Need Help Identifying an old bass.

[Ensenada1991]

Hello!

I've been trying to identify this older (maybe 1950s?) electric bass. The bass in question was actually converted into a "tritar" by Mark Sandman of the band Morphine (a tritar being two bass strings and one guitar string. I'll include a couple of pictures (pretty low quality but they're the best I've been able to find) and one video I've found of him playing it which is actually not that bad, quality-wise.

 

[5StringBlues]

@JIO ?

 

[JIO]

@JIO ?

Hard to say ... MS found his sound playing non-mainstream instruments strung with only a few strings. Could be it was also modded. Not familiar with that particular instrument but it looks to be short-scale Italian. There were a lot of ss basses from Japan, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Australia etc made in the '60s and it could be from any one of those countries. For MS, it was cheap or free, it was anti name-brand and it served his purposes. It was the way he played whatever it was that created his sound - not the bass itself. It is just a piece of wood with strings - it isn't Mark Sandmand.

 

[Ensenada1991]

Welp, after a little hunting I think I found it! an Eko 1100

 

[cdef]

Italian guitars of the '60s can look much alike, and (as with Japan) it's not always easy to tell manufacturers apart. Still, intuition whispers that the "tritar" might be a modded D'Scala. These were made by Gemelli, and later by Polverini. Although Italian, they're rare in Europe, since D'Scala was an American import brand. Haven't located a bass pic yet, but the guitar below ticks the boxes for body, headstock and pickguard shape (allowing for the painted contours ). To be sure, the styling is close to other makers like Bartolini and even classic Eko.

 

[Ensenada1991]

found this photo of a Gemelli bass, looks familiar doesn't it