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NBD - Chinese "Dan Armstrong Ampeg" counterfeit.

#61
@Axstar nails it, I for one am really glad that policing fake basses is on the bottom of the priority list for US customs as well. With their tiny staff relative to the number of containers coming into the US every day, some percentage of which contain fentanyl, formaldehyde saturated drywall, or trafficked human beings, their attention is rightly focused elsewhere. A crappily faked clone of a model that’s been out of production for years, and is therefore not costing Ampeg one red cent in profits, is kinda hard to get worked up about by comparison. He’s been totally transparent and honest about the whole thing, has no intention of re-selling or misrepresenting it as genuine, and was willing to risk a little cash on a harmless experiment. People gotta lighten up and have a bacon sandwich. Next time you buy something at Harbor Freight, Walmart, Job Lot, or the Christmas Tree shop, take a look around at the crap for sale, mostly Chinese, and most of it blatantly copied or ripped off from American intellectual property. Then get back up on your high horse and resume the self righteous posturing.
 
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#64
Gilmourisgod said:
@Axstar nails it, I for one am really glad that policing fake basses is on the bottom of the priority list for US customs as well. With their tiny staff relative to the number of containers coming into the US every day, some percentage of which contain fentanyl, formaldehyde saturated drywall, or trafficked human beings. A crappily faked clone of a model that’s been out of production for years, and is therefore not costing Ampeg one red cent in profits, is kinda hard to get worked up about by comparison. He’s been totally transparent and honest about the whole thing, has no intention of re-selling or misrepresenting it as genuine, and was willing to risk a little cash on a harmless experiment. People gotta lighten up and have a bacon sandwich. Next time you buy something at Harbor Freight, Walmart, Job Lot, or the Christmas Tree shop, take a look around at the crap for sale, mostly Chinese, and most of it blatantly copied or ripped off from American intellectual property. Then get back up on your high horse and resume the self righteous posturing.
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Mmmm....bacon.:thumbsup:
 
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#65
farace said:
I have a 1970 DA/Ampeg. It's heavy, it plays really well, and I don't mind the Dano-style bridge. (It's my understanding that due to the lack of height adjustability, they originally shipped with three bridges of differing height. I only have the one, but it's the right one.) Sometimes it sounds great, and there were times it was my main bass. It hasn't seen much use lately, though, in my jazz band.
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From memory the original basses had Grover/Schaller guitar tuners, and Dan Armstrong issued a special 'plexi bass' string set that fitted these tuners. I guess if the bass was intended to be used with one string type alone then everything could be considered 'set and forget'.
 
#66
CGremlin said:
250 quid is pretty cheap for several weeks of fun. He didn't buy it with the expectation that it'd be a great instrument out of the box. He bought it with the expectation that it'd be a fun project to un-hose it and turn it into one.
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Exactly this. If the frets are garbage then this becomes a fretless project (etc). I get to practice my modding chops and will probably have to think tangentially about how I get past some problems.
 
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#67
I'm not a fan of forgeries or the threads that get people arguing about them but this one gets a pass.
Most people expect some compromises when they order an Ali Baba guitar but aren't really prepared for what really comes out of the box. Documenting the issues as Axstar has w/pics :) is long overdue.
Aside from moral or legal grounds where we all have differing opinions, the one constant is the shocking ability to build a beautiful instrument that actually makes sound for literally next to nothing.
Documenting how they pull this 'miracle' off, showing each and every shortcut and the issues that only appear after you've started a repair or removed a part is valuable info for anyone considering getting one of these so called 'guitars'.
 
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#68
Axstar said:
I didn't caption the pics with anything of the sort, and if I 'get in trouble' then so be it. I'm explicitly documenting the process of importing a fairly grey-market musical instrument from China to the UK, with a breakdown of costs, additional charges and the quality of the instrument received. This is simply to inform people considering doing the same. This was an experiment on my behalf; nothing more than that. I see people discuss Chinese instruments in terms of the quality of the electronics, or the sting of additional charges, but it is difficult to find any of this information in one place.

