Bassassin

I have one of these, lined maple fingerboard. It looks stunning and is lovely to play. Unfortunately mine is an absolute boat anchor, it weighs a ton and is sit-down only! May not be true for all of them but I think they have a reputation for being a bit beefy.

Opeth. If I remember, main man Mikael Akerfeldt joined as a bassist, before becoming guitarist/frontman/composer.

Sell about 10 basses I never play. Actually play my lovely Sire fretless, rather than just looking at it hanging on the wall. Too bad this doesn't look like it's going to be the year for resolutions

I'm sure £900 could buy you one that didn't have a p!ss poor Halfords rattlecan finish & hadn't been used for banging fence posts in.

Potential bargain project there. Although this (SB600 bolt neck, I think) will have the traditional Aria SB wide nut/narrow bridge, near-parallel neck, so won't play anything like the OP's Elite/SB-R.

Only just spotted this - don't think I've ever seen one come up for sale before! The Rick type bridge was standard on these. They turn up on a few MIJ original designs, including the first iteration of Ibanez Artist. As far as I know Squire modded his quite heavily - reshaped the body & obviously the white finish & tin metal plate weren't original. Electra was a US importer (St Louis Music) domestic brand so I don't think these were ever officially available anywhere else. Incredibly rare bass, if it wasn't for the new B**x*t import hell - and the fact I have absolutely no need or use for it - I might be slightly tempted...

Indeed - still got it. And it came from Denmark St, memory's a bit vague but I think it was Roka's. Casting's not perfect on mine but it was a bit of a bargain & sort of had to come home with me! There were some of the painted body ones there too, the blue was quite pretty. Nice bass but only ever gigged it once - the hollow metal body is very microphonic, and to get it to not squeal like a piggy meant I had to seriously cut the top/high mids & couldn't get a tone I was happy with. Nearly sold on here a few years back (unforseen cash emergency) but if I remember right I was talked out of it! However seeing the £1200 tag on this (whether or not it actually exists!) and the fact mine's basically unmarked does mean I could possibly be persuaded... Look. Look at the shiny...

No - please don't hack this up. From the satin/grain texture finish, I think it's an SB-R60 rather than an Elite I, there's an ever-dwindling number of these around, they've not been made since around 1984, A good proportion of them have already been butchered, by earlier owners who at least had the excuse of considering them cheap, throwaway Japanese rubbish, which is how these were seen for a lot of years - and the reason they're so scarce now. Swap the pickup, drop in a preamp - any mod that can be reversed isn't something you or any subsequent owner will come to regret. If you think two pickups will help give you the sound you're after why not look out for an SB-R80, SB-Elite II or SB-ELT?

I picked up a Faker someone had butchered into a lefty in a similar way a few years back - good quality thing that probably started life as a Shaftesbury. Might've kept it if it hadn't also had the frets crudely ripped out & neck binding stripped off. Stripped it for parts & flipped the neck/body for more than I paid. Wonder what happened to it?

Yes - in precisely the same way a '62 US Precision is still just a £120 Fender.

Interesting design & certainly an improvement over the primitive original - but it won't address tail-lift, which the new official Rick unit does. I still think unless you really need the mute, the Hipshot remains the best solution, at least you can palm-mute when using a pick - which quite a lot of Rick players seem to do.

The prices these are hitting - or at least asking - has become a reflection of assumed collectability & investment potential. Undoubtedly they're excellent instruments but broadly, so were all Fujigen Fenders - there's no metric by which a JV Squier is worth around twice what you'd pay for an 80s or 90s MIJ Fender, beyond the hope that at some point you could flog it for more than you paid! Good luck to them, if I had one I'd want unrealistically eye-watering money for it too. Whether or not anyone would pay it! Should say that one's very, very clean - if that's original (seller suggests it is) there really won't be many around as nice as that. And you definitely wouldn't want to drag that down to the Spyglass & Haemorrhoid open mic night.

It's very nicely crafted but basically a £200 bitsa P with a three grand carved dragon. I'd be concerned about the practical effect of removing big chunks of wood between neck & bridge, looks likely to flex & deform under string tension. Looks too delicate for anything more strenuous than hanging on the wall, anyway. His other bass looks a little bit more practical, still very silly but a bit less like the back of a seat in a Chinese restaurant: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Electric-Bass-Guitar-phoenix-hand-carved-in-sycamore/353228993444

I missed a delivery for a cab a few years ago & went to the depot to pick it up. While I was waiting for someone to find it I could see a van (typical Luton style box van) being loaded - boxes & packages were heaped on the ground at the back of the van, and the guys were literally using the pile as a ramp, running up & down it to take stuff inside the vehicle. I would say this is evidence that's a standard practice.

