Alpha-Dave Posted May 21, 2007 Share Posted May 21, 2007 Antoniotsai 7 String Bass Cost : won on Ebay, inc shipping&import duty = £335 Specs : 7 string, 35” though-neck. Maple/mahogany 5 piece neck. Swamp ash body. Rose wood fret board with a huge inlay. Through-body stringing. 2 truss rods. Individual bridge pieces, 16.5mm string spacing. 2 pickups, 3 band active eq. Thick padded gig-bag, but no rigid internal support. Pros : B sounds great, as do all the other strings. Same quality as any other far-eastern guitar (I'd say equal to an Ibanez BTB505 I once owned The woods are great, non are figured, but they're all strong, smooth and not at all cheap. The mechanical hardware (bridge, tuners and truss-rods) are all good and as you'd find on any 'name' £500 far eastern bass. The Electronics are similarly ok. They do buzz if near a source of RF interference, but I think this is fairly standard. I'm going to re-shield the control cavity with £3 of Maplin's aluminum tape just to be sure. Cons : Had to replace the flat battery Had to replace awful strings, but an Overwater £22, 7-string set is great. Neck dive (see options below) To solve the neck dive there are 3 possible solutions : 1)Live with it, using a comfort strapp for playing standing. This is an ok, cheap solution 2)Replace the tuners with Ultralites, this would cost about £96 from the cheapest source I could find, and would save quite a bit of weight, the equivalent of removing 2&1/2 tuners. I removed a couple, and it balanced ok, but still titled a bit, but combined with (1), is a good solution. 3)Cut the head off and add bridge tuners. The bridge tuners would cost £188 from Status-graphite. The problem is getting a 7-string string clamp that will attach to the end, and not interfere with the truss rods. Status and ABM only make them for 6ers, so would have to have 1 made. Costs are from $50-100 from David King in the states, but would require self-fitting, or Robbie at RIM Custom Basses reckoned around £150 for him to make&fit a brass end-block, plus bridges. I've opted for option (1), and if I decide to keep it long-term, then possibly (3) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gypsymoth Posted May 21, 2007 Share Posted May 21, 2007 correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me (from other auctions) that Mr. Tsai purchases standard Korean guitars and adds the inlay work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpha-Dave Posted May 21, 2007 Author Share Posted May 21, 2007 As far as I can tell that's correct, they seem to crop up under a variety of names: Mazetti, Wolf and a couple of others that I can't recall, but they're all around the same price to buy in the UK as the Antoniotsai when landed in the UK, so if you can get one in an auction (especially with the currently weak dollar), then you can get one with some fancy inlays. This has now moved on to another forum member who has the necessary skills to do it justice, but at some point I may yet get one of the Ritter rip-offs because they have a slimmer head, so wouldn't dive as much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krazy_olie Posted May 21, 2007 Share Posted May 21, 2007 'Tis rather good looking. There's a very similar fretless Mazeti going at the moment (sans inlay). The only bad thing I can see about buying this guy's stuff is that it has to be imported as opposed to the Mazeti, which has a UK dealer of sorts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veils Posted May 31, 2007 Share Posted May 31, 2007 I can't help but get the feeling that it would be a bit nasty to play...... Is this the case? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpha-Dave Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share Posted May 31, 2007 Erm, please define nasty ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veils Posted May 31, 2007 Share Posted May 31, 2007 Feels cheap.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpha-Dave Posted May 31, 2007 Author Share Posted May 31, 2007 All the mechanical bits were about the same as an Ibanez BTB405 I used to own, they all functioned well, but nothing 'extra special'. The finish was ok, very matt. The frets were all fine and with a new set of strings on it felt nice to play. I admit it wasn't as good as my Warwick or ACG, but I don't think that's its fault. The truly worst POS I've played was a Lindo bass I bought for £60 NEW from ebay - rusty screws and the truss rod snapped within a month, but as I only needed it for a demo model I didn't care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Low Down Dave Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 You have to be careful with these inlaid guitars I think there are 3 main sellers: Bruceweiart, Taisamlu & inlaidartist I won’t go into too much detail but I have come across a few with misplaced frets making intonation impossible. And never repeat, ever touch the acoustics as the wood is not dried properly and they will crack in time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wizbat Posted March 7, 2009 Share Posted March 7, 2009 This is a great bass to play now that I,ve spent quite a bit of time levelling the frets and it now has a set of Newtone strings fitted. It also has a strap pin extension fitted to the top horn to sort out the neck dive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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