Bassassin

£290's a bit closer to the mark (than the near £400 it failed to sell for previously) considering it's probably modded, damaged, a bit of a cosmetic mess, and isn't a "classic" era Aria. ELTs are awesome basses though, wherever they were made.

I met Tony Butler years ago, and shook his hand. Does that triple the value of my hand?

Couldn't agree more. It's the shape which makes it a very ugly bass - I really like the actual woodwork.

Re-listed. Same description, so he's clearly not following this thread...

Not a Washburn - there wasn't a P styled model in the range in 1984. Closest thing would have been one of the Force models & they're very distinctive & nothing really like this. Don't know what the bass is but I've seen a few bound body/no scratchplate P types from that era - pretty sure Fernandes did something like that. Failing that it could be some sort of custom job. Apropos of nothing, can't read the logo but the placement looks really odd...

It's an early 70s Japanese LP bass copy, plywood body, pressed top, the necks on these are also a mahogany multi-laminate - which strongly suggests they're Sakai Mokko builds. The same bass was sold in the UK as Jedson, and also unbranded. The one I had aged 16 was unbranded - it was a decent & playable starter bass and actually sounded pretty decent - unlike a lot of these the pickups were proper humbuckers rather than single coil "mockbuckers" - and it was pretty gutsy. Just noticed this has an old Maxon single-coil as a replacement for its bridge pickup. Oh - the Guild logo's a sticker, and this is about £100's worth realistically. They're fairly common.

First off it's not an SB-900 - it's a late 80s (post-Matsumoku) SB-ELT. These were probably Japanese but they don't have any serials or other identification so they may be Korean builds. As far as I know (and I ain't no expert) all the Matsumoku fretless SBs had lined boards - I've never seen a fretless ELT before so this might be factory. Not too sure though. Whatever it is, the seller's a lazy sod for i) not researching what it actually is, ii) not doing what he claims is a simple repair that he's done before, and iii) not giving the bloody thing a wipe. Still managed to get nearly £400 for it though.

Just had a proper look at the pics (I was on my phone earlier) and that's a Thunder 1A, probably a Jet with the finish taken off. Ignore my earlier remark - it's a wreck!

Considering Thunder IIs are typically around the £300 mark, that's a damn good price for a project/ resto.

I'm inclined to think those are not the original pickups - the wood surrounds look like an afterthought. and don't match the build quality of the rest, to my eyes. I'd guess they're a later modification & are covering older routes. Another bass displaying exceptional craftsmanship (aside from the wonky pup rings) but ultimately ending up pretty ugly - although this one's very much of its time. Anyone else clock the Aria Pro style bridge?

Properly cool, always fancied one of these but never actually seen one in real life. The guitar versions however, are pretty common. I think they were sold as Austin Hatchet in the US, Kay in the UK - but they're actually Corts - sharing the neck-through construction , brass triple-dot inlays & brass hardware with a range of Corts from the late 70s/early 80s. They were sold under the Cort brand as "Cort 45". Lol.

That's astonishingly well-crafted and meticulously detailed, a genuinely jaw-droppoing level of craftsmanship. It's also really, really ugly.

Cheapo bass strings in shonky packaging. Speaking as someone who got burned a couple of years ago - and mine weren't quite that absurdly cheap!

Did a lot of reading about Watkins after I picked up a Rapier III at a car boot for £6.50! It was designed from the ground up to be a Strat-style guitar, simply because real ones weren't available in the UK at the time. Think Hank Marvin played a Rapier before he got that red Strat.

Justice was the album that made me a Metallica fan & got me back into metal - I'd also say it represents a seminal moment in the birth of the prog metal genre. So I was just a little bit excitable when I read about this - right up until I listened to the Dyer's Eve stream. Gutted. Same old same old, and (from an ex-fan's POV at least) another slap in the face for Jason. Really, from the point of the Napster thing onwards, it's been hard to shake the feeling that Metallica had become a cynical, profit-motivated business being run by a bunch of cnuts. A proper remaster/remix of Justice would've gone a long way redress that feeling - but all this does is reinforce it.

And finished at £77. Someone likes a challenge. And chucking money away.

Yes - should be a separate single saddle sitting on top of the base plate, with the string(s) passing over that . Can't quite work out what's going on here.

Bear in mind it lacks a nut or a functioning bridge. A £15 car boot project, but will be massively compromised by also being a wretchedly abused 45-year old cheapo with an unreinforced hollow body that's too flimsy for the one string it has. Will be amusing to see what it sells for.

This is a knockoff of the old Valco Airline, right? Basically a guitar strung with bass strings to make a pocket-money starter bass for kids. Only this one's £866.

Apparently "Grief has a shaft stiffness". Y'know - I really don't think I needed to know that.

I've fancied doing something similar for a while - I really like the idea of a lefty maple/pearl blocks neck with the headstock re-shaped to a Tele style. More to the point with this - what's going on with the string alignment/bridge position? Also a bit lazy bodging r/h tuners on - they've had to cut a chunk off the backplate of the G to make it fit. Whole thing looks a bit of a lash-up.

A couple of pics:

I don't think so - Cimar was owned by the same trading company (Hoshino Gakki) which owns Ibanez, but all of the copy-era instruments appear to be from a different factory to Ibanez. I'd say it was broadly a lower-tier range - or at least there were "starter" level instruments in the line up, which there wasn't in the Ibby range. That said, there were top-end Cimars which were easily on a par with Ibanez - their Rick 4001 copy was a rebrand of the Chushin-built Shaftesburys which are pretty common in the UK - these are way more accurate than the early Ibanez versions and easily as good quality-wise. The only exact crossover between Cimar & Ibanez that I'm aware of was the Cimar Stinger from 1980 - this was the exact same bass (and guitar) as the short-lived Mk 1 Ibanez Blazer - even the marketing materials were identical. Weird or what?