good look at a Fernandenbacker before! Going from the catalogue info I have, I think your deductions are right, it's an RRB-80, and it's probably from the early/mid 80s. I think the colour's stunning, and the fact we can see the construction's interesting, too. Lack of a skunk stripe doesn't suggest corner-cutting - Rickenbacker introduced the 4003 in 1979, and it has no skunk stripe, this may be copying that part of the design. However it has the narrow neck pickup spacing (widened to one inch on real Ricks from about 1974) and it also has a toaster pickup - these were phased out on Rickenbackers in the early 70s. It's likely that the pickup & narrow-spaced scratchplate were used here simply because the parts were available. Interesting choice of tuners too - they're either Schaller M4S/Grover Titans (they look identical) or copies of same - they're original, they are on the black one and also on the catalogue pic I have. This solves another little mystery - because I've seen the occasional unidentified copy with these before. I would be fairly confident that this was made in Japan - apart from the colour, it looks identical to the early 80s catalogue examples, and I assume Fernandes was strictly MIJ at that point. What are your concerns about the wood? It's worth bearing in mind that this is a 25-year old bass (or thereabouts), the woods will be seriously well-seasoned by now, and any issues of construction & stability would have shown up long ago. I'm no expert on wood types, but I'd have assumed it's maple, since it's ubiquitous on Rick copies - and very common on MIJ basses in general. Anyway, I think it's gorgeous, if I had the opportunity of getting it (for a sensible price, of course!) then I would, without hesitation. Oh & thanks for the link to the info site - not seen that before. The timelines are interesting, but not strictly accurate from what I already know of some brands - but there are some useful insights. And no problem (as far as I'm concerned!) posting here - I've always felt this thread should be more broadly about discussing Rick copies & genuine Rickenbackers, and would be better off in General Bass Discussion. It's not like there's a noticeable number of Rick copies on FeePay anyway! J.