If HR Revenues and Customs (the 'Customs agents in my area', I guess) decide they are owed more money then so be it. That will be part of the process. I doubt they have the time, skills or resources or legal teeth to comb through a niche non-UK forum and to then match my China Post tracking number back to my Parcel Force UK tracking number, to get an extra £20 out of me. HMRC have the ability to check any and all goods imported into this country, and they can come up with their own evaluation of the goods that way. Their time is probably taken up more at looking for weapons, drugs, goods made from banned animal products, etc. I've seen a few documentaries on these guys. In one case somebody was importing a shipment of Ugg-style boots. The boots were marked as not containing any animal products, but testing revealed that the 'fake fur' had come from farmed cats or dogs. Yikes!
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I was only being sarcastic and humbly apologize for any offense you may have taken. It is always difficult to glean the true meaning of a written page as opposed to hearing the spoken text, even with the help of emojis. Let's try again. I want to move to your neighborhood so I can take delivery of a rosewood and ebony neck with genuine ivory fret lines listed as a gift with a value of 2 pounds without the threat of being caught despite plastering the city with posters of my recent purchase. :roflmao::roflmao::roflmao::roflmao::roflmao: That was how it should have put the first time. Have a great day.
 
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#69
To provide a wee bit of an update, I started working on the frets and they are made out of cheese. These are the softest frets I've ever worked on, and arguably they are too soft to provide any sort of longevity.

My early warning was the roundwound chew I spotted when I removed the strings. I played the bass for an hour prior to doing this.

I decided the pull the frets and make this a fretless, and the nippers I use for pulling frets were actually warping and squashing the frets under pressure. I tested a couple of pulled frets, and they are very easy to nick and crush with pliers or other tools.
 
#71
Just to add, I've had four Chinese Fender copy necks and all have had no issues bar one, a bound Tele neck whose frets were a bit lower than I wanted.

But these are lucky dips in the Sino-bucket of guitar parts.
 
#75
Gilmourisgod said:
Those frets are not “cheese”, the American Dairy Council zealously guards that term. They’d probably be ok with “Metallic Cheese Food Product”. Please take note for future reference.
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Or, Axstar could follow the French way of doing things. If he wants new frets he could forage for fromage.
 
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#76
Mvilmany said:
Thank you for removing the “Dan Armstrong” pickguard and replacing it.
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Yeah I couldn't keep that on in good faith.

The pickguard has split, cleanly, along the grain. It took a minor knock on my bench and parted like the Red Sea. It is made from rosewood, and it is that variety that smells a bit like cigar smoke. I thought it was real wood from the appearance and grain, but it was heavily lacquered so I wasn't entirely sure.

If it breaks like wood and smells like wood then it is wood!
 
#79
Progress:
SrZenbp.jpg


New non-bootleg pickguard and knobs scrounged out my box of parts. They were originally on a reissue Burns bass. The pickup is a Kent Armstrong, and not yet wired up.

y0pbdB0.jpg


Fretless inlays! I need to oil the neck. I'm not going with a superglue coating on that, because it is a pig to pull off nicely, and the fumes make me feel ill.

qFqJEBN.jpg


Headstock stripped, sanded, oiled and waxed. I will make a matching trussrod cover out of the pickguard material.



My biggest problem is the bridge screws. As they weren't screwed in vertically I've torqued the head off of three of them, simply screwing them into the body. Bad news. I tried heating them to get them back out the plastic, but that didn't work. I had to drill a second hole parallel to the first, and chiseling the dead screw over into the parallel hole. I can then pull the screws out with thin pliers. I've widened the screw holes further, and I will epoxy some wooden dowel into these holes. It is a hacky move, especially as I don't own a drill press, but frankly I can't be bothered putting more effort into this bass 'doing it right', as there is no 'right' any more.
 
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