If you are doing black hardware then #1
Gold hardware then #4
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Same!
I ended up with the gold. May or may not be a good thing. I did mess up and forgot the sanding sealer like I put on the test piece because I’m an idiot. I had the back completely covered with the gold before I remembered I hadn’t done that step on the bass itself. I immediately started removing it and was pleasantly surprised it didn’t really strip the dye off and didn’t look too bad. If anything, it kind of made the green more of an emerald than dark teal of the malachite. Not wanting the front to look different, I did it the same way. Here’s the front with the gold on one side and I’ve started stripping it off the other.
Here’s some progress on front and back:
And here’s more progress with the tape removed from the center. Teak oil was used to strip the gold. It’s been rubbed all over now.
Starting to get a bit of nice sheen to it.
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I’ve got an Ltd B-204 that I was ordering new control knobs for and I spotted some Gotoh GB707s in the same colour for a good price so I grabbed them too.
I’d checked before I bought them that they were going to fit and there was nothing to change on the bass, just undo the old ones and replace. That’s when things got interesting.
The holes in the headstock are 14.2 mm. The Gotoh’s are 13.9 mm while the original tuners are 13.4 mm. I used the existing holes for the alignment screw which matched the Gotoh’s and the pics below show how much better aligned the Gotoh’s are than the originals. It’s like the bass was designed with Gotoh in mind but then they found some cheaper hardware but didn’t update the hole pattern.
The original tuners have an external thread on the retaining nut.
Compared to the internal thread on the Gotoh tuners.
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Looking good, those gotohs were ment to be there 
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This is almost assuredly true. LTD is the export model but the full ESP and E-II versions very likely have Gotoh hardware. like looking at an E-II BTL:
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Interesting, I think some of the misalignment of the original tuners is because there is too much clearance in the headstock and string tension has pulled them over.
The B-204 has some extra features, like the 6-bolt neck and string-through bridge but little details like the tuners show it was built to a price. For example, the ferrules for the strings can fall out when you put new strings on.
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Yeah the only weird thing is there is no domestic B204, the closest are the BTL or the Bottom Bump, which are both a bit different.
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I had the 6 string version and it was really well built. They are great basses, just too many strings on that one for me. Weird in ESP land they don’t have this line. Wonder why
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Just finished a four string bass for my wife’s youngest nephew.
Iroko with Maple stripes in the neck and body. Ebono veneer on the headstock and hollow body wings. Double reverse split coil pickups, each with a stacked volume/tone control.
The Ebony fingerboard is bound with Ebony and the frets have hemispherical ends.
I really wanted to get the strap button off the back of the instrument (the first iteration of this bass had the strap button on the back face of the heel and it doesn’t lay flat in the bag).
30" scale, so it actually balances on a guitar strap. Though it’s not my thing, it’s set up for slap, with 1.5mm clearance at the 12th fret.
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What an amazing gift
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@jonathanhaynes43 is that scratch built? Nice work.
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@Shaker yes, it’s made from scratch. The wood is all reclaimed/borrowed/gifted apart from the Ebono veneer and the Ebony fingerboard (I paid £12 for the fingerboard, as it was the last one of 20 something grade B guitar fingerboards on ebay). The Maple stripes in the neck-through came from boxing out round steel beams in a pub renovation; and the Iroko body wings used to be an electrical engineering workbench.
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Excellent work and the youngster will have a mile wide smile.
I have ebony flooring scraps from a client’s home. How they imported it is a mystery but being extremely wealthy I assume it came here on their ship from foreign lands. I will have to measure it to see if it is big enough for fingerboards.
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So……when will you be taking orders for left handed basses? And will you ship to the UK?
I’m only half joking here
Part 2 of my B-204 upgrade. I added Seymour Duncan NYC’s and three way switches for each so I can select parallel or series humbucking or straight single coil using the outer most coils.
The controls are volume-volume-tone like a regular jazz and it’s passive only now.
Compared to the original pickups it has a lot more character. Single coil mode is similar to what you’d expect from a jazz. Series and parallel modes change things up a lot and both respond really well to the overdrive on the Rumble. So far I prefer single coil on the neck with parallel on the bridge. Series mode on the neck is not my favourite, it just seems like too much but it’s really hard to describe the sound. There is a clear difference between all positions for sure.
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Thats a nice looking bass.
I had the B-4E and loved it. But it’s gone, gone, gone. With the rest of them.
But I will get more.
I like the natural light wood on this one as opposed to the darker stain on the B-4E. I might like this better, but Shhh.
Don’t tell the B-4E
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Well, looks like I’m going down the path of another project before I finish my existing project! At least this one will be pretty straightforward. Since I’ve got my Rogue Beatle bass now that’s a short scale, I decided I wanted to make my previously converted P bass back into a standard scale. I’ve posted details on the conversion previously in this thread and others. The driving force at the time was that it needed a new neck anyway (the one on it was twisted and wrong for the body making intonation impossible aside from open strings) and I have stubby fingers so wanted the narrower fret distances for learning.
Now that I’ve been learning for a while and getting my hands stretched out it’s not a big deal and I want something better for slapping and just full P-bass sound short of buying yet another new bass (which I may still do if this seller on marketplace ever gets back to me, heh). I found a new neck I like the looks of. We’ll see how it feels when it arrives. Keeping with a Jazz-style 38” nut width