Bassassin

I've no idea whether they ever sourced from Matsumoku, but we can see from the details that these basses are not Matsumoku products. It is incorrect to suggest they were made by Hoshino, as these are mid/late 70s basses, and Hoshino's Tama factory only made guitars for a short period in the mid 1960s. (I should point out that all of the "copy era" instruments are 1970s. There were no accurate Japanese copies of American instruments made in the 60s wth the exception of the very first Les Paul clone, which sneaked onto the market in 1969. Difficult to be clear about dates but Fujigen & Matsumoku LP copies first appear in 1971 catalogues, along with Strats, Teles, Precisions, SGs, Jazz basses etc - so it's realistic to pin the start of mass manufacture to 1970.) However, the Mataos may well have been sourced via Hoshino, acting as a distributor for whichever factory manufactured them, I think that's a reasonably possible hypothesis. Ta for the additional pics, I think it's quite likely both of those basses are from the same factory again. The black Precision is sort-of what I'd expect from a post '76 export bass; accurate copy bar the headstock - which is exactly what you find with Cimars & CSLs from 1980-ish. This is my 1980 CSL Jazz copy: It's not particularly original - I've pimped it a bit but originally it had a standard bridge, round-end pickups like yours & a 3-pot control plate. It also has the same 3-screw, cast-body, torque-adjustable tuners - and I'm sure it's from the same mystery factory as all of these others. Basses identical to mine were also sold branded Cimar. I also have this, which is a Cimar. It has the same headstock, tuners and heel-adust truss rod as my Jazz: Both of these basses have a lower-half stamped neckplate, like yours & all the others. Yours only differs in having a serial which I think was hand-stamped post-manufacture. The hardware's interesting but represents another gap in the hive-mind knowledge thus far - if we knew who made some of the parts, it might be easier to tie things together. It's (unfortunately) no help at all, but part of the intrigue, that these 3-screw tuners are a variation of the units fitted to 70s & 80s Yamahas, which are identical (and interchangeable) apart from the style of the key: And that headstock shape looks a bit familiar... Really that's probably a coincidence, but the confusion here isn't mitigated by knowing that Yamaha outsourced manufacture to a variety of factories, and not knowing which factories those were. So in short, my thoughts are as follows: Mataos come from the same factory as your Diamond (but not necessarily other Diamonds) and the similarities between them and Cimar/CSL suggests those too are from the same factory and since Cimar & CSL are brands known to be connected to Hoshino then there's a circumstantial possibility that Matao was also sourced via Hoshino in their role as distributor which is a role we know they undertook because UK importer J.T. Coppock Ltd sourced their Antoria guitars (which were functionally identical to Ibanez) via Hoshino and those were sold alongside the identical Ibanez instruments at a significantly lower price point which we know through the personal testimony of sales reps at the time who used the same demo instruments to sell two different brands to two separate dealer networks and, and, and... Hope that's clear! Congratulations! That concludes Phase 1 module 46.3(b) of your induction into the Vintage Japanese Guitar Community. Your badge will be in the post, pending submission of the correct remuneration and completion of a short (92 page) written test.

@adrihongkong - no problem, all that stuff is imprinted on my brain and as I might have mentioned I have an aptitude for long-windedness. With no work to do at the moment I can happily just sit and ramble/rant! Any connection with Matao would be based upon instruments being sourced from the same manufacturer, rather than the brand itself - as the info points out, Matao was a name owned by Music West, which appears to be a chain of US music shops. This reflects the nature of the vast majority of names you find on headstocks, which is why they don't often give much information about the instruments themselves. Importers will tend to go for the best deal available, so actual manufacturers can regularly change on that basis. Interesting that Hoshino is mentioned but they are a trading company, not a guitar manufacturer. In addition to Ibanez & Cimar, Hoshino owns the Tama brand, and the factory which produces Tama drums. For a short period in the 60s, they did manufacture guitars there but that stopped in the mid-60s, and subsequently they contracted out to other factories, notably Fujigen Gakki for Ibanez in the 70s & 80s. It's possible - maybe probable - that Matao was imported via Hoshino, but unfortunately it's the same dead-end regarding actual manufacturer as Cimar & CSL, both of which are Hoshino-related. Interesting to see a bass with the same headstock as yours, are there any pics of the rest of the bass?

