Bassassin

Off the top of my head, it's Tim Allen at gig.ink who does thse. Or anything you want on a trc.

I suspect it's more like a batch/shipment number than an individual serial. Rose Morris sold three different guitar ranges - Top Twenty, Avon & Shaftesbury, and these all had the same silver stickers, obviously attached by the distributor rather than the manufacturer, as they were sourced from various different suppliers. I've owned numerous Rose Morris instruments & these "serials" are always 4-digit, which would be ridiculously limiting if each number was actually unique. So I have no idea why they called a batch number a serial, but I think that's what they did. Fwiw if I was selling an Avon SG in nice, original condition, I think I'd hope to get around £120 - £150. These were decent budget instruments, but not the top tier of 70s MIJ copies.

That would've been a fiver over the odds. Still, shows what can be done with a crap sticker and some bullsh!t.

Don't know why I've refrained from commenting on this up to now - but bloody hell! That ticks every P - shaped box I have: MIJ, through-neck, maple board, double P - I could go on... Only ever seen this before in old catalogues, and not with a maple board: So I'm not sure whether yours is the FPM-80 or the BO-60. Apart from the price & finish, I'm unsure what the dfference is. Could be that yours is another model altogether and just not in any of the available catalogues. These only appear in the 1980 & '81 catalogues and will have been Japanese market models. Doubt if Fernades would have officially exported this sort of bass post "lawsuit era"! I don't see many basses I seriously covet these days but if you ever decide to part with it, I'd be very seriously interested!

I don't think so but I couldn't swear to it - it was a long time ago! He definitely played it on the '83 Signals tour.

CTTH was recorded at the Glasgow Apollo in 1980, on the PW tour. My ex-other half was part of the "Glasgow Chorus" credited in the ESL sleeve notes! I didn't see them on that tour - became a fan slightly too late to get a ticket for the 5 nights they played at the Hammy O. I do regret never having seen them in a smaller venue than the arenas they were booking from MP/ESL onwards. The 1981 Ingliston gig was my second-ever Rush show - it was technically the ESL tour as they'd just released that album, but programmes, merch & the set were all the same as MP. Apart from the sneaky rendition of the as-yet unrecorded Subdivisions...

ESL tour was the UK/Europe leg of the Moving Pictures tour. MP was released early '81. Still got my MP tour shirt somewhere.

Pretty torn up about this. Massive Rush fan since my teens - they are beyond doubt my biggest musical influence, and Neil's contemplative, philosophical and often spiritual lyrics inspired and affected me far beyond music. Goes without saying that he was a defining and extraordinary musician whose like we will not see again. I am privileged to have seen him play many times over the years, and those memories now have a deeper meaning.

Decent but butchered MIJ copy, probably late 70s. Would be worth picking up for around the £50 mark if it wasn't for the ham-fisted defret, which IMO would cost more than the bass' restored value to sort, unless you could do it yourself. As it stands, it's a decent set of tuners on some scrap firewood, which means the £26 it's currently at is double what I'd pay.

Might just about be worth £50 for the tuners, pickup and bridge - those heart-shaped Hercules jobs are like gold-dust. All that paint would come off the body with plenty of acetone and elbow-grease & I'd be surprised if the original finish wasn't still there underneath. Not sure about the neck though, the paint & varnish on what I assume is a rosewood board might be problematic. And that headstock is grotesque - no idea what you'd do with that.

There's an anagram in there somewhere.

No coherent difference! It's the same company (Shiro Arai Co), they adopted the Pro II suffix in the mid 70s, probably around the time they started pushing original designs alongside copies. Don't think there's any real differentiation, modern Arias seem to use both brands pretty much interchangeably.

The discussion here plus my negligible detective skills have led me to speculate it might be an IGB-65 - is this it? https://www.andertons.co.uk/bass-dept/bass-guitars/modern-bass-guitars/second-hand-aria-igb-65-in-natural

The only real question is - how come Eastwood haven't knocked out a shonky Chinese copy, priced up at £1200?

It's a brutalized 1982 Ibanez Blazer/Roadster/Roadstar II. Both tragic and hilarious at the same time. The hilarity being the price.

Unless you mean the grotesquely wonky headstocks.

Really impossible to answer without knowing what the bass is. Aside from the 70s & 80s MIJ Arias and a few recent exceptions, there's usually not a lot of value to them. Not really sure why because broadly they're good quality instruments. I find it a bit depressing to say that it's possible you'd make more from the parts, depending on what it is.

Looking at the seller's other items, and paying particular attention to the prices and quantities sold, I am contemplating a career change: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/apcustom_shop/m.html?item=281863941188&hash=item41a0666c44%3Ag%3ADHwAAOSwImRYaoFY&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

Now, this was unexpected, and makes me very happy. First new range of basses I'm genuinely keen to get a good look at in literally years. So much for zero-GAS 2020...

Cool little thing, although insanely overpriced. But this ad does bring to mind something that's baffled me for years - why (oh why oh why) do people cover up the serial numbers on instruments they're selling? What possible point is there in doing this?

It's proper. Here's a better condition (and also overpriced) example of the same model for comparison: https://reverb.com/uk/item/30776354-70-s-1978-yamaha-pulser-precision-bass-pb-400-nat-japan-with-hardcase-and-flatwound-org-strings Agree in that condition it's well over the odds - it would clean up better than it is but the hacked-up logo & missing original parts don't help it.

Bit of a stretch calling it a Fodera copy, apart from the headstock shape - it's a really good-looking bass. Just like Foderas aren't.

Amazing collection! Those 3-point units used by Matsumoku are notoriously flexible though - this was my Westbury Track 2 when I got it: Think it might've been too far gone for the bar to fix it...

The first UK Rockinbetters were 21-fret & had a conventional bridge: If I remember from an ancient BC thread, it's another toaster under the Fender style cover. Not 100% about this but I think the first ones were MIK, as were the Indies I mentioned earlier. Rockinbetter's a bit of a curious brand - the name seems to have originated with a Canadian distributor called Dillion (or possibly Dillon, links are all gone now) which was also distributor for Tokai, presumably leading to the conflation many are mildly irritated by. I did see pics of the Canadian market copies in the early 00s and they weren't identical to the ones we got. These are nice basses - David still manages to sneak the odd one or two out if you keep an eye on the Fakers FB group, I'm sure he just finds a few under the bed or at the back of random cupboards from time to time... I have an original set-neck RV4, only two in the world in this colour, according to David: Any excuse to keep posting this pic! Scratchplate/controls are my own mod as I'm no fan of the original 4001 style plate.