Bassassin

Been racking my brains since this turned up, because I was sure I've seen this concept before, in guitar form. Turns out I was right: https://www.facebook.com/layerguitars/photos And if you scroll down the pics a bit, guess what's there? Only with a neck... Page seems to have last been updated in 2016, so guessing the idea didn't really take off. Cool enough art-piece, I suppose.

Yes - it's a Hondo. There was one on Reverb, in Italy. Not my idea of Hondo money, tbh! https://reverb.com/uk/item/32293146-hondo-professional-bass-hp1216-vintage-year-1981-made-in-japan-matsumoku-factory FWIW I don't think it's Matsumoku - that's a Chushin bridge used on MIJ Washburns & other Chushin-made basses, never seen one on a Matsumoku.

Happily no room for drum-dabbling any more, but now I'm unable to rein in my guitar-dabbling, keyboard-dabbling & recording-dabbling. I think I have to accept I'm just an irredeemable, inveterate dabbler. There's no hope for me, is there?

True that - Hondo tried to position itself upmarket in the early 80s, as Japanese brands like Ibanez & Aria Pro were transitioning to original designs with pro endorsements. I've read about this idea of Tokai Gakki in Hamamatsu building Hondos but there's no evidence for it - Tokai was a small concern that had to outsource its own production to the likes of Kasuga Gakki so it's doubtful they'd have taken on high-volume OEM mainstream brand production. However there are Matsumoku-stamped Hondos, & very high quality stuff came from Samick in Korea, who built the majority of the brand's output. Don't know which manufacturer this came from - but I want one:

Not without precedent though - in the early 80s Hondo - which was definitively far more in the bargain-basement low-end cheap copy arena than Ibanez ever was - started having DiMarzios fitted as standard on a lot of models. For a while used ones were a good source of bargain pickups! They also featured on cheaper (while not cheapo) instruments like Westbury & MIJ Vox. Yeah I know it's OT but I like to think I'm contributing to the thread not getting locked!

Conveniently, I like both basses and cats. On reflection, becoming a bass player didn't actually make me any less staggeringly sexually unattractive than I already was - which, on further reflection, was hugely unsurprising. I did dabble with the idea of becoming a drummer, though:

Baffling. Never seen one of these before, not sure which is harder to understand - why someone made it, or how it's physically possible to play it. Best explained perhaps by "just because you can, it doesn't mean you should".

It's thinner-sounding but I'd say still useable, did the same thing with a push/pull pot on another P fitted with a Model P. In fairness the see-through one's so heavy it has its own gravitational field & weather systems, meaning it doesn't get played too much. That & the neck's a bit sh!t. Regarding that Ibby Blazer - don't know if I'm about to shatter any illusions - but they weren't fitted with DiMarzios as standard. A lot of people assume they were because of the hex poles & cream covers, but that was the fine art of imitation at work there. Ibanez called it a 'Super P-4', and they were probably made by Maxon. And just to keep things a bit more on-topic - I have done the OP the courtesy of watching his video. Hmm.

I can't even start to understand that. And I don't want to.

Little switch is series/parallel, pickup is indeed a PAF-stickered DiM Model P, which I liberated from an old Satellite P copy which I paid £50 for, and then sold for £100. Them were the days... Never seen tort blocks but I'm pretty sure some of those Overwater J types had black MOTO scratchplate material inlays.

This is like that "Are YOU A Boring Bass Player?" guy all over again. Looks like the OP's been a member here for 12 years - surprising then, that it hasn't clicked that we're largely a bunch of middle-aged, highly experienced, frequently pro/semi-pro musicians, many of whom will have been knocking up bitsa basses for the last three or four decades! Oh, and here's one I made earlier.