It's a mess, and it's also not an AFR. That's an EDA905, the plastic-bodied semi-reissue of the AFR from about 15 years ago. Nice enough basses, but they go for about £300 when they dont have muck all over them.

PW is my favourite Rush album so I'm considering it. Not really fanboy enough, though - there's no new/unreleased material here & I don't know if it's worth it just for the live stuff, of which there's already a fair amount from that era around. I probably wasn't alone in hoping that someone might have unearthed some long-lost demos for Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, the aborted concept piece that much of Permanent Waves originated from!

To be blunt, yes. I honestly have no idea why someone who claims to understand these instruments would say yours was made by Matsumoku. The only reason I can think of is that he is conflating the standalone Diamond brand with Aria Diamond, and then presuming that every Aria guitar was made by Matsumoku, which is demonstably not correct. If you'll bear with me I'll try to explain - it's difficult to do without being longwinded so this might be both boring and overly detailed. Brevity is not my forte (that's probably a prog rock thing!) but I'll try to make sense. I should explain that while I might only be some nobody on a forum, I'm some nobody on a forum who's been playing MIJ instruments for 40+ years, studying them for much of that time, and for years made much of my living restoring and selling them. I have owned, played, worked on, assessed and sold multiple hundreds of these things and along the way picked up a bit of info. My MIJ rule of thumb no.1 is, with a couple of exceptions, ignore the sticker on the end, if there is one. Most brand names have absolutely nothing to do with the manufacturer, and can be more often misleading rather than helpful. So, taking your bass as just a Japanese bass, I'll try to explain how I, and anyone else who knows these instruments, can tell that it's not a Matsumoku product. Many manufacturers had various individual traits which can make it straightforward to ID their instruments, or, like I said earlier, to be confident about what something definitely isn't! First - the neckplate. On their 70s era copies Matsumoku used two styles of plate: Both styles are exclusive to Matsumoku - a "Steel Adjustable" plate constitutes a 100% confirmed ID. The only Mats instruments that did not always use these styles were brands commissioned by specific distributors, for example Univox & SLM Electra, who specified their own logos and serialisation. The plate on your bass, with its lower-half MIJ stamp is a standard style mostly associated with Fujigen Gakki but also used occasionally by several other manufacturers including Kasuga and Moridaira. Importantly, this style has never been seen on a Matsumoku instrument. If you read the quoted section in one of my earlier posts, that gives a bit of insight into how metal parts such as neckplates were sourced by various different builders. I didn't talk about the serial on your bass earlier - as an aside, it's interesting (I have never seen that format or positioning before) but I think a red herring as far as a manufacturer ID is concerned. Looking at the irregularity of the characters compared to other serials, it appears to have been hand-stamped after the plate was manufactured. The pickups on your bass help to exclude Matsumoku as manufacturer. On their J bass copies, Mats used a couple of distinct styles which are quite different to standard J units: As the 70s copies were based on 60s & 70s Fenders, pickups were intended to be hidden under chrome covers, so authenticity wasn't considered that important. The earliest copies pre-date the existence of accurate J type pickups, so often manufacturers used whatever was available - it's common to find chrome Telecaster-style units under the covers of budget basses. Anyway, as time passed, the basses became more authentic & Matsumoku moved to using conventional J-type pickups, interchangeable with the original Fender units. The round-ended pickups like yours are common but broadly, not used by Matsumoku or Fujigen. Identification of electronics & pickups remains one of the big grey areas in the MIJ community knowledge - Nisshin Onpa was responsible for Maxon pickups which were very widely used, and very helpful in dating pre-serial instruments as from 1971 they bear a code which defines the unit's actual day of manufacture. However there are various pickup styles, including most bass pickups, which aren't coded or branded, so beyond the overall style not much use for date or ID. I need to explain how I know your bass is not early 70s. Simply, it's the headstock. Accurate MIJ copies of American designs started appearing around 1970 - bodies, headstocks, fretboards, the whole aesthetic, was intended to look as convincing as possible. It's entirely fair to say that no MIJ Fender copy made before mid-1977 would have a headstock like yours. You'll have heard the term "lawsuit" bandied about in relation to these instruments. Leaving aside the fact there never was a lawsuit, the threatened legal action by Norlin, Gibson's then-parent company against Elger Hoshino, the US arm of Ibanez brand owner Hoshino Gakki Ten, was in relation to Hoshino's use of the trademarked "open book" shape on Ibanez-branded guitars. No lawsuit took place because Ibanez had stopped using that style over a year earlier, as the brand started moving away from copy instruments towards its own designs. However a consequence of the stir caused by the legal threat was that it precipitated a general move away from copies, and other Japanese manufacturers followed suit, meaning most headstock shapes on exported instruments were modified from that point on. Matsumoku changed their Fender copies to this shape: It's worth mentioning that Japanese home-market copies weren't modified, and while by 1979 MIJ copies in general had pretty much vanished from export ranges, they continued in their home market for decades. As I said in my first post, I've never seen a bass the same as yours before, and while not getting a pat answer about its ID & manufacture might be frustrating, for the likes of me it's intensely fascinating. I think most of the MIJ intelligentsia elsewhere will probably conclude it's a Chushin - and they might be right - but I'm not sure. Chushin Gakki was a massive manufacturer which supplied an immense range of instruments of all levels with a countless number of brands - but their scale & significance is something that's only become obvious in the last 10 or so years. It's meant the name's become something of a catch-all for anything we can't be certain about, and realistically, that's a lot of stuff. I'm skeptical broadly because there are lots of examples of confirmed Chushin Jazz copies which are the same standard as yours but have very different woodwork details. It makes no sense that the same factory would produce two different versions with the same appearance, spec and price point. This is part of the same logic that can be used to tentatively rule out other manufacturers whose instruments are well-recorded such as Fujigen, Moridaira, Kasuga. I think your bass - and the related Cimars & CSLs - came from a specific factory whose traits we're as yet unsure about and whose role at the time isn't clear. The likes of Terada, Iida, Dyna, Kawai, Nagoya Suzuki & Kiso Suzuki were all active at the time and certainly on the copy bandwagon, along with numerous long-forgotten others, and of course Matsumoto Gakki Seizou Kumiai, the manufacturers' union mentioned in an earlier post, about which we still understand frustratingly little. I've often compared understanding these instruments to a form of archaeology - there is little information about the hundreds of manufacturers that came and went during the Japanese guitar boom, a period that broadly spanned the late 50s to the late 80s, and the ones we know most about are those that were most successful at the time, and that survive today. Everything else is the result of years of piecing together scraps of what's left behind.

