I had totally forgotten I ordered this on AliExpress. Ordered it months ago on AliDelay, to my old address and totally forgot.
Arrived at my new address today. It’s a replacement Peavey neck, stylewise it’s like a Millenium or Milestone neck. It may be a factory reject from actual Peavey stock. The maple fingerboard is gorgeous and perfect. The back of the neck has some dings. Minor stuff, totally sandable. The fingerboard is slitted for frets, but this one will be fretless. I love surprises!
My Squier is becoming a bit of a project. When I swapped out the pickups for the Geezer Butler EMGs, I had an awful hum. I went back in, added another ground to the neck pickup which sorted out the hum. When I put it back together, bridge pickup didnt work. Took it apart again, one of the plugs had slipped off the volume knob, breaking the connection. Reattached the cable, verified everything worked, put it all back together. Was fine for three days, yesterday bridge pickup is not working again. Will go in later today to check the connections again. If that is the problem, I will forever swear off plug n play and learn how to solder
Not to mention the bass needs a proper setup since the original swap. I don’t seem to have a small enough hex key for adjusting the string height, need to pick one up. My A string is so high it is noticably quieter than the E, D, and G strings, even though pickups are at a good height.
On the bright side, I am getting damn good at working on the electronics without taking the strings off, and am getting a lot of playing time on my five string with all the time this one is spending on the bench.
Oh no, definitely not the Squier’s fault. I take full responsibility that it is needing so much TLC. All good learning experience though. And any issues I am experiencing are thankfully minor and super simple to fix. If I can’t do it, my local music shop can.
it takes some time and mistakes, but all these things are doable - including soldering, and a really good thing to get good at and save yourself some money (if not give yourself some headache along the way).
As many of my projects start I have a “spare” part.
In this case a Fretless neck from an Artist Hybrid.
I have been looking for a body/junker bass to add this to and finally found one.
A slightly dropped sunburst PJ with a tort pickguard (initially the guy was going to keep it but let me have it). I got this for the princely sum of $35 AUD (bargain)
As you can see i is a bit dinged up but nothing I can’t dealt with.
Initially I had planned to strip it back and either leave as timber finish or paint (possibly in Bunnings Green with some added luminous paint)
I have decided to leave it as is for now because in person it exudes charm
Now here is something I thought odd, there are 3 holes on the controls part of the pickguard and no jack hole in the body-the pickguard matches up with the holes in the body.
I am wondering whether it was wired with only 2 pots -ie no Tone knob.
I will get back in touch with the seller and ask him as he has those parts still.
Perhaps I will wire it up that way and see what happens (probably a lot of humming)
If that fails I will need to drill a hole for the jack.
I am interested in thought/experience from the brains trust
Like I said I was initially going to strip it back, I do like it the way it looks but there is some chipping.
I think it may have been run over at some point-no cracks in the timber tho
No reason I can’t get it working and then refinish it, just gives me another project
So, after 2 months of having my Warmoth body and neck listed up on Reverb with no offers, very few watchers, and two price drops each, I’ve decided to keep them and finish building it. I spent a lot of money on them, and I’d rather keep them then price-drop them into oblivion in the hopes they sell.
This weekend I’ll rebuild what I can rebuild. I think I made a mockery of the wiring harness last time, so I think I’ll keep my eyes out for a pre-wired harness where I only need to connect the pickups and ground. Or maybe get everything installed and take it down to 13th Street Guitars to have them wire it up when I get some cash. They did an amazing job on the Charvel I had.
So, it looks like I will wind up with a second bass after all. I’ll have my Aerodyne P/J, and this Warmoth G4 with GOTOH tuners and bridge, and True Custom Shop J/J pickups.
I am weighing my options, just ordered various pots and a blend pot plus some pickups (not expensive ones).
Ordered them rather than nip down to Jaycar because they are cheaper but also gives me a week to think about it.
I do have some spare jack plugs to choose from.
I will likely go with Black hardware.
I liked your idea of stripping it down to timber finish. If you’re going to put this much effort into rebuilding it, you may as well go all the way. No bass wants to be kept black burst.
