As I was reassembling and restringing Baba Yaga, I was filled with so much pride for the Motherland and our glorious craftsmanship of this fine instrument that I forgot to oil the fretboard that didn’t even look like wood anymore lol. It looked like withered dried out leather
Soon, comrades. Soon.
And let me tell you, the action was absolutely horrific. But this thing probably hasn’t had strings on it for a long, long time. If I get brave I might fuck with the truss rod. The action is not from the string tension.
Well, it plays. It sounds pretty decent, too; I’ll probably make some recordings tomorrow. It’s late and I need to head to bed. I tuned it CFA#D# with the .105 .080 .065 .045 strings I had on hand and the tension was good there. It felt tight as I tried to even do DGCF, but it’s a 32" scale bass, too. I thought I could lower the bridge but it’s basically all rusted together and while I finally got the bolts to spin, it just spun.
The neck joint is absolute ass, though. I think I can get some shims/wedges/paper or whatever-the-fuck into it at the very back of the pocket since the screws are so far forward, and straighten its angle out which will help a TON from looking at how the strings leave the bridge.
Ima mark this project 95% complete. It needs a new jack or a repair on the existing one. It connects very loosely and fell out once lol.
Also, its electronics make it the quietest instrument I own. There was absolutely no noise even when cranking the input gain on my interface to hear it, or when I used my DarkPre preset. Tomorrow I’m gonna see how Baba Yaga grinds…
Parts Used
Body – 2022 MIM Jazz Bass Loaded Body (Stratosphere Parts)
Neck – Fender MIM Roasted Maple Neck (Fender)
Tuners – Black USA Ultralite Bass Tuning Machine 1/2" (Hipshot)
String Tree – Black Slotted string Tree (Vintage Forge)
Strap Locks – Black Dunlop Strap locks (Dunlop)
Neck Plate – Black Neck plate / Black screws (Solo Music)
Control Plate – Black control Plate (Guitar Fetish)
Output Jack – Black oxide Pure Tone (Solo Music)
Bridge – Black Gotoh 201B-4 (Ebay)
Pick Guard – StormGuitar (Etsy based in South Korea)
Pickguard screws – Black #3 X 5/8" SCW-9207 (Philadelphia luthier tools)
Strings – GHS Precision Flats – 3025 Light 45-95 (GHS)
