First!! I am so truly happy to find this place, this gives me the great feeling, not to be the only happy musician in this world, owning, and playing a fine Tune bass.
Denmark is a fairly small country - in top of Europe...and for you americans ...Sweden is NOT the capitol of Denmark - Copenhagen it is!!! :O)...ok, just being funny(I hope)
Mostly I am a jazz oriented musician, and have played on both my old doubble bass(buildt in 1911) and my former Fender Jazz bass(1972) which I sold the same day I could lay my hands on a second hand pearlwhite battered fretless 4 sting bass, called Tune bass maniac from Japan.
This bass have a wonderful tone, and a very long sustain, is masterly buildt, and feels comfortable to wear...even for a four set gig, compared to my old trusty Fender bass.
On the net, I met another fine musician - and friend, Doug Ross, who has been to great help for me. he is a skilled musician, and compassioned Tune fan, and he wrote this e-mail to me, about the Tune basses, and their history.
I do hope this will be of interest.
I have to say though, that I have had the opportunity to play on a number of korean buildt basses, and always found them equally well buildt and good to play.
Please tell me about your experience about this, my fellow musicians.
the best of greetings
Allan
Denmark
Copenhagen
Link Removed
[email protected]
........................here comes Doug`s e-mail......................
Hello Allan,
Thanks for your email, it is always a pleasure to become acquainted with another pro bassist. I checked out your website and the MP3's of your band. I like it.....nice work!
I get a lot of emails from other Tune owners like you, asking for information about this mysterious bass company in the Far East! They really are outstanding instruments, it's a shame that they never became very well known. The original company, Tune Guitar Technology, was started by Hatsukazu Fujitani in 1983 and the first and most famous model was the Bass Maniac. It's a little difficult to tell from the pictures on your website, but your bass looks like an old one from the '80s. Did you buy it used? The extended fingerboard is cool.....looks like a special custom model.
T.G.T. expanded to build more interesting and adventurous basses in the '90s (when I lived in Japan) but then they got into financial trouble and Fujitani san disappeared with a lot of money and the company collapsed! For a while, you couldn't buy Tunes, but then a couple of years ago, they began to reappear. As it turns out, there are now at least TWO rival companies making "Tune" basses. The new Japanese company, Tune Guitar Maniac, still makes very high quality instruments virtually identical to the original T.G.T. basses. But unfortunately, there is also a Korean company making cheap copies, and the Korean company has the Tune trademark registered in the U.S.A.
Because I speak Japanese and I am friends with one of their long time endorsers, I have established a relationship directly with the Japanese company and I can get basses directly from them. In fact, I just got another wonderful fretted Bass Maniac 5 string from them! They asked me to be their U.S. distributor, but because of the trademark problem, I can't sell their basses here. It's a funny coincidence that you have a fretless, because they are making a custom fretless Bass Maniac 5 for me right now! If it turns out nicely, I might sell the five string I just bought and order a fretted custom 5 string to match my fretless! It's an addiction!
If you want to contact the Japanese company directly, you can try to email them from their website:
http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~tune/ I believe that they will ship to anywhere in the world, but they don't speak much English, so communication might be a problem. Let me know if you need my help, and I can contact them for you. Good luck, and let's stay in touch!
Doug
www.dougross.net