Umm...

[Derek1071]

Pretty convincing, to be fair:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322626315502

[TheGreek]

Link doesn't work for me...

[Hellzero]

It's an old Maya or crap like this, better avoid this.

[Bassassin]

[quote name='Hellzero' timestamp='1501539988' post='3345446']
It's an old Maya or crap like this, better avoid this.
[/quote]

It's an early 70s Moridaira, probably sold unbranded. Like most early MIJ stuff, it's a fairly inaccurate copy, but a long way from "crap".

[Hellzero]

Have you ever played one ? This is real crap, sorry but these Japanese plywood basses are not good instruments at all, just like the Morris and other atrocities made in the seventies.

It's not because it's old that it's good.

I'm almost 52 and started on these basses that were awful but affordable when you are a student. Thanks to them, I now have a powerful left hand (and fingers) and can play double bass easily. So for that point I should say they were good, but the action was so high, the pickups so bad and noisy and the weight so heavy that telling these basses are good is proving that you never played one.

When I bought my first real bass something like 5 years later, a second hand 1972 Fender P-Bass, I asked myself how could I have been able to play such an "instrument"...

[binky_bass]

Sent him a message the other day explaining it was far from a Fender... no reply, but at least he had the decency to amend the listing.

[Bassassin]

[quote name='Hellzero' timestamp='1501633748' post='3346152']
Have you ever played one ? This is real crap, sorry but these Japanese plywood basses are not good instruments at all, just like the Morris and other atrocities made in the seventies.

It's not because it's old that it's good.

I'm almost 52 and started on these basses that were awful but affordable when you are a student. Thanks to them, I now have a powerful left hand (and fingers) and can play double bass easily. So for that point I should say they were good, but the action was so high, the pickups so bad and noisy and the weight so heavy that telling these basses are good is proving that you never played one.

When I bought my first real bass something like 5 years later, a second hand 1972 Fender P-Bass, I asked myself how could I have been able to play such an "instrument"...
[/quote]

Well. I guess that's me told, and firmly put in my place, then.

Tempting as it is to respond with my usual elephantine sarcasm. I should probably be a little more constructive and explanatory.

So yes, I have owned and played well over a hundred instruments from this era, starting with my first bass, which was a Grant-branded shortscale Jazz-ish copy. I had this brand-new in 1978, when I was sixteen. It cost £59, which was actually more than I could afford back then. It wasn't good - properly low-end and somewhat absent-mindedly put together.

The thing is, I didn't even know how to tune the thing, never mind adjust the intonation & the truss rod, shim the neck etc. So I thought it was garbage, it held me back and eventually I bought another low-end MIJ bass off a mate. This was quite a lot older and had presumably been set up at some point, and this was what I learned on, and did my first few years of gigs with.

Subsequently I have owned a really stupid amount of basses & guitars, predominantly midrange 70s MIJ copies. For a while a few years back I was making something of a living buying these instruments, restoring/fettling them and reselling, and as a consequence I have a somewhat trainspotter-ish level of interest & knowledge relating to these things.

So I know exactly what this bass is, which factory made it and when, to within a year or so. Unless it's damaged or has excessive playwear, the neck will be well-made with good quality fretwork and it should set-up to be playable without any fret levelling. If you look, you'll notice it's a 3-part quarter-sawn construction which is typical of midrange MIJ of this era, and was a construction technique adopted to minimise the likelihood of neck twisting. The real MOP inlays to the 17th fret are an indicator that the bass is pre 1973.

The pickups are very decent single-coil Maxons (actually pretty sought-after by MIJ geeks) which despite the appearance do give a good impression of "proper" J pups. At the time this bass was made, there were no accurate copies of J or P pickups which is why these turn up, hidden under the chrome ashtrays of so many early MIJ Fender copies. These will have codes on the back which give an accurate age for the bass, although I'd say '71 or '72.

The body is probably not ply - on instruments of this type 99% of times they're veneered butcher-block - it's likely a mahogany core with birch veneers & probably a 2-layer pancake construction. The only real cost-cutting here is the admittedly nasty 2-saddle bridge, which, like the pickups, is intended to be hidden under the ashtrays.

In fairness, in this condition (and if I was still fixing these up to sell) I wouldn't want to pay more than £50 for it - whatever way you look at it, it's a 45 year-old resto project and there's always a risk associated. However if the neck's intact and the pickups are working, then it probably would take very little to make a decent and useable instrument out of this.

[Hellzero]

Don't want to go to war, but I used to run my own repair shop some 15 years ago (guitars, basses, amps and even classical instruments) and owned for myself something like 150 basses from the cheapest to very expensive ones

I played bass, double bass and a bit of guitar over the 3 past decades, recorded a few albums and repaired so many of these old Japanese instruments that when I think about it, it just makes smile when i see the today price tags according to the real quality of these instruments and I agree when you say it's worth £50 GBP.

So let's say you had all the good ones and I had all the bad ones.