Canora or Ibanez

This bass came to me about 7 years ago. I found it in a pawn shop in Dromana, Victoria, Australia. I was visiting my friend who owned the shop to talk about some other business things when he asked me what I thought. At the time I owned a guitar retail and repair shop and considered myself to be quite a knowledge base on the subject of fretted instruments. He open the case and there it was, to most it would have been a piece of crap. What I saw was a 3 piece neck through body bass guitar. It had no transfer on the headstock, it’d been rubbed back. Amazingly this bass guitar is the sister instrument to a six string electric I’d acquired about 6 years before that. Both instruments are identical in timber construction all the way down to the brass nut. Anyway, the guitar I had was branded a Canora. Canora is the ‘Monterey’ Brand of the eighties in Australia. Mostly pieces of cheap junk. There’s something special about this model, I’ve always known it. My friend said what is it, I said a Canora, he said are they any good, I said not usually, he said give me $200 for it, I said yeah if you throw in the case. What a dog of an instrument, action was more suited to a lap steel then an electric bass. After about 5 attempts to set the instrument up I finally got it sitting in a sweet spot. It could sound better, pick-ups could be better, frets could be replaced but it gets me through heaps of stuff. Here is when it all gets interesting. I really wanted to know more about the instrument so went searching the net. After not finding much reference to Canora Guitars I came across the Ibanez Musician. I couldn’t believe it, Ibanez set out to make an awesome instrument I reckon, I’ve got a crap prototype that was badged Canora. Cool.
The story gets a little more interesting when I was up late one night watching a music video program on TV. The song ‘Send Me An Angel’ by Real Life came on. You know what saw in the clip don’t you? -same model bass (single P bass pick-up and the tome controls I remember it having when I got it), rubbed out headstock transfer, but fretless. Picked my bass up and had a close look at the fret board for workmanship around the frets and to my surprise (not really surprised by anything with the instrument anymore) there was some shitty craftsmanship along the neck including tooling marks on the edge for fret positioning. I might not have found the same bass, but I’m pretty sure I have, I’m also certain that it came from Ibanez based on the rest of the instrument’s construction and I know it was badged Canora. The final thing I know about this bass guitar is that it’s mine and it could do with a refret, some new machine heads and a new P-Bass pick-up. If you know anything about this model contact me - bosswild (at) projectmp3.com.au.