Bassassin

These were crap. It's a cheap Korean knock-off of the Kramer Duke, which was in itself a cheapsh!t, bodged-up-in-an-afternoon attempt to bandwagon-jump the 80s headless market, whilst avoiding the inconvenience of bothering to design appropriate hardware. But at least the Kramer had decent Schaller parts, which this doesn't.

Looks like a generic Fender copy covered in filth. One of the things in life I simply am not equipped to "get".

Is that what you get now instead of the NME's current favourite landfill indie haircut band? Not watched it for about 4 years - my, how times change. Used to force myself to sit through it as it was the only live music on TV. In recent years I appear to have exhausted my supply of giveafuk.

In fairness exactly the same result could have been achieved with a much smaller - and lower - shim in the back end of the pocket, simply changing the angle of the neck rather than raising the entire thing. Would look somewhat less, err, conspicuous too. The majority of bolt-neck instruments I've worked on either already have, or benefit from a shim at the back of the pocket.

Mine was a CMI - Jim Marshall's Cleartone Musical Instruments brand - @razze06 has it now. Don't remember seeing this model branded Shaftesbury, only the Nobblies.

Voted B - seemingly the unpopular choice but I've always enjoyed playing new places in front of people who had no idea who we were, and what they were going to get. Money for fuel is a bonus too. Doesn't always happen...

The 'Oo were the first band I really got into and Townshend, in his day, was a genius-level composer. I don't really do all-time favourites but for me Quadrophenia is unparalleled as a suite of conceptual music, it's an album I never tire of. However - Moon died within a few months of my becoming a fan and in a real sense, that was when The Who ended. I've always had some interest in their sporadic career since then, was beyond gutted when we lost Entwistle, and have bought a few albums and seen what's left of them a couple of times. But this - little more than a leaden 12-bar with Daltrey grunting away like he's lost his inhaler. A bit of a relief in a way, won't have to be tempted to give any more money to a thicko geriatric millionaire with ignorant, obnoxious political views.

That nut looks like it's been strung l/h at some point. The scratchplate is the same shape as the original - they were always ugly! Easy to use it as a template to make a replacement though. Not sure what's gone on with the neck joint - mine was bolt-on but I have an idea some of them were glued. Mine had a cover over the screws but can't remember what it was like underneath, except it wasn't like that! Would definitely need to see the neck to understand what he means about it being bent. Seem to remember these have a 2-way truss rod, might be possible to tweak it. Although £350 seems a bit much for what really looks like a project.

It's a bitsa, or at very least, heavily modded. You may find some answers, or some definitive clues if you take it apart, but looking at the pics I can see pickup, knobs & tuners from a 70s Taiwanese-made Kay, a home-made scratchplate, P-Bass bridge cover and a Letraset headstock logo. I'm betting that big piece of plastic is covering a multitude of old routes and screwholes. Would be interesting to see.

I do remember seeing The Vandals supporting Pearl Jam about 20 years ago - I only remember the name of the band for two reasons: their drummer was in the original line-up of A Perfect Circle, and their singer inexplicably got his kit off during the PJ support gig. Fortunately I was far enough back not to experience either psychological trauma or retina burn. Phew. I wasn't so lucky for a couple of gigs my last band did in our early days. In a triumph of booking mismatch we (a female-fronted proggy/gothy/rocky band) were on the same bill as local hardcore punk veterans The Swellbellys - who, as the name & pedigree suggests were rather well-fed gentlemen from the halcyon days of punk rock. The intervening decades might have softened their waistlines, but not their attitude or desire for freedom of expression - their encore involved the entire band getting naked, and exhorting the boisterous, enthusiastic and very, very drunk audience to do the same. In a very, very small room. I still have nightmares. Often about chipolatas and scotch eggs.

First bass was a nasty little shortscale J-ish thing branded Grant, exactly like this: Didn't have a proper amp for a couple of years, for bedroom practice I rigged up a cable to connect the bass to the aux input in my little stereo. First amp came from a local charity shop, cost me £30, I think. One of these: Which regrettably, I don't have any more - in fact I don't know what happened to it. The band I was in split, the amp was in the drummer's mum's basement, which flooded before I got around to collecting it. It probably ended up in a skip - which is a shame, because I could probably pay off the mortgage with it now...

