The Univox Hi-Flyer bass is a fair imitation of a Mosrite, with the "Bart Simpson" headstock, reverse-strat body, and reverse-angled neck pickup. These things are plentiful on eBay and in used guitar shops, despite occasional claims of rarity or collectibility.

The 30-inch scale makes the Hi-Flyer a good choice for beginners, children, or people with small hands. My son and I have a couple of these things, and there's a definite pecking order among the different variants.

The position of the neck pickup makes these basses useless for slap.

The painted models use a poplar body (not plywood, despite quotes by Kurt Cobain, who referred affectionately to his white Univox guitar as "his plywood guitar."). The clear ones are maple. Sunbursts may be poplar or maple. In any case, the maple basses sound better.

The necks are pretty much all the same, except that the clear- finished maple guitars have a maple fingerboard. The neck is slim, comfortable, and fast. The maple fingerboard sounds brighter, as you would expect.

The single-coil pickups have a tone that some have described as "farty," and it's especially true in the bridge position. But if you use bright stainless strings, like GHS Boomers, you can get a very nice growly bark from the bridge PU. The neck pickup, with its reverse slant, makes nice, round, woody sounds with the tone control at zero. These are not great pickups by any means, and you have to fiddle with heights, angles, and individual pickup screw heights to get consistent tone across the strings.

Some Hi-Flyers come with humbuckers. They overcome the farty tone of the single-coils, so the low end sounds much better defined. You lose that distinctive growl of the bridge pickup, though.

These basses have narrow-string-to-string spacing (5/8"), so many standard replacement pickups won't fit. One that does is the Schaller Bassbucker, a 4-wire humbucker. These things totally change the character of the Hi-Flyer, making it into kind of a mini Music Man. You can occasionally find them for sale cheap on eBay. Highly recommended.

The weakest point of the Hi-Flyer is the bridge. As with many cheap basses, the intonation adjusts in pairs, making accurate intonation impossible. Because of the narrow spacing, you can't find an aftermarket 4-saddle bridge. I made my own out of brass, and it greatly improved the sustain and increased the brightness of the bass. A few (very few) of the Hi-Flyers were made with 4-independent saddle bridges. If you find one, it's a winner.

Hi-Flyers are light, easily portable, and no bigger than a guitar. Great for throwing in a gig bag and jamming.

Construction	70%
Playability	90%
Appearance	50%
Sound	60%
Value	90%
Overall	70%