Bassassin

Obvious variation on the HB thing. Like the fact they've binned the nasty Chickenbacker hardware & electronics, don't like the fact they kept the nasty throwaway scratchplate 'design'. In other news, if you're in the Phillipines, you can get one of these: https://ddmusic.ph/product/dd-resurrecctor-bass-guitar-4s-salmon-pink/ For about £160, or a bit cheaper in white with a maple fretboard, and a bit dearer in green. Wonder how easy it is to import a bass from Manila? Or bring one back from a holiday trip...

I work for a charity & only found out last week we get the free pro account. Had a quick mess around & it looks very intuitive & comprehensive. I have a poster design to do for next week so will be giving it a proper tryout tomorrow. AFAIK Canva's related to the free photo/video site pexels.com - I've been using their endless repository of images & video clips for years. Easy to lose hours there!

Saw prog collective Big Big Train at Edinburgh Queen's Hall last night. Uplifting & thoroughly lovely music from an international bunch of absurdly talented multi-instrumentalist polymaths. Came away feeling both inspired & musically inadequate!

Excellent! I had no luck finding decent pics of Hondo OEM DiMarzios, but this is great to see & confirms what I thought/hoped. And now you know those covers come off easily - think how much more awesome it'd look with cream ones!

Another entry in the ever-growing sub-category of basses which is: Home Made Basses That Should Be Used To Beat Some Aesthetic Sensibility Into Their Creators.

Whatever it is, it let someone steal that for £112!

Makes sense in a US-made bass but doesn't follow for the Far East. OEM DiMarzios were a big deal in Korean-made Hondos & numerous MIJ brands around 1980-ish - I have a Westbury Track 2 & Westbury Standard guitar both with their original DiMarzio pickups, and neither of which have any other DiMarzio electronic components. A tenner says original pots in a Hondo Curlee would be the Korean-made Jung-Poong (JP logo) units that pretty much every MIK guitar has. Anyway - done a bit of digging, & the fact the Hondo Curlee guitars had DiMarzios makes me 99.9% sure the bass does too:

The wiring & wax potting on that don't say 'cheap Korean pickup' to me. It's not a Model P, & I don't know enough about old DiMarzios to know if this is theirs, but I'm leaning that way. If there's a signal, I think I'd clean 'em up & see what they sound like. Can't help thinking this thread would get more attention in the 'Bass Guitars' folder rather than down'ere in Repairs & Tech. Someone probably knows what these are.

That's gorgeous. never heard of Ms DeTiger before but she has superb taste in basses. I'm only glad her taste doesn't extend to maple/blocks (blue sparkly blocks for preference) or I would be placing an order right now. As it is I'll cross my fingers for a cheapo Squier version in a year or two.

These are cool - I'd've paid £90 for it, no bother. That'll be a great project so do start a thread for it! Not sure that's a DiMarzio - a lot of 1980-ish Hondos had them as standard, as did US Curlees - but yours doesn't look like it has hex poles like a Model P. It might be marked/stickered on the back, & a DiMarzio will have green/red/white/black wiring. Usually I'd say imperial size hex poles are the giveaway, but not this time... Definitely should have a series/parallel microswitch though. And cream covers. Not sure that's the original bridge, Curlees were from the everything more brassy than everything else era, & that one looks a bit vintage. There are, or have been a few Curlee (Hondo & US) owners on BC, so hopefully some more informed contributions than mine will be forthcoming!

Not a model I'm familiar with, quick Google shows a pointyhead PJ, late 80s/90s, probably Korean but definitely not MIJ (so won't be on any Matsumoku site!), looks budget/midrange. Fortunately post-Mats budget/midrange Arias tend to be pretty decent. MIght be more info through the Aria guitars FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/23692974725

Definitely wouldn't have got that! Never seen one of these before, I'll hazard a guess it's Italian, though. Really like the body shape/pickguard & that laminated look to the body edges. The rest, not so much!

There's something 'almost but not quite' about the styling - looks like with a couple of tweaks of proportion it would be striking rather than lumpen. The rudimentary hardware & janky retro-style pickups look horrible & the Danelectro knockoff headstock doesn't work. I quite like the scratchplate design but don't get why there's a huge bit of it where the controls aren't. And where they are, they just look like they've been sort of abandoned there. Maybe I just don't understand it - but hey - at least it's not yet another Precision, right?

