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Hi there!
I’m new here by accident but 1bassleft contacted me via email and asked me to post details of my two CMI guitars.
So, here goes – if I mess the HTML tags up, then go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_mudshark/sets/72057594077196720/
Here you can find all the photos I’m linking to here and in much larger sizes and better quality.
1) CMI Jazz Bass – made in Japan
http://users.powernet.co.uk/guitars/cmijazz.jpg
I got this in the mid 1980s as I needed a bass to lay down bass lines on my 4 track. I paid something like £40 for it in a music shop in Bedford. It played in tune and didn’t sound too bad at the time.
The body is laminate and, as you can see the pickups are cheap Tele types – the black plastic plate that the bridge unit is mounted in is obviously meant to be covered but I haven’t got the cover.
The neckplate says “MADE IN JAPAN” quite clearly.
The tuners are rather nasty – they’re those sort with the pressed covers and the pegs are totally wrong if the makers wanted to produce a copy.
The logo is the curly CMI sort with the truncated “C”.
The bass has lost a thumb rest somewhere along the line as well as the bridge cover.
All in all, it’s a pretty low-rent instrument although it does play in tune and makes quite a good dead “thud” which is suitable for whacking out the odd reggae bass line when the fancy takes me.
2) CMI Telecaster
I acquired this in about 1990 when I exchanged a rather nasty Korean Squier Strat for it in a local music shop. I had to pay VAT on the Tele to clinch the deal and IIRC it cost me about £14 which puts the shop price of the Tele below a ton.
It has a solid body, which I discovered when I had to realign the neck in the pocket. I also removed the brass nut – I don’t know whether this was stock – and replaced it with a tusq one and it’s had several nuts which I’ve fitted depending whether or not I want it for slide playing.
The tuners were rather good cast and sealed Gotohs when I got the guitar but I replaced them with a set of Grovers that I had lying idle.
The logo is quite clear – it’s the block sort – and it’s accompanied by the words “Artist Model”.
The string retainers aren’t original. They replaced the old sort made of pressed metal. These came from the Korean Strat as I had the Tele in my possession before I let the Strat go. Slightly naughty of me, but the guy I was dealing with was a much bigger shark than I was 😉
The neckplate is blank.
As you can see it has a three piece bridge which is fine, even though some people say the intonation is a compromise with these. It plays perfectly in tune! Brass saddles too.
It’s actually a rather good guitar. It feels and sounds like a Tele and I have a MIM Nashville and a US Standard to compare it to.
Living in Milton Keynes – which includes the home of Marshall in Bletchley – I am lucky enough to count Jim Marshall’s son Terry as a friend and now that I’m aware of 1bassleft’s determination to unravel the story behind the logos I’ll see what Terry can add to all this.
I hope I’ve provided enough detail – I’ll be only too happy to provide more if possible.
If you want to see the rest of my “collection” then most of them are shown in:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_mudshark/sets/1670159/
There’s also some other photo sets there which should give you a general idea of where I’m at musically.
Steve.