There are very good repro pickups & knobs available for vintage Arias. Looks like that's what it needs. From the pics it could be a TSB350 (bolt neck, 2-a-side headstock) or TSB500 (set neck, 4-inline headstock). Looks like depending on the year, it had either standard black speed knobs or Aria's own design, reproductions of which are made by Repro Guitar Parts. I think the pickup's an MB-III, with exposed P type poles. Not sure if Armstrong do a version of this but Rautia Guitars do one in the correct cream finish. Anything else it needs will be standard parts, not sure of pot & cap values but someone on one of the Aria FB groups will know.

£15 car boot trash, on a very good day. Doubt it's MIJ, has what looks like a mahogany neck which on instruments like this (mid 70s or later, at an educated guess) is typical of Korean manufacture, as is the wonky, half-formed headstock shape. The missing/broken tuner could be a hint at that too - Korean versions of this style (originally Gotohs) have chromed plastic keys which crack & fall off, which is likely what happened to the original. It's in an awful state, original finish stripped & badly Ronsealed, showing the cheap & nasty plywood build, random, broken components. Not even any use for firewood as plywood burns really badly. "Don't bother chucking that on the fire".

Had one of these for ages - sounds as odd as it looks! Very lovely, lightweight, playable thing, SR-ish skinny neck, which I love. Can't remember the last time I played it, but I'm still quite unreasonably attached to mine!

Well, it's '75, so lawsuit era, technically.

Oh, that's lovely! You really don't see many of these. Does highlight the mystery though of why sellers prefer to make stuff up rather than spend 10 minutes with Google. This '60s Italian-made bass' does indeed have a neckplate stamped 'Made In Japan', and also has a serial number which places it at September 1975. It's a Fujigen model 2385, identical to the equivalent Ibanez - which might have been a sensible way to sell it, you'd think!

Unfinished Sweet by Alice Cooper - featuring the great Dennis Dunaway:

It was indeed! Cheers! A bit of Googling later, pretty sure it's one of Paul's, seems to be a signature body style: Hopefully, he'll drop by to confirm.

There was actually a BC member (whose name unfortunately escapes me) who built basses a lot like this for a couple of years. He did commissions for several member here, this was maybe 10 or so years ago, if I remember he abandoned it as a business because of the pressure & time constraints of doing so alongside a day job/normal life. Can't for the life of me remember his name, and for that reason would guess he doesn't post here any more. IIRC his builds tended to be small-bodied, headless, short/medium scale & chambered to keep them light. This does look a lot like his basses in terms of design & timbers. Was interested because I had ideas about a compact, lightweight fretted/fretless double neck for the band I was in at the time. Not much help, but hopefully someone else will remember who I'm talking about!

Funny, my immediate reaction to the thread was."nah, me neither" but that's not strictly true. Most slap you hear these days does tend to be the frenetic clattering & boinkety-boinking of the Youtube bedroom obsessives - but I have to remind myself that was pretty much me in 1985. I spent months making my thumb bleed trying to work out what Mark King, Nick Beggs etc were doing, and got to the point I could ham my way through Mr Pink well enough to impress people who'd never actually listened to it. I've always played in rock/metal/prog bands so my attempts to shoehorn in a bit (at times a lot, to be fair) of sloppily executed clunking & pinging were misguided, at best. In the fullness of time (and possibly a smattering of musical maturity) I got bored & wandered off. Like a few others here I'm partial to a bit of RATM, FNM, RHCP, have seen & been suitably jawdropped by Vic Wooten (spent an hour or ten trying to get my head around his double thumbing techique) and still own a copy of A Physical Presence - but slap is 99.9% off my musical radar & I don't expect I'll need to revisit it as a playing technique or a compositional element at any time soon.

Hilariously bad stickered-up £80 tat copy, sprayed with Halfords grey rattlecan primer then belt-sanded. Second-best laugh of the day!

It's probably more Cygnus X-1 than Don't You Want Me Baby, but I've been having a lot of fun with this: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/taurus_by_smart_electronix Can't have too many free synths.

Korean, probably Cort, I'd say late 80s/early 90s. Quite an interesting take on a Jazz, does need a good clean up but I would guess worth £120 - £150-ish.