I know a bit about Wandre from my adventures in vintage guitar shenanigans - they're incredibly rare & collectable 60s Italian exotica, as much period art as musical instruments. Not to my taste, but I've always hoped one would turn up at the local car boot for a tenner - they look like that sort of thing. Fwiw the Etrurian here is by far one of their more restrained designs, and at the current bid (£470-odd) would be a ridiculous bargain. Check this: https://reverb.com/item/11437659-wandre-rock-bass-first-series-masterpiece-davoli

I'd be prepared to say it's a genuine MIJ Squier neck - as far as I can see the tuners are the Gotoh GB1types frequently used by Fujigen, would be odd to use them on a stickered-up cheapo. Don't think that 7-screw bridge was ever used on anything associated with Fender though, and the black-back body looks pretty suss - would expect it to be ply. Bitsa, I'd say.

It's not true anyway. Stickers won't touch a poly finish, and nitro's rubbish to start with. (#controversial)

Frequently. Used to habitually use Rotosound Swing Bass, always stone dead after one gig or two rehearsals.

Being a huge Tool fan since '94 (so not quite OGT from the first EP, but close) and having more money than sense these days, I did pre-order the gimmicky tat physical version, to go alongside the ltd. eds of all the other albums/Salival box set etc. Didn't pay any £80, though. That's possibly why it hasn't turned up yet, leaving me in the curious position of still not actually believing this so-called "new album" actually exists. In this era of post-truths, fake news and alternative facts, that seems perfectly plausible.

Here we go: This is from a mid-70s catalogue for the Maya brand. The same basses were sold with dozens of different names on the headstocks and very often unbranded, so if this one has no brand, then that's what it is - a no-name. However, these are believed to have been made in Japan by Chushin Gakki, which was a major manufacturer during the 70s copy era. Chances are, it won't require much more than a good clean, a setup and new strings to put it right - these aren't fantastic instruments but they are sort-of cool and sort-of collectable these days. If it's cheap (under £50, say) it looks like it'd be a fun little project.

I'm no Fender expert but... Front screws on the bridge, cheap, unevenly laminated body wood, glued-on maple fretboard, cheap-looking neck timber, pressed-tin tuners, blurry, photocopy-look decals. The more trained eye will see much more but this is cheap Chinese tat - knock a 9 off the price and it would still be too much.

Yes, exactly that, but instead of one distributor, loads. Anyone could (and still can) order direct from a factory/exporter, as long a you bought a minimum quantity, and have instruments badged up as they pleased. Many of the 70s UK brands, such as Grant, Shaftesbury, Avon etc were just imported by music shops, sold in their own retail premises & also distributed to other outlets around the country. In the 70s you'd end up with the situation where retailers would have the same instruments with different badges (and often different price tags) hanging side-by-side.

Because there's no need - they've just shortened the scale length to (presumably) 33-ish, and shunted the whole lot up the neck. 12th fret position moves, so no need to shift the bridge. The physical length of the neck stays the same as the standard bass. Same with Wyman's I'd expect.

Counting from the 12th, it's 22 frets, likely they just didn't add the extra two on his. Shame the pic's not clearer!

The first fret is the zero-fret, that's how they shortened the scale.

These would have been sold with a load of different names - Chushin Gakki (the factory that made them) was probably the biggest manufacturer of low/midrange copy-era stuff during the 70s, and importers all around the world all put their own brands on them. On the whole, despite being built to a budget, they're usually perfectly playable instruments - there's definitely a consistent good quality in necks & fretwork on instruments of that era. I think back in the day a lot of us (me included) considered them junk because we had no clue about setting our instruments up properly. Those closed-back Gotoh tuners on so many of these basses get a bad rap, but that didn't stop the likes of Shergold using them.

I'm afraid I have no idea, but I want to commend your use of the term "embuggerance". I will find an opportunity to use that word myself today, and strongly recommend others to do likewise.

This is interesting - looks like the Reverb bass actually uses the 1st fret as a zero-fret - the neck's the standard length but fret positioning/spacing's altered to make the scale shorter. It's very noticeable how close the 24th fret is to the end of the fingerboard. What's interesting is that the Wyman article doesn't say they shortened the neck, it says they'd "just steal two frets' length off a regular bass". I think this is how they did that.