Had one the same: Overall similar to the Columbuses & Grants of the era but clearly not the same manufacturer, despite sharing a lot of identical hardware.

Again - that tells us who it's not, rather than who it is. Fujigen seem never to have used this style, Ibanez, Antoria, Greco etc J copies have conventional square-ended units. On their various Jazz copies, Matsumoku used a few distinct styles unique to them as well as standard types. The only Mats I remember seeing these on are some permutations of Westone Thunder II & IIIs. Don't think I've seen round-ends on Kasuga, Yamaki or Tokai either, but there's so much indeterminate stuff it's hard to be sure. Manufacturers who did use these include Chushin & Moridaira, they also appear on Yamahas but they contracted out to various other manufacturers and as far as I know there's no record of who built what. Me, usually. Which is how I know that style of pickup was used on plenty of Korean basses in the mid/late 70s. Actually, interesting you mention Cimar & CSL, the two brands are related. Cimar was owned by Ibanez owner Hoshino, CSL was house-brand of UK Ibanez importer Summerfields. CSLs were usually re-brands of Cimars, sourced through the distribution deal with Hoshino. I think the OP's bass is from the same factory as Cimar/CSL (too many common details for coincidence, knowing what I do) I just don't know who the manufacturer was, yet. While I have specific reservations, Chushin Gakki's a strong possibility, and that's what I expect he'd be told if he were to do the rounds of the various MIJ FB groups. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't like to be told their instrument's not what they want it to be, it seems.

There's probably a dozen. But we couldn't talk about old 1960s 6-string guitars we've owned there, could we?

I think it's a later version of the same bass as yours, from the same factory. The colouring is interesting, but to me looks like a new instrument or one that's not been exposed to light, the neck & body being a naturally more yellow colour than the fretboard. hardware looks brand-new too.

Years ago I had an old Columbus Jazz copy which had a massive Cargo Studios sticker right across the back. Did a bit of digging and found a record of a Columbus J on an ancient gear manifest from the studio - which was for a time co-owned by Peter Hook. So I like to entertain the idea that Hooky might have had the occasional play on my old Columbus. Tenuous, I admit.

Just watched that half an hour ago. Lovely piece of work!

