Here is a Very Rare One For You Clifton (Chushin Gakki) Bass

[Quadzilla]

I just bought this vintage Japanese made gem. Looks to be a fairly decent quality neck-thru - Kind of like a B.C. Rich / Alembec look-a-like / clone. I'm guessing MIJ sometime in the 80's.

After a lot of research, it seems that the Clifton brand was made by Chushin Gakki. Here is a quote from Michael Bechmann, who seems to be quite an expert on the deep details of vintage Japanese axes. "Clifton is a salvage brand made by Chushin. By salvage I mean they bougth out parts and half-finished instruments that they refinished/reshaped. You find most of these made with Daion/Yamaki body's and most of them were from 84-87. The brand still exists today but its almost exclusively for the Chinese and Korean market."

The bass plays and sounds amazing. Action is low and she weighs around the 8 lbs mark (which is pretty light for a neck-thru bass like this). The pickups are punchy, but carry a lot weight in the notes without sounding muddy.

I can't seem to find another one like it anywhere, even after doing many lengthy searches. So it's a bit of an odd-ball (in a good way).

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[VintAxe]

Very interesting mixture of influences.If I squint, I can kind of see the Daion body but your bass has sharper contours than any 80's Daion bass I have seen. Of course the pin tail is Alembic. I have no clue about the headstock profile, sort of a late 70's Ibanez vibe.

From the pictures it appears to be a well built bass. Thanks for sharing your research about Clifton with us.