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"Custom" Brand Guitars?

Posts related to vintage guitars manufactured in Japan or other Asian countries

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by cheepaxes » Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:56 pm

Letting YouTube run on autoplay I came across a band called "Binkbeats," which really appears to be one guy doing some very sophisticated looping. In ths video he has a guest keyboard player. One of the instruments he plays is a blonde P-bass copy labelled "Custom." He makes it sound good. It looks very much like something that would have come out of Matsumoku, and in fact the manufacturer sticky listing brand names of Japanese instruments suggests the same. I don't recall seeing that label before. Anyone know it?

Screen capture:

[img]http://www.scottmcknight.com/Custom.jpg[/img]

Source video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfpSn7Z ... JYxm0yoU_E
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by VintAxe » Sat Nov 10, 2018 9:51 am

Hey Scott, good to hear from you :D

Matsumoku is definitely a good bet. It's possible that it is Fuji Gen and I'm sure someone with more sophistication and time than me could probably pin it down. As far as the brand name goes, I'm betting it's a name used by a European distributor. Frank Wienk, the guy playing the bass is located in the Netherlands so it was likely exported from Japan to somewhere in Europe. I think Custom would be a word many Europeans would be familiar with since such a large proportion of the population knows English. My first thought is that it was originally imported into England, since musicians in the Netherlands bought a lot of their gear from England back in the 70's. If I were researching the brand, that's where I would start.

Loopers are cool. My son Phil bought one of the loop stations and passed his little Ditto down to me. You can just grab a guitar and be up and running with a fun practice and minimal technology almost instantly.

Thanks for posting the video. I'd never heard of the Binkbeats, appreciate you sharing a new discovery.

hope you are well, and don't be a stranger 8)

steve
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by cheepaxes » Wed Nov 14, 2018 10:30 am

Thanks for the response, Steve. :)

Yes, I liked that music too. I appreciate how his ability to get great sounds out of a Matsumoku bass validates some of my own gear decision. :)

He seems to take composing for a looper to a level I haven't heard. I had a Boss RC-2 but it had a lot of features I didn't use but which got in my way. I ended up giving that to my brother and buying the simplest Ditto. I haven't used it around the house for practice as much as I thought I would, because frankly it's easier for me to use Reaper. I have taken it to a couple duo gigs and used it to record verse changes so that I could play over them, or to record bass parts on a Dano six string bass, then play some rhythm guitar stuff along with it.
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