Longest-owned instrument is a Columbus SG copy which I bought used in 1980 - my first guitar. I'd been playing bass for two years when I got this: Nice, playable slightly better than budget quality Japanese guitar which I learned a lot with. That one's not mine - These are guitars with very slender necks & no volute, and bad things can happen when headstocks hit walls. This is mine...

I had a Rapier 33, picked it up at a local car boot along with a ruined Kay Strat copy, think I paid £12 for the both. The Rapier was a really cool & interesting old guitar, played not bad after a bit of work. Lots of curious details - set neck, no truss rod, and fitted with switches from a Morphy-Richards hairdryer. Can't remember the specifics now but the trem impressed me with its simplicity & compactness. Odd finish, almost like it had been plastic-coated, unfortunately quite badly cracked. Mine dated to '62 as far as I could work out - which, if I got it right, made it the only YOB instrument I've ever owned. Seems they were real garden-shed jobs back in the early days, hand-wound pickups & whatever components could be put to use - hence the switches, I guess. That's one I sort of wish I'd hung onto, doubt I'll run into another.

I've shimmed necks on BBOT-equipped basses to avoid huge, spiky lengths of saddle height screw sticking out & trying to lacerate my hand! Particularly lethal for pick players whilst palm-muting. Never had to do this with a cast bridge, as far as I recall.

Thanks for the pics @adrihongkong - good to see a few more details. These definitely help establish who didn't build rather than who did, but there are a few intriguing details too. I am struck again by the fact this looks so factory-fresh, I've never seen a 40+ year-old bass before with no tarnishing & discolouration of the metalwork, or ageing of the wood (particularly the neck) no matter how well looked after it's been. OK, I don't think it's anything to do with Aria. Aria Diamond was a distinct sub-brand with an unambiguous logo, here's a late 70s decal: So anyway, I think this is a different Diamond, and could be related to this one that came up last year, which I think is a Tokai build: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/389192-diamond-bass-made-in-japan/ I spraffed about that one at some length on that thread so won't repeat myself too much! The problem with positive IDs of random 70s MIJ basses is that there are distinct ID characteristics for just a handful of manufacturers, but in the industry's heyday there were dozens, if not hundreds of companies, from huge mass-production factories to backstreet workshops turning them out. And there's this issue, what with them being copies, that they do all tend to look similar... There are some details about the bass & similarities to other instruments that make me think it's from the same manucaturer as those other instruments - but that's not a whole lot of help when I don't know who the manufacturer was. It is, I think, from the maker responsible for Cimar & UK brand CSL. I would say it's the same as the Cimar model 1908ASH in this mid 70s catalogue: A few differences, notably the tuners, headstock and neck heel. These basses have round-ended J pickups & a 2-saddle bridge under the covers, I would say the Diamond is a later version of that bass. Worth noting that late 70s Cimars were fitted with the same 3-screw torque-adjustable tuners fitted to the Diamond. The problem is that it's not known who made these Cimars. Cimar was distributed by, and subsequently owned by Hoshino Gakki, owner of the Ibanez brand, but the copy-era guitars at least, were not made by the factory which made Ibanez. A lot of the dead-ends in this research often lead to an organisation known as the Matsumoto Manufacturers Union or Association, which seemingly came into being to make smaller businesses more competitive against the bigger players at the time. This is worth a read if anyone's interested: Anyway, given myself a headache (real, not metaphorical!) trying to get my head around this & get it into some sort of order. I'm off for a lie down.

I'm sure I remember someone on here, must've been 5+ years ago, did an A/B with a BBOT & a BA2 - same bass, same strings etc, and the consensus from the clips was that the BBOT sounded marginally better. Hope I'm not hallucinating that. I like hi-mass bridges largely because they look better, I'm hard pushed to hear any difference at all. I do have a few basses with Schaller 3Ds, being able to adjust string spacing, mostly for accuracy over pickup poles, can be a benefit.

I think in real, quantifiable terms, some people think they look better.

