Bassassin

Wish I'd known too, still lived in town then, could've walked 'round.

All these brand names are only names & nothing to do with who made it. Might not even have had a headstock brand, many budget instruments from the 70s didn't. However it's 99.9% MIJ (fractional possibility it's Korean or Taiwanese but I doubt, it and it's absolutely not an Eko!) and does look closest to Hooky's old EB copy & the 2 Zenta-branded basses - main clues are the shape of the scratchplate & trc. The same designs did appear on basses branded Jedson, possibly made by Sakai Mokko or Teisco Gakki, (which is a different Teisco to the one most people have heard of) but otherwise they're very different: The scratchplate & trc might put Sakai/Teisco Gakki in the frame but isn't enough for a positive ID. I don't have any pics of an identical bass (and the guitar versions are more common) but I'll have a dig around & see what I can find out. The Zenta name doesn't offer much of a clue, the brand was a John Hornby Skewes budget range & the Zenta literature I have shows 2 EB style basses, both identical to Korean-made Hondos & lacking the distinctive details of this bass. The business model back then was often to source the best deal on any generic instrument, so suppliers & instruments would change depending on what was available.

You could've sold it to me if it was a P/P like this one - I'd only have had to come from West Lothian!

I just have a memory for pointless details that no-one else notices!

MIJ. I have one, cost me £60 from a local pawn shop, and turned out to be the nicest Jazz I ever picked up. Looked like this when I got it: And looks like this now: Original round-end pickups were a bit thin & weak, so it got a pair of DiMarzio Model Js. And pimped a bit too. If I could only keep one it'd be this, no question. I don't know as much about this as I'd like to. CSL was Summerfields' house-brand at the time they were UK importer for Ibanez, and this, plus several other CSL models, is a rebrand of a Cimar Jazz copy from 1980. Cimar was owned by Ibanez' parent company Hoshino, so it's tempting to think they came from the same factory, Fujigen. However there are details which make me quite confident that's not so - and I don't know who did make them. Which is faintly annoying!

Metal fixes everything. 🤘🤘

The Eko looks a little like the Westone (another 80s Japanese brand) Thunder range - although not quite, the Westone bodies are more symmetrical. Unfortunately the single-pickup Westone Thunder I has a bolt-neck, which is why I've not included it here. The other models in the range both had two pickups & active electronics.

@sarakisof - "is it good for metal?" is a BassChat in-joke that's been around so long no-one, not even Tony Goggle or TIM! - can remember where it started. And of course it is, everything's good for metal. In the right hands.

Never seen that before! Add that to the list, then. And that reminds me of this one - another Aria Pro that fits the bill: Aria PB-1500 from about 1978, I think. Probably neck-dives horribly but I'd love one. Very rare, though. Sorry if I wasn't clear about the Brandoni Eko - they bought up Eko's original stock including unfinished bodies & necks, and sell them as parts to build yourself, or as completed instruments.

What's really odd is that I've just posted a pic of a bass version (branded Asama) on this thread - someone looking for a natural finish, through-neck & single pickup bass. These are interesting guitars & are something of a mystery within the online vintage Japanese guitar communities. So far they've been identified under nine different brand names around the world, and I'm confident there are others: Fernandes Bozo Lincoln Asama Condor Memphis Pro Martin Sakura Tempest Out of those, the only "name" brand is Fernandes, where they appear in a Japan-only catalogue as "Custom Hand". There was a bass version too. There seem to be small variations between versions & it's interesting that yours had a built-in effects circuit, I've not read about any of the other versions having that. It's still not clear who made these - as you may know, an instrument's brand name is seldom connected to the actual manufacturer - but speculation is that it was Kawai Gakki, who are known to have manufactured Fernandes at various points, or Kasuga Gakki, who seem to have been main manufacturer and possible owner of the Pro Martin brand that these guitars were also sold under. Both Kawai & Kasuga produced similarly constructed instruments under their own names.

I think the MC800 & the active, twin-pup MC900 were only around for a year, after which they were replaced by the MC924 active and (on occasional years) MC824 passive. Both were twin pickup/24 fret. Ibanez used the same numbering to differentiate active/passive & 24-fret necks on their Roadster, RoadStar II & Studio series basses too. I sometimes worry that I know all this stuff, but nothing remotely useful.

Both stunners but I'd be all over the blue, love a transparent colour stain.

