Mansfield Tele Bass

I recently picked up a Mansfield Tele bass. It is short scale, with two single coil pickups. What I have found is that these were rebranded Japanese imports. I found the below on a google search:

"Mansfield was a Canadian musical instrument distributor (you will note that most Mansfield owners are in Canada). Mansfield guitars are OEM made from different musical instrument manufacturers. Recently produced Mansfield guitars are actually Chinese produced, and that is not what we are talking about here. But in the 1970's , the Mansfield guitars were built by Hoshino Gakki (Japan), the Ibanez makers.

If you have a 1970's Mansfield, chances are that it's an Ibanez with a Mansfield name on it. The Ibanez vintage guitars are highly wanted. You can search Ibanez vintage collector websites for more information about the Ibanez story and some information about Mansfield. There is no doubt that those guitars are meant to become collector's items because they are apparently the same guitars as the Ibanez vintage 1970s, except for the brand."

I know it is not especially valuable, but it does play well, with almost no neck dive, and has a great 60's style snappy single coil bass tone.

And it looks great too... have they been made for anyone else except Mansfield?

Although I have been able to find pics of some guitars labeled as both Ibanez and Mansfield, I have not seen the Tele bass produced as an Ibanez, or any other make. But, they may be out there, maybe even with no name.

In the UK these little Tele-esque basses & guitars are very common, often unbranded or badged as Jedson, Zenta & various other names. Here's a Zenta-branded example in a 1974 Bell Music catalogue:

http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/26.jpg

It's not clear who made these - they have a crude, kitschy 60s look which means that 99% of Ebay sellers will insist they are Teiscos, although as yet there is absolutely zero evidence to support this.

The Mansfield info you found is unfortunately factually incorrect - Hoshino Gakki is a trading company, not a manufacturer so did not make this bass. Hoshino does own the Ibanez brand and in the 70s contracted the Fujigen Gakki factory to make Ibanez guitars, so it's possible that if the Mansfield brand owners did business with Hoshino, then some instruments may have been sourced from Fujigen.

However, Fujigen production's pretty well-documented, and so far nothing resembling this bass has been connected with them, so I strongly doubt that they were the manufacturer. The fact is that in the 70s there were dozens of Japanese factories, most of whom have since disappeared without a trace, very few records were kept to document the 70s guitar-making boom in Japan so it's often near-impossible to establish the origin of many instruments.

With luck, at some point one of these basses will appear bearing a brand connected exclusively with a particular manufacturer (most factories had their own brand ranges) and then we'll know where it came from - but until then it's largely guesswork!

Jon.

I am aware that tracing the heritage of many old Japanese guitars is sketchy at best. Thanks for the info.

The Bell sure looks like my bass! The only difference is the bridge cover. I have also seen some Mansfield branded 51 style basses, and they match the pic in your catalog link as well:

Ahh yes, Jedson is the name I was thinking of. I nearly bid on a very similar bass a few months back.