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Identify this bass guitar - it won't be easy

#43
DJ Bebop said:
Hagstrom neck?

View attachment 4346277
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I don't think Fender painted headstocks black back then, and Hagstroms were a lot more common in the UK, so you're probably right.
The pickup does look like a Hagstrom pickup...likely the bridge pickup, angled strongly so that the pole pieces remained under the strings when pushed up towards the neck.
The body, as seen more clearly in Matt's screen capture, is an ungainly shape that screams "homebrew" to me.

Here's the refinement of my guess, based on your Hagstrom theory:
Someone either smashed a Hagstrom or got a broken one cheap, and built a new body for it. Whether it was the bassist himself, or he bought it from someone else, is a fact likely lost to time.
 
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#44
I don't know what bass that is, but man they sure did change over the years :roflmao:

upload_2021-7-25_21-6-13.jpeg
 
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#46
After much research I've come to the conclusion that this is a real UBO (unidentified bass object). NASA will undoubtedly investigate and Project Blue Book will pass it off as either a weather balloon or swamp gas. Fifty years from now the files will be declassified showing it to be either a heavily modded Baldwin/Burns/Ormston or a DIY killer mutt one off. Although the truth is out there we may never know.
 
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#53
spatters said:
@Matt O for the win. Here's my call:

That's not a Burns Bison. That's some sort of Burns-styled homebrew with a neck off some other bass.

The picture Matt posted shows that the body shape is all wrong: the horns are way too big, even for a Bison.
Now look at the headstock and the tuners. That's not a Burns neck. Someone with a more encyclopedic knowledge of old basses than I have ought to be able to figure out where that neck came from.
Now look at the pickguard: it's multi-piece, but not in anywhere near the same configuration as a Legend.
Now look at the square bridge cover: that screams "homemade," or at the very least "low volume hobby builder."
The pickup might be a Burns pickup, but Burns never made a bass with one pickup in that position.

I think someone made a body that was sort of Burns-inspired (unsurprising given the time period), salvaged a neck from some other bass, and built their own. Could have even been a very early Burns prototype...I have no idea. But it's not a Bison or any other production Burns.
Click to expand...

I think you have it, hand made or Burns prototype.
 
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