Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Wandre Rockbasso - 1960s Italian sculptural minimalism

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This vintage Italian Wandre Rockbasso is a perfect example of a guitar that is both sculptural and minimalistic.

It's a short-scale bass with a single pickup at the neck and a single volume control behind the tailpiece at the base of the instrument. This particular Wandre model allows you to see how the backbone of Wandre's steel neck passes straight through the body of the instrument all the way down to the tail-end. I'm guessing that in this instance it is also carrying the wiring from the pickup.

Someone has rather inexpertly removed the frets, which unfortunately may devalue the instrument slightly. I say "inexpertly" because no effort has been made to fill in the empty fret slots and refinish the fingerboard. It all seems such a waste of effort, because to get the best advantage of the fretless sound, a shortscale bass with a single pickup mounted at the neck does not present the best candidate for conversion. It also contributes to rather spoil this classic vintage bass. On the plus side, because the fret slots haven't been filled in and lacquered over, it should make refretting a much easier task if someone decides to restore this bass.

This bass is currently being offered for sale by Palm Guitars in The Netherlands via Vintage & Rare, price available on application.

If you thought you'd seen something similar previously on Guitarz, we looked at the 6-string guitar version, the Wandre Rock 6, back in May 2008.

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