I think most of us learn to play a bit before we learn the theory of what we're playing - therefore we probably tend to start out listening to & playing along to pretty simple stuff. So I think any affinity to 4/4 & 3/4 is learned - I certainly think that was the case for me. My musical self-education very broadly took me from punk to metal to prog, and by the time I started trying to compose my own music I was as likely to be playing in 7 or 5 as much as 4, so that's what came out. These days I tend to sit around with a bass or guitar & noodle random ideas, and again, they're as likely to unconsciously be an in 'odd' time as a standard one. Not sure I've ever sat down with the intention of writing something wilfully not in 4 or 3, it's just what feels & sounds right.

Just a couple of quick points: I have been studying, researching, restoring, buying & selling MIJ guitars & basses (with a specific interest in Rick bass copies) for around 25 years, have spent the last 20 all over every MIJ-related site, forum & group on the web and have never, ever, seen a Tokai 4001/4003 copy. There is zero evidence they ever existed. There's even some doubt that the Tokai guitar copy is MIJ as it's been suggested that the catalogue it appears in crosses into early MIK Tokai manufacture. There's more detail to the Tokai/Rockinbetter story than just the UK importer - off the top of my head, a Canadian firm called Dillon or Dillion used the brand on some crude Rick copies. They are better known however for selling fake Tokai Love Rock LP copies (Google 'Fakai') - so the plot is a bit thicker than it appears at first. Still doesn't mean Rockinbetter's in any way connected to Tokai, but it's quite strongly conflated. The template for current Chickenbacker copies seems to go back to Korean-made Shine Fakers (made by Saehan) in the early '00s. These had the common Chickenbacker tailpiece design (with a Shine logo), Seymour Duncan pickups & mostly had small, non-Rick styled headstocks, although a few had the proper shape. They still turn up occasionally and are pretty well-made apparently, although are dimensionally inaccurate, like all modern Fakers.

No idea whether it's comfortable or not but looks like it'll always be pleased to see you.

Possibly only US. Don't know about MIM but MIJ, MIK, Indonesian, Chinese etc are metric, as far as I know.

Hi Tom, welcome to BC - and good to see another Force 30! I'd say you got a bargain there, if you do sell, bear in mind you'll probably never see another! Yours is the first one I've seen since the last post in this thread so no more new info so far. A couple of FB groups would be interested in seeing your bass, not sure if a Force 30's been featured before: Daions Online Washburn Guitars - The Golden Era

£90 bass with a £200 Halfords rattlecan squirt job. ...and yes, I was just after an excuse to use the phrase 'squirt job'.

Lovely little thing, isn't it? I had an identical one about 9 years ago - Antoria 2354B, made by Fujigen, exactly the same bass as the Ibanez & Greco versions. Mine was a car boot classic, needed a proper clean & setup, & a very hard-to-find replacement neck pickup, as the original was dud & rewinding's not part of my skill set! Couldn't find a handrest though, there must be thousands of dusty ones at the backs of drawers... Very, very good little bass and one I thought twice or three times about moving on. Happy to be able to give @Paul S a few pointers and delighted it turned out as good as it looks!

Quite difficult - the MC900 was the first, and consequently rarer 22-fret iteration of the Musican range. I'm not aware of any circuitry issues with these but it's probably reasonable that if an example has issues, they will have shown themselves by now. There will be specific MC series experts who know much more than me, perhaps ask for advice here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ibanezvintageguitars There's also a BC member who's recently acquired an MC800, which is the passive electronics version, he might be able to give info & advice about build & playability: These were the top end of Ibanez' range at the time and build quality is generally exceptionally high. Obviously a bass that's 40-odd years old will have had a life, but unless it's been abused or has excessive play wear I wouldn't expect any construction-related issues. I'm not sure if you're just looking for one of these, or are asking advice about a particular one you're interested in buying - if you're still looking, considering the rarity of the early MC900s, I think if you'd consider a later MC924, there would be a lot more choice available. Hope this helps a bit!

Took a moment for me to realise who the seller was - it was the postage that tipped me off! However - never seen one of these before, it's probably not a thing of beauty to very many beholders, or a design classic - but certainly a curiosity. Won't be too upset if I never see another one, to be honest.

Amusing name aside, they look a lot like yet another set of fashionably filthy and smashed up Fender copies to me. I'm not a Fender copy hater by any means but at what point does a market become oversaturated with countless identical clones of the oldest, most common and by now, most generic basses ever created?