This topic deserves more attention than I've currently given it. A few other late 70s/early 80s basses that might fit the bill. Most of them had natural finishes as that was fashionable at the time, but they're predominantly poly lacquer finishes rather than oiled, so hopefully that's not a deal breaker. Aria Pro SB-R60 The SB-Rs (and the near identical SB Elites) have a more conventional-shaped neck (and much nicer inlays) than something like an SB700, which has a fairly parallel neck, with a wide nut & very narrow string spacing. . Still fairly easy to find for a vintage Japanese bass, & definitely a lot more common than an MC800! Aria Pro TSB550 32" scale. Not as common as the SB-R but they do turn up from time to time and aren't outrageously expensive. There are good number of less well-known basses fron this era too, here's a thing branded Asama: The same basses (and matching guitar versions) turn up with a variety of different names - nine at the last count. Most common as Lincoln in the UK. Moving to Korea, this was made by Cort, sold in the US branded as Lotus, and confusingly, is a copy of Washburn's Vulture/Scavenger basses. Washburn didn't do a single-pickup through-neck Vulture & the Scavengers were bolt-neck. And moving a bit closer to home, from Italy, here's an Eko/Camac BX7: These are from about 1984 - sort of. What's interesting is that Brandoni Guitars in Wembley bought masses of Eko liquidation stock including the BX7 unbuilt neck/bodies, and seemingly will sell you this brand-new, as an NOS body built up with modern components. For £325... I might go shopping.

Well, that's not strictly the case! Right - sit down, make yourself a cup of coffee/tea/gin and let's see what we can work out from the evidence as presented. This is likely to be largely stream-of consciousness rambling, confusing & very, very boring. Don't say you weren't warned. The problem with trying to identify old instruments from online sales listings is - how can I put this? Sellers often don't know what it is they're selling, or if they do, they will assume the majority of potential purchasers don't. So they might say things that either aren't necessarily true, or aren't meticulously researched & fact-checked, to sell whatever it is. Many buyers & sellers often seem more concerned about what they want something to be, rather than what it actually is. That's the case with both of the basses you've linked. They're not Japanese, probably not '70s and they're absolutely not made by Matsumoku. They're Korean, and possibly made by Cort, if the style of the control plate/scratchplate on the natural finish example is any indication. That one's actually very interesting & I'll get to why a bit later. I should probably explain that I sort-of know what I'm on about with these things - I've had an unhealthy preoccupation with old-ish MIJ & MIK instruments for most of the time I've been playing (which is a looooong time!) and for about 15 or so years made a living by restoring & selling predominantly 1970s copy-era Japanese guitars & basses. I don't claim to know everything (& no-one does) but when you've worked on literally hundreds of instruments from a particular era, you do get an eye for traits & details. Typically Korean & Japanese are easy to tell apart, and the products of specific Japanese factories (such as Matsumoku) are very straightforward to ID too. These two basses, like yours, are Korean. The neck style, very similar to yours (extra fret, unusually wide black blocks, no binding, Fender-type headstock, Gibson-style nut) indicates they're from the same factory, which as I've said is probably Cort. It's worth understanding a bit about brand names too. Best advice is usually to ignore them, in the majority of cases they'll tell you nothing at all about who actually made an instrument. In many ways your bass is a good illustration of why - it's unbranded, it came from the factory unbranded & like thousands of others, would've been sold brand-new like that. For a few pennies per unit more, whichever company ordered & imported your bass could have thought up any name they wanted, and the factory would have put that on the headstock for them. However - some well-known brands can be tied to specific factories and that's why the two you found are helpful in understanding more about yours. Japanese-made Hohners all came from a factory called Moridaira, and when that arrangement came to an end in the early 80s, Hohner production moved to the Cort factory in Korea. I mention Hohner because Leyanda appears typically as a brand for Hohner acoustic guitars, although a little research indicates they used Leyanda as a sub-brand for budget electric guitars too. This might be a regional thing, as Hohner also used Rockwood & Arbor as budget sub-brands in some territories. And about 30 seconds' Google image search gives us a Hohner Arbor Jazz copy with an identical body, control plate & scratchplate to the natural finish Leyanda: I'd say, based on inlay style & hardware it's a few years later than the Leyanda - but it's an associated brand, has the same highly distinctive components, & fits the established timeframe for Hohner's use of Korean manufacturers - so it's safe to say it's from the same factory. So through this process of somewhat anal detective work, I think we can be perhaps 99.65% sure that your unbranded Jazz bass came from the same factory as the two Leyandas you found - it has a distinctive & near-identical neck. That neck's overall style (black blocks, Fender headstock) probably dates it to late 70s - at a guess '78 or later. We know the manufacturer's Korean, as all the basses have identifiable MIK traits, and we can narrow down the factory to probably Cort because one of the Leyandas has the same distinctive body & hardware as a Korean Hohner Arbor - which was probably made by Cort. There are a few reasons I can't be 100% that it's a Cort. Firstly, knowledge of older Korean manufacturers isn't great - like in Japan there would have been dozens of different factories but we only know a few - off the top of my head Cort (Cor-Tek), Samick, Young-Chang, Saehan & (possibly) Arirang, and apart from the first two it's not clear how early they were operating & what they made. We know that Hohner's high-quality post-MIJs are Corts because they're often identical to Cort's own-branded guitars from the same era, but we can't be certain Hohner's budget ranges were also from Cort. At this point though, there's no particular reason to think they weren't. So it's Korean, late 70s, factory-unbranded and made by Cort. Evidence to 100% establish the manufacturer & a specific year might emerge in future, or with more detailed research than I've done, but at the moment that'll have to do!

