well, I had a feeling I’d finally arrived at the right place. thank you for the kind welcome. I should warn you- I have around 28 basses now, 8 guitars & about 30 keyboards of one sort or another. fender, rickenbacker, ibanez, moog, mellotron…. you get the picture. GAS gone mad, but I am also a working musician- 2nd career anyway.

I wrote recently to a “guitar guru” (see what I did there?) from whom I’d bought a couple of tokai strats, to see if he knew anything about yamato. he didn’t mention the battleship, though I already knew about that… 🙂 but he did venture that the japanese manufacturers of the late 70s were given to experimenting with branding to the degree that if someone wanted a guitar range with their pet dog’s name on it as a “brand”, it would likely happen.
anyway.
my yamato was a respectable but skinny white jazz replica with reasonable pickups & hardware, except for the tuners. I changed these for schallers, but andy’s (of denmark street) only had the 2+2 sets, so two of them go backwards. it’s been like that since 1983, & I’m sort of used to it now. sometime in 1984, I decided that the thing was too skinny (feedback problems), & (on student money at the time) I acquired a no-name precisionish japanese instrument with a rubbish neck. this thing was in a rather fetching sparkly salmon pink.
so the yamato neck, with it’s excellent finish & black blocks, was fastened to this hideous pink body with a small gap between the end of the neck & the end of the neck pocket.
but for some modification to the scratchplate (to show off more of the pink), the addition of a 1/4 pounder (to make it louder) & a bass-cut switch, this is how my favourite bass is to this day. & it is my favourite despite competition from a 1974 4001 & a bunch of other desirables.
I will post a pic when I’ve got one that does it justice & when I figure out how. again, many thanks.

duncan.