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Rare Basses


Bass_Guardian

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And another rare bass with the original quad coil Tune pickups and its original Tune twin preamp, which is even rarer, yes twin preamp, a very odd idea, you might say, but not that odd in fact.

Here is my Tune BEB-6 fully original and the best 36 inches bass I have ever owned or played. Yes it's an original one made in Japan before the Kobe earthquake that destroyed the Tune factory way back in 1995...

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On ‎18‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 16:16, anzoid said:

Yeah, you'd think Hohner would have better records of their own instruments... maybe a new Hohner thread is in order to try and gather together everything known about B2s Jacks, B basses and all the rest. When I started out playing back around 89-90 I had a Westone Spectrum Series 2 in red, it was... a bass. A mate had a Hohner B Bass (black I think) and, wow, would have loved that bass but so far outside my price range at the time it was unbelievable. Got my first B2A in 95 from the classified ads in the back of the local paper. It was listed as simply a Hohner B2A, no other info, guess you had to know what that meant. He was asking £100 for it and, to be honest I was expecting a bit of a dog at that price - but it was immaculate. Seller was a semi-pro bassist retiring due to arthritis, he just wanted it to go to a good home. I like to think it did, had it as my only bass for nearly 15 years and it travelled a lot. Finally sold it to a friend who was just learning bass - one of my few regrets.

When I read this about the old headless Hohners beeing kind of rare, I come to think of my own headless bass. It's a Cort Space B2 (I think it's called) With active/passive Electronics. I'm not shure how rare this is, but The Cort webpage states that these where manufactured alongside the Hohners in the Korean Cort factory in the 80's, and share much of the same hardware and Electronics.
I do think that the active ones are a litte more difficult to find than the passive ones.

Well herre are some pics.

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Snap - well, kinda!

cort1200.thumb.jpg.0c72c8b13b21a5e2f400a94fa56d8149.jpg

Got mine as a bit of a beater/project off a BC member about 6 or 7 years ago, the finish was somewhat the worse for wear so gentle application of a heat gun persuaded it off. Interesting to find there's a clear basecoat with quite a nice satin finish over the wood, so no need for a refin.

Yours is interesting - I've never seen an active Cort before, the electronics do look to be the same as the Hohner's. I have a B2A as well as the Cort, and the original Hohners were from the same Cor-Tek (Cort) factory in Korea. Curiously though, the necks are entirely different, the Cort's being more of a flattish Precision shape, while the Hohner is narrow at the zero-fret and very round-feeling. I'd assume the Hohner is modelled on the original Steinberger, as it's a licensed copy.

This might interest you - Cort were clearly determined to get as much mileage as possible out of that Steinberger licensed hardware!

934801204_Cortheadless.png.170fea7496423ee4ee481c45a4e366c3.png

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1 hour ago, Bassassin said:

934801204_Cortheadless.png.170fea7496423ee4ee481c45a4e366c3.png

I nearly bought one of those Space PBs a year or so ago, but I messaged the seller to get an idea of the weight and he said it weighed a ton! Was a bit surprised, but he claimed it was plywood. Maybe should still have taken a punt on it... though thinking of dismembering my Hohner Jack II (bolt on neck) to make something similar...

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11 hours ago, Bassassin said:

It'd be a shame to re-purpose your Jack, @anzoid I'd just pick up a cheapo P,  headless hardware set and power tools of your choice! :D Clone Hohner/Steinberger hardware is about £35 a set, including the headpiece. I've had a headless project in mind using this for some time...

Yeah, you're not the first person to say keep the Jack original.  I did buy it as a project but it's 80s slightly battered charm is growing on me. It does raise (at least for me...) a potentially interesting question as to whether we ought to preserve our rare(ish) basses simply because they're not being made any more, are in some cases hard or almost impossible to come by and have historical value (for certain values of both "historical" and "value"). Against that is "well it's mine and I'll do what I please" :D

With the Jack one option would be a refin back to the original metallic ice white (it's gone creamy off white that is not totally unattractive, but not particularly nice). My only hesitation for that would be getting the correct "Hohner Jack II" printing done on the body.

As it is it's actually a very good sounding bass, though could benefit from a pre-amp as the output is a bit weak. Maybe I should just look for an active Jack bass :D

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Gibson SB-300. Short-scale SG body design bass. Fewer than 1000 made and only shipped from mid-1971 to early 1973. Interesting in that it was Gibson’s first bass model to have a maple rather than mahogany neck and single coil pickups. More details on this and other Gibson basses can be found here

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

FlatEric, that's an amazing looking bass, I must say :)
Beautiful colour & wood grain. Nice design. I agree with alembic1989 re the brass nut & hardware too
Just wondering though, why all the switches? What do they all do? Must admit, they do seem to "add" to the look of it though :)

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How about a sunburst Performer if you want good looks? I paid £80 for it, but it was maybe 7 or 8 years old and very out of fashion! Next to it is my Hohner B2 (A.K.A Deathburger) which became a lefty and switched back, had it since the late 80s.

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Seem to be a lot of headless and 5 strings - got this not long ago, best of both! Back in the day, the rumour was Dave Pegg played a Hohner headless with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull because he felt the wood body sounded nicer than a Steinberger.

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On 12/02/2019 at 14:02, Marc S said:

FlatEric, that's an amazing looking bass, I must say :)
Beautiful colour & wood grain. Nice design. I agree with alembic1989 re the brass nut & hardware too
Just wondering though, why all the switches? What do they all do? Must admit, they do seem to "add" to the look of it though :)

Why, thank you. :)

Series/parallel to each pick-up and the third one in is in/out of phase - two vol and two tone.

Cheers. : )

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2 hours ago, FlatEric said:

Why, thank you. :)

Series/parallel to each pick-up and the third one in is in/out of phase - two vol and two tone.

Cheers. : )

@FlatEric, I remember we spoke about these a while ago but I can't remember if you said whether your other one has the chequered body binding or not - I would love to find one of those!

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22 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 Back in the day, the rumour was Dave Pegg played a Hohner headless with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull because he felt the wood body sounded nicer than a Steinberger.

He definitely played a Riverhead Unicorn headless with Tull 1985:

I had massive (and still unrequited) GAS for one of these back then. These were wood construction, he might well have played Hohners too.

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On 14/02/2019 at 10:45, EMG456 said:

@FlatEric, I remember we spoke about these a while ago but I can't remember if you said whether your other one has the chequered body binding or not - I would love to find one of those!

Hi. Yes, I have that one as well. Bart pick-ups and a piano like tone. I have seen it for ages, so may go a hunting for it. I have no pics of it, at all but when I do lay my hands on the old fella, I will stick it up on here.

Cheers. : )

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  • 1 year later...
On 16/11/2018 at 13:32, Bassassin said:

Continuing with MIJ stuff - Washburn SB-40. This model doesn't appear in any catalogues, and seems to represent a halfway point between the Vulture & the Force series - there is some dispute amongst Washburn anoraks whether the model designation's correct, despite what it says on the sharp end. It's almost a fretted version of the bass Bathiki Kumalo used on Graceland, apart from the reversed P pickup.

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I now have it's sibling

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On 14/02/2019 at 18:52, Bassassin said:

He definitely played a Riverhead Unicorn headless with Tull 1985:

I had massive (and still unrequited) GAS for one of these back then. These were wood construction, he might well have played Hohners too.

I used to own this very bass! Got it from someone I was in college with who had done some trades with Dave Pegg. Can't remember what happened to it, I may have part exed it for an Ibanez Studio bass

Edited by chaypup
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