Bassassin

This might be a good start: http://www.vintageunivox.com/ Unfortunately the site hasn't been updated for 20 years so it's a bit of a nightmare to navigate, but history, plus pics & info about specific models are there if you're willing to dig. There is a plethora of Facebook groups devoted to Japanese guitars from the 60s, 70s & 80s, including a Univox-specific group, and also The Original Vintage Japanese Guitar Fanclub, which is pretty much a repository for all the current knowledge & research about old MIJ instruments. As far as the Basschat community's concerned, it's unlikely anyone here will have specific info for you, as Univox was a US-specific brand & never exported to the UK - but I would be failing in my civic duty if I didn't insist that you post some pics!

Prosaic answer: From 1981, I'm sure Lars never owned a copy... And how many artists mentioned on the front would by any stretch be considered 'metal' at any point after, say, 1985?

Would be Stoner/Doom these days. Sabbath never considered themselves to be 'metal' & still reject the label.

Needs a 'not any more' option. A lot of 'classic' hard rock would've been called heavy metal at the time but as the music's become more extreme, the term's been redefined. Lots of speculation about the origin of the term - I've always understood it to have come from biker slang for large capacity (and therefore loud) motorcycles - hence its appearance in the lyrics of Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild. Which would have been pretty heavy in its day.

Hang on - I'll just pop back to May 2010 and find out.

Wasn't me. Unfortunately!

Just plain white on the original MIJs. For the 2012 Clockwork Angels tour Geddy used a custom plate bearing a symbol from the album artwork - not sure but these might've been used on Geddy sigs around that time. This bass pre-dates that, though.

Cheap for any MIJ Jazz, never mind a desirable high-spec god-sig model. Tempted, despite the fanboi connotations...

I believe this particular bass might have been discussed recently elsewhere on t''web, where I already said stuff about it, some of which I'll repeat for the interested. And the unconvinced. This is part of a curious sub-genre of 80s MIJ instruments which is 'Japanese copies of Japanese originals'. It's not a Blazer, but a lower budget copy of a Blazer from a different factory. Not 100% clear which particular factory, but it's absolutely not made by Fujigen, which was the manufacturer of 70s & 80s Ibanez, including the Blazers. These basses (and the guitar versions) appear branded Jarock, Madeira (sub-brand of Guild) and Oakland. The Oakland brand is thought to be connected to the Kiso (Nagano) Suzuki factory therefore it's speculated that these were made by Kiso, rather than Chushin Gakki, as the MIJ community had previously assumed. These seem to be decent basses but are unlikely to be of the same quality as the Ibanez original - they feature generic closed-back tuners, not the Gotoh GB-1-based 'Hercules' units used on Blazers, the bridge is a standard BBOT type rather than the cast, heavy duty Blazer units, pickup is not the 'Super P-4' DiMarzio clone used by Ibanez, and I'd suspect the solid finish (also available in sparkly red & blue!) conceals a ply body, rather than the solid ash/sen used by Ibanez. So, value-wise it depends. At a guess an original Ibanez Blazer will probably sell for about £350 - £450 these days, so this, being a budget Ibby copy, should realistically be a bit less, if I was sticking it on Ebay with a no-reserve auction I'd hope for maybe £200 - £250. Assuming I was being clear about exactly what it was - and what it wasn't.

Top Twenty was the Woolies brand, probably sold elsewhere too as that was Rose-Morris' ultra-cheapo brand beneath Avon & Shaftesbury. Anyone's guess what the Jazz was, there were loads of unbranded instruments & literally dozens of different factories making good ones.

Satellite (as the attentive reader will know, me having pointed it out a couple of posts up! ) was from the same distributor, FCN Music, Korean-made and even cheaper & tackier. Columbus was posh by comparison! Back in the heyday of Ebay, for about 5 years or so I made a few bob buying & selling old 70s MIJ & MIK stuff, I always did a 99p no reserve auction & people did sometimes bid things up to downright silly money. Like many us, I started out playing this sort of thing, and while very little of the old Columbus, Avon, Hondo etc stuff was exactly pro-standard, I did appreciate how much poor setup & lack of any ability to fix it had held me, and I would think most of us, back, 30 or 40-odd years ago. Of the ones I worked on to sell, I'd say it was only one or two instruments that couldn't be made perfectly playable, due to problems such as warped necks.

AKA Mark King Music, because he seemed to be on the cover most months! Pretty sure I've still got a stack of them somewhere...

The information here's not correct. Fujigen Gakki only ever made 'Made In Japan' labelled instruments. When manufacture moved from Fujigen to Dyna Gakki & Tokai Gakki, 'Crafted In Japan' was introduced to differentiate them. Seemingly Fujigen retain exclusivity over the MIJ label and it has appeared on occasional post-'97 Fujigen-made production runs. The 'O' prefix & CIJ indicates it's post-'97 and from either Dyna or Tokai, but I don't think there's any way of distiguishing which of those factories built it. There's no quality differentiation between any of the factories used by Fender Japan.

I'm inclined to think this thing's the result of an infinite number of monkeys being given woodworking tools.

The bridges would need to be where the pickup presently is, if that was ever going to intonate.

Ftfy.

Never seen a build before where someone's clearly installed the bridge before attaching the neck. But rules are there to be broken, right? ...Right?

Cool - didn't know that!

You'd need to do something like providing a picture of the tuners in question, before anyone's going to be able to do more than guess at an answer. My guess is probably not. Many MIJ Fenders use Gotoh GB1 or GB10 tuners and I don't think there's a lollipop key version.

Since 2014 the various online MIJ communities have unearthed a bit more about the origins of many of these instruments. We now know MIJ Columbus to have largely been a product of Chushin Gakki - most of them are identical to a vast array of midrange copy-era guitars that appear worldwide with hundreds of different brands - including common UK names like Avon, CMI, Grant, Sumbro etc. It's possible that some of the later MIJ Columbuses were Kiso Suzuki builds, but that's as yet unconfirmed. Copies can be understandably hard to ID. FCN's Kimbara range seems to have been a combination of high-end Chushin builds and Matsumoku - I'd expect @W1tchseason's Jazz to be a Matsumoku bass - if it has a 'Steel Adjustable Neck' stamped neckplate, that would confirm it.

I thought the same, but is 'Closet Classic' maybe meant to suggest it's intentionally aged? Like a relic, but without looking like it's been kicked down 6 flights of stairs & flung under a bus. I kind of like it, apart from the falling-off finish & price tag.

Just had a look - it's a bit tatty but if it wasn't collection in person from London I'd be sorely tempted. There aren't too many unmolested through-neck, early Yamaki-era Washburns around, and when they turn up they don't tend to be Vultures. Even in that condition it's a bit of a bargain.

Looks like a bitsa assembled around a 70s neck & a cheap modern body. As ever, the big oversprays on the contours indicate it's almost certainly ply, butcher-block if you're lucky, but absolutely not solid timber. Faintly amusing it's wearing a June 1980 Fujigen Gakki neckplate which I am entirely confident is not related to any other part of the bass! Mildly curious to see what it goes for, & how much someone's willing to pay for unclear provenance and a lot of problems...

I think that's the Japanese calendar, in which the year derives from the reign of the emperor at the time. In the Showa calendar, which ran from 1926 - 1989, for the duration of the reign of Emperor Hirohito, 58 corresponds to 1983. And that's a stunning JV. If you didn't give the chap at least a grand for it, you robbed him!

This is very strongly influenced by 60s Italian oddities Wandre.