Yep! I even had some intonation issues when replacing the cheapo chinese bridge on my little Blackstar bass with a Fender highmass bridge.
The screws fitted perfectly, but intonation was way off, as those bridges are constructed differently.
I had to fumble a lot, but now it’s ok (not perfect though) … and I learned a lot about intonation in the process.
I just bought a Jazz bass body on another bass forum, It’s a body made of pauwlonia, a lightweight wood that has become an excellent subitution for swamp ash, it weighs 2.75lbs!
It came from someone who sells relic’d bodies and necks, on this particular one the finish didn’t come out very well, hence the sale at a really good price. Seeing how I’m going to paint it, I was happy to take it of off his/her hands.
It’s been a minute, here’s a quick post to catch up.
This body is amazingly light, but that’s all that it has going for it. The screw holes for the neck are off as is the holes for the bridge/pickguard screws.
I ended up plugging and redrilling and now everything’s starting to line up.
I’m hoping to take this bass with me when I go visit my hometown the first week of June. High school reunion, it ought to be interesting.
There will be spontanious jamming with old friends, It is my hope that this bass will be up for the task.
This body was a mess, but I finally got things centered. The body had been relic’d previously, so idecide to go with that theme. I am still awaiting a 34" scale neck, reversed headstock and blocks and binding on the fretboard, hopefully it will arrive soon. In the meantime, I will go ahead and used the P styled neck. I am planning on painting the headstock to match the reversed headstock neck.
Once I had the pickup positions routed, I used alder to fill what was left of the original pickup routes. I then painted the body with satin black (nitro lacquer).
I have decided to paint the bass purple metalflake, not bass boat glitter (though I do love bass boat glitter), just a fairly deep purple with a nice bit of flake.
I’m having fun with this build, it’s surprising how many cool things that you can find in the paint section of your local automotive and/or hobby stores. All kind of glitters, flakes, candy colors, etc… Testors model paints has a line of lacquers in small aerosol cans (3 cans will paint a body) that has some amazing colors. Most auto parts stores carry some nice colors as well.
I used a few different aerosols to achive the color I was going for. Epiphone has a new Thunderbird coming out in purple flake (I will be buying one) and that is a really nice shade of of purple.
Thanks, I left the burgundy on it, it was previously relic’d, though it wasn’t the greatest paint job. I sprayed it black first for the basecoat (over the burgundy), the I added light silver glitter coat, the purple glitter, a bit more silver and finally a translucent purple to darken it up.
Now I need to apply the top coat (nitro lacquer), once cured, I’ll wet sand, buff, t I will relic it. I’m not going to go crazy on it (maybe), but I want it to have some “worn through” places, such as the bevel area on the top where your arm would rest. Maybe a bit buckle wear on the back…
If you’re going to do the relic, it would be cool if you could see the different layers of paint. Little bit of wood, little bit of burgundy, little bit of black. Like the wear is showing the paint history.
The blocked and bound bound neck with a reversed headstock showed up yesterday. For an fairly inexpensive import neck, it is decent. Most important, the neck is straight and the fretwork looks good.
I will have to do some reshaping around the heel, for some reason the heel area on this neck starts around the 13-14th fret (I’ve seen this on other import necks as well). I will also do some slight reshaping of the profile as it’s currently a bit chunky.
The headstock was a really bad impersonation of a Fender headstock. but I’m modifying it anyway. the maple wood grain is nice and the rosewood(?) fretboard has some cool figuring.
Here is the new neck. I had time today to cut the headstock to my Moonshine specs, I’m in the middle of moving into my new location and my spindle sander is at the new place. I will clean it up this weekend.
On a side note, the grain on the fretboard looks Bitchin’.
The heel is also needs quite a bit of sanding to narrow it fit into the stock Fender neck heel, wth the binding on the neck, that will be a possible issue, I have a couple of ideas on how to address that. More to come.
The neck fits! I will need to do a bit of sanding to make up for the finish that will be applied to the neck, I’m happy that I won’t have to do anything major.
As mentioned earlier, the Artec Mudbuckers have four leads, which allows for a number of different coil switching options. I found a really cool wiring diagram for a two humbucker guitar which is perfect for what I’m looking for.
Today I made templates for the rear routed control cavity. This consists of three templates; the control cavity, the inner cavity, and the control cavity cover. As of now, I have all of the templates made, plus I started the routing of the inner control cavity.
I hope to get to work on this some more before the end of the week. I’m going to a high school reunion (46 years!) on June 1st, and I want to bring this along to jam with.
