What (Fodera?) is this?

[salmon256]

No idea of the model hope someone helps.

My only thing I can help with is, I also enjoy bassist from Japan, Korea, China and all over, there are many independent brands of Japanese basses players all over Asia use that are lesser known or virtually unknown outside of Japan. Example one brand that comes to mind is Black Cloud guitars are boutique Japanese instruments and you can get them in the US but they cost lots and you need to order one from a Japanese music store, and pretty much only Japanese players are sponsor by them.

Many of the youtubers I watch will use these popular in Japan brands but are virtually unknown outside of the states and many of them are replicas or remakes of similar shape basses.

However I hope someone can find the model since it looks awesome!

 

[zuma]

No idea of the model hope someone helps.

My only thing I can help with is, I also enjoy bassist from Japan, Korea, China and all over, there are many independent brands of Japanese basses players all over Asia use that are lesser known or virtually unknown outside of Japan. Example one brand that comes to mind is Black Cloud guitars are boutique Japanese instruments and you can get them in the US but they cost lots and you need to order one from a Japanese music store, and pretty much only Japanese players are sponsor by them.

Many of the youtubers I watch will use these popular in Japan brands but are virtually unknown outside of the states and many of them are replicas or remakes of similar shape basses.

However I hope someone can find the model since it looks awesome!

Sugi is great too! I have a Bossa OB-5 myself. My friend who owns that Sugi also turned me on to Tetsuya, and many other Japanese bassists like IKUO.

 

[johndb]

Looks similar to my long gone Fodera, which has a flamed purple heart top. I sa that it was modified for humbuckers by a later owner.

 

[zuma]

Looks similar to my long gone Fodera, which has a flamed purple heart top. I sa that it was modified for humbuckers by a later owner. View attachment 6999560
View attachment 6999561

That departure must've hurt.

 

[rogerbmiller]

This is a 6er, but yeah, I could see the bass above being a Monarch Elite.

https://reverb.com/item/71908970-fodera-monarch-elite-6-1987-fancy-see-description

It's pretty difficult to find Foderas outfitted with Jazz pickups. They're out there. It seems they're not very common though.

Originally, Foderas were either P/J or JJ configurations unless you got something really customized. Pickup options were Bartolini or EMG and all preamps were HAZ 2 band. This one looks to be Barts with the HAZ.

My Fodera was ordered in 1988 and delivered in 1989. It is an EMG P/J configuration with the HAZ you see in the listing you referenced. Switches are preamp bypass and standby (to keep the bass muted between sets while letting your amp tubes stay warm).

Personally, I prefer the tone of these older Foderas and would never let go of mine. The newer ones are meant to be Swiss army-like but they are lacking in character of their own in my opinion. These older Foderas had a very modern sound, for the time. They are rarer to come by as they changed pickups and preamps some time in the 90s (the company was founded in 1983) and they produced so many more in later years. When I bought mine, they were operating out of a small shop on Avenue O in Brooklyn and probably made a handful every month. Now they have a 12K square foot shop with CNC machines, etc. and make hundreds per year at various price points, all with the newer pickups and preamps.

 

[erratick]

Great info. Are you fluent in Japanese?

Fluent? No. My listening comprehension is good, my speaking is accented and kind of poor. And I'm functionally illiterate. I can read a little and can't write much. I have trouble with basic legal documents.

However, I understand the katakana and hiragana. Which gets me some functionality. I know some kanji. Not enough to read a newspaper without looking things up (you'd need to know about 1000 kanji give or take). But I know some. I had to look things up to make it through the description. Sometimes it's faster to google translate, but not good for the language skills and sometimes machine translation is bad.

I know a handful of languages at poor to mediocre levels and one fluent. But I like learning them. Spoken and listening Japanese is pretty easy. I'd say written is way harder than learning to read/write English or romance languages. Japanese is literally thousands of symbols with meanings.

I guess I know enough to know how bad I am with it. However it's fun to learn and making mistakes or being bad with Japanese doesn't bother me. It's hard to become good without first being bad at something.

I'm also poor with reading/writing music- I was better when I was young and playing piano regularly at reading/writing western music notation. But that is partially desire and time spent.

 

[zuma]

Well I'm glad you were around for this one! Thank You.

 

[johndb]

That departure must've hurt.

It's THE bass that I most regret selling. It was perfect...black walnut wings, beautiful ebony board with blocks, gold hardware, HAZLabs preamp and Bartolini pickups. It recorded beautifully. I sold it around 2000 when I moved out west to work with Bill Bartolini. It needed to be in the hands of a much better player than I.

 

[zuma]

It's THE bass that I most regret selling. It was perfect...black walnut wings, beautiful ebony board with blocks, gold hardware, HAZLabs preamp and Bartolini pickups. It recorded beautifully. I sold it around 2000 when I moved out west to work with Bill Bartolini. It needed to be in the hands of a much better player than I.

To make you feel better, I sold a beautiful Trans-Blue Kubicki Ex-Factor on consignment, and at the end of a very long story, I got $500 for it! Now tell us about working with Bill Bartolini!

 

[George Himmel]

Throwing my support on the opinion that it’s an ‘80s-90s Monarch Elite (neck-through) 5, loaded with Bart JJ pickups, probably a HAZ preamp, maple neck, walnut body wings (from the grain figure can see in the stills). FWIW you can still I’m sure order this from Fodera, it’ll just cost you more $$$ and patience LOL

Oh and sorry if I missed this in the thread, but the TR cover just says “Fodera”

 

[zuma]

Throwing my support on the opinion that it’s an ‘80s-90s Monarch Elite (neck-through) 5, loaded with Bart JJ pickups, probably a HAZ preamp, maple neck, walnut body wings (from the grain figure can see in the stills). FWIW you can still I’m sure order this from Fodera, it’ll just cost you more $$$ and patience LOL

Oh and sorry if I missed this in the thread, but the TR cover just says “Fodera”

Thank You. It's nice to know that that truss cover says! I thought it might be his name.

 

[George Himmel]

Thank You. It's nice to know that that truss cover says! I thought it might be his name.

To be fair, that’d be pretty cool.

 

[Brad Maestas]

I can't get enough vintage Fodera content. Thanks for posting and thanks, @johndb for the pic of your old bass as well.

I also see a stock truss rod cover on the bass in the video. Fodera has always used a stylized, calligraphic font.

A little Fodera archaeology for you, and one of the ways to quickly identify the era... Earlier truss rod covers often have an extra line around the perimeter, which was a very nice touch. Here's a pic of my 1988 Emperor showing this earlier style for comparison.



After this they dropped the border line but kept the same shape.


Then they went to a pointier style that we see them using today (I prefer the older style myself).

 

[zuma]

@Brad Maestas That's fascinating. Do you know the approximate years they made those 2 switches?

 

[Brad Maestas]

Just going off of memory and pictures of other basses I have on file, I would guess that the first change was made around 1989-90, then to the current style maybe around 1997-98? Perhaps Jason DeSalvo aka @Just Thumpin' knows?

 

[jim777]

After looking at a headstock shot- still blurry. It might be an STR bass. They have had some basses like that. Although some details don't match current production. So... it's just a guess.

I don't think it's an STR, mine look different; left and middle.

 

[zuma]

I don't think it's an STR, mine look different; left and middle.

Wooooo! That Carvin's a beauty too. And the fretless, it just looks like it has mwuuuahhhh for days.