Always sort of liked the look of these, never played one though, never mind owned one. When I lived in Kent in the 80s there was one (fretless & sh!t brown) in constant rotation in the local shop (Frenchy's in Duncan Street, Gillin'am) - I think I was probably the only regular punter who didn't own it for a fortnight before trading it back in.

Not really a P player but I'm a sucker for black/black/maple, with a cream DiMarzio Model P for preference. Proper 70s rock machine look, & I'd definitely concede a JJ influence in there. Doubt I'd have picked up a bass without his influence. My one's a pretty rare 70s Japanese copy (Daion performer) which I paid about £100 for. It did need a bit of tidying.

Considering their origins as weirdo psychedelic proto-prog Zappa proteges, I always felt the partneship with Bob Ezrin imposed more conventional song structures on them. Although I doubt I'd ever have heard of them, never mind heard them if he hadn't!

Intro. Verse. Chorus. Verse. Chorus. GUITAR SOLO!!! Chorus. Chorus. Fade.

It's because guitarists like to play solos. While that may sound glib, as bassist/main composer in a good few original bands, I've quite often written stuff that doesn't have a bit where everything else takes a back-seat so the guitarist can do widdly-squee stuff. But they just do it anyway.

Thanks! I can help, but be warned: you have just kicked open the door to some paralysingly dull pedantry. This bass is the same thing as the Satellite, and it was made in Korea (possibly by Cort) around 1980-ish. I've seen a few names on these, and I've got an idea there's a Hohner-branded version. Satellite was the budget brand of UK importer/distributor FCN Music, dates are unclear but they seemed to appear mid/late 70s & all appear to be Korean-made - at least, I've never seen an MIJ one. To clear things up, there's no such thing as a 'Teisco Satellite'. Sellers like to call anything a bit old, far-eastern, & cheap/wonky-looking a Teisco, but not many of them are - there were dozens, possibly hundreds of small guitar manufacturers in Japan during the 60s 'guitar boom' (nearly every backstreet wood shop/furniture manufacturer jumped on the bandwagon), most of which were gone by 1970 - including Teisco, which was bought over by Kawai in 1967 & absorbed in to its parent company. Budget guitar manufacture moved to Korea & Taiwan during the 70s, as most of the big Japanese manufacturers focused on better quality & ultimately, original designs. The starter-level Korean stuff coming from Samick & Cort in the 70s & 80s used the designs & hardware types common on 60s MIJ stuff - hence slightly weird crossovers like this Satellite, with its 80s body/headstock but bedecked with tinny, barely functional hardware. If there's a takeaway from this it's that your old 60s Japanese guitar probably isn't Japanese, or anything like as old as you thing it is. Told you, didn't I?

It bugs me that the bridges & knobs are generic off-the-shelf parts, and not recreations of the originals. Also, looking at the specs, these have standard Fender style neck proportions, not the wide, near-parallel neck & tight string spacing the original SB series had. They'll feel & play nothing like an original SB.

I saw Stereophonics as opening act at the Edinburgh Princes Street Hogmanay bash in 1996. Presumably their management blagged the gig as that was best part of a year before they released their first album. I'd never heard of them & what I remember was a loud, high-energy hard rock band reminiscent of early Manic Street Preachers - to the extent they got referred to as the StereoManics for a while! They were quite good fun if a bit unremarkable, but certainly a lot more appealing (to me at least) than what the industry clearly decided would shift more units. Although in fairness they've probably had a longer career as a result.

That, exactly. Back in t'day they were great for the democratisation of music, just like punk in the late 70s which was my gateway. I remember having this argument/discussion with an Oasis-hating bandmate back in the 90s - basically anything that gets kids picking up guitars is good for music. The ones that get hooked will soon look past Noel's 4 chord dirges & sloppy pentatonics for more adventurous music & inspiration. I never liked them, never hated them either. They were just dull - a derivative, unimaginative meat & potatoes pub rock band that somehow got very, very lucky. The big question with the reunion is whether they'll get through the first rehearsal without hospitalising each other. Maybe the alleged £40 million payday (each!) will be a sweetener.

Terrible blurry, dingy photos, cursory 19-word description & zero evidence that it's a JB (not saying it's not, but the pics show a poorly photographed TBird copy with no clear identifying details) doesn't fill me with confidence or a desire to part with £800, to be honest.