If it doesn't have to be new, that's a fairly standard format for late 70s/early 80s original design Japanese basses. This is a Kasuga Scorpion:

Interesting old bass - I can tell you it's not Japanese. From what I can see I'm fairly confident it's Korean - that style of tuner with the pressed steel backplate in that shape, and the domed string retainer, are universal on MIK Fender copies from the late 70s/early 80s. Importantly these never appear on Japanese instruments. For comparison, this is a Korean Jazz copy I had a few years back: Another clue is what looks like a blank neckplate - most Japanese instruments from this era have an MIJ stamp. There are exceptions but those will usually have other identifying characteristics. The extra fret's odd - I don't think I've seen that before, but I wonder if that's because a number of MIK basses (including the Franconia above) were available in long & short scale versions - the extra fret suggests the neck pocket's longer, which might be to make it possible to use the same body blank/routing for both scale lengths. Just an idea. The round-ended J type pickups originated on MIJ basses but also appear on MIKs - speculation is that manufacture was quicker/cheaper routing rounded body cavities than cleanly squared ones, leading to these being used. Early MIJ Gibson copies with bolt-necks have round-ended fretboards & neck pockets, presumably for the same reason. It's an interesting bass, nice to see a solid timber body rather than the usual ply. If you can get it for £/$/€50 (don't know where you are!) then that might be worth a gamble, but tbh it does look pretty tatty & neglected, in that state I wouldn't pay more than that.

The neckplate's from a October '82 Fujigen guitar or bass. These plates were never, ever used on MIJ Fenders. Everything else apart from the blatantly shonky sticker does indeed appear to be a Classic Vibe fretless. These chancers really need to try harder.

I might be cloth-eared & hearing-damaged from years of high-dB ear abuse, but with these comparisons and with my own basses I can never hear a difference that's not more likely to be attributable to pickups, electronics, pickup positioning or even hardware. I love the look & feel of a lacquered maple fretboard so for me it's an aesthetic & tactile choice.

You know what I'm going to say. 😁

They certainly are - cream covered DiMarzios (or copies made by Maxon or Goto, which Yamaki/Washburn used) were absolutely de rigueur on early 80s basses! Swapping the covers would be sacrelige!

Peaches by The Stranglers. Would've been June 1978, got home with my brand new £59 bass, sat down & tried to play along until it sounded right. Had to re-learn it a week or two later after I found out how to actually tune the bass - and suddenly it was a lot easier! Also the B-side, Go Buddy Go taught me to play walking bass - which was handy. Took me 2 years to actually get in a room with a guitarist & a drummer & the first thing I ever played in a "proper" band was the Overture/Temples bit of 2112, by Rush.

Definite similarities. There was a pretty standard format for a lot of MIJ original design basses, which was basically a symmetrical doublecut body, bolt neck, 2-a-side headstock & a single P type pickup. Washburn, Westbury, Vantage, Kasuga, Aria, Hondo, Morris and various others all had basses like this. Not sure if they were an attempt to "originalise" something like a Gibson EB type, or just have consistency with their guitar designs. Or maybe just an odd affection for neck dive...

I had a Watkins Rapier 33 guitar about 13 years back, picked it up at the local car boot, cost me £12 for that and a Kay Strat copy that looked like it had been found in a ditch. The Rapier was a really interesting guitar, did a lot of reading & research about them - they were proper garden shed instruments in many ways - no truss rod, hand-wound pickups, switches cannibalised from Morphy-Richards hairdryers & so on. The finish was an odd sort of plastic coating rather than conventional paint/lacquer - very prone to cracking & flaking, probably due to age-related shrinkage - mine wasn't an exception! The one I had turned out to be a pretty early example - the features & serial put it at around '63, I think. What was good was that everything worked fine, a couple of frets needed re-seating but it played quite nicely after a clean, fettle & re-string. Sold it for around £350, if I remember - which was quite pleasing considering it cost me £6.