That's really quite interesting. On first glance I'd say it's probably 70s Japanese - although some of the better Korean instruments from that era can be hard to distinguish from MIJ. I don't think it's the same bass as the Matsumoku-built Arias, although there was an Aria Diamond sub-brand. Instruments branded just "Diamond" occur quite regularly in various different territories and it's not clear if all, or in fact any, are connected to Aria. It's probable several unconnected distributors used the Diamond name. What's most unusual about this bass is the headstock shape - almost all 70s MIJ Fender copies used the standard Fender style. Some (including Aria) changed the head shape from around 1977, after Gibson's threatened litigation against Ibanez over their use of the Gibson head style (the so-called "lawsuit") but this isn't a style used by Aria. For me, that's particularly interesting on a Fender type bass which has the large chrome truss cover seen here. On early 70s instruments, several Japanese factories used these, including Fujigen, Matsumoku and Chushin. All phased these out by around 1972, apart from Chushin who continued their use on budget Fender copies throughout the 1970s. I've been interested in these old guitars & basses for a long time and this one is the first I've ever seen to combine that early truss cover style with a non-Fender headstock. The headstock points to late 70s, as does the position of the thumbrest - earlier instruments have it fitted below the strings as a tug-bar, as the late 60s/early 70s Fenders would have. There may be some clues to its origin in some of the bits you haven't shown, so if possible pics of the neckplate, tuner backs, pickups & bridge might be useful. Neckplates can sometimes identify a specific manufacturer, or at least, narrow down who didn't make it. Finally - it really looks in exceptional condition, pretty much unplayed to my eyes. Very unusual to see something like this where the neck lacquer hasn't yellowed significantly. Looks like it's been in a box for 40 years!

Wasn't what I was expecting the first post to be! It's exactly like mine! Which is currently looking for a new home, me having got a Yamaha SG1500 which pretty much does the same job. I regret selling everything a little bit, but I probably feel worse about holding onto instruments I just don't play any more. The Westy's been in its case for about 18 months now, will definitely miss it when it's gone.

Way too much for a bass with an unadjustably dodgy neck. Maybe worth the £60 I didn't pay for one!

If you're interested (and I understand if you're not!) there's another one here, better quality pics from different angles - genuinely hard to see any differences from mine, including the neck/body joint position: https://www.richtonemusic.co.uk/product/tokai-breezysound-thinline-telecaster-butterscotch-w-hard-case-2nd-hand-ytokai88700/ The scratchplate is interesting - when I first got Tele GAS I spotted a lovely SX Thinline someone had up on Ebay for about £100, natural finish with a pearl scratchplate. Missed out on that, and weighed up a new SX (£200) against the J&D, which was £113 but with a tort plate that I wasn't too keen on. Anyway, I put the detail aside & pulled the trigger, thinking I could pick up a pearl plate later for a few quid. Having got the guitar & looked into it, it turns out the proportions are quite different from a standard Fender fit plate - and the screw position & count is also different. The Fender plate (and the SX copy) have 4 screws along the top, between the front of the bridge/pickup surround & the neck pocket. The J&D - and the Tokai - both only have 3. Combine that with the very yellowy butterscotch finish, identical detailing and near-identical hardware, and to me they do look too similar for coincidence. My "thing" is old 70s/80s Japanese guitars, often Fender & Gibson copies & I'm aware how Japanese factories made generic instruments for various overseas importers/distributors, sometimes with slight variations but usually identical, and those instruments were sold with different names and often with vastly different prices. I have every expectation modern Chinese factories are just the same & I'm pretty confident the J&D Teles come from the same factory, if not the same production line, as the Tokai. Hope you'll excuse my banging on like this, but I do find this sort of thing unhealthily interesting! I suppose it only matters because the same guitar (if it is) being sold for 3x more makes the J&D seem even more of a bargain!

Genuinely curious - what differences are you seeing other than the headstock shape? The only thing I can see is that the neck might be set a couple of mm further back on mine, when you line up the 17th fret with the neck/body junction. Anyway, really amazed by how good a guitar it is for so little money - I bought it expecting it'd be a bit bit shoddy & I might have to do some work to make it play properly, but it really needs nothing. Even the shop setup was spot-on, the only thing I had to do was tweak pickup heights to balance their outputs. I might well have just got lucky & landed a good one but I'm tempted by some of the other J&Ds now. Got my eye on their shortscale Jazz, might be fun & a fraction of the price of the new Sire shorty.

It's an LBX60 - this is an '85/6 catalogue: A few years ago one of these came up on the local Gumtree for buttons, I think £60 or so. Me & another local BC member spent too long coming to a gentleman's agreement over who should go for it, and we both missed out!

Bizarrely enough, that's why I ended up with Tele GAS. Couldn't really get into the album (a massive step back/down from Hand Cannot Erase imo) but loved that big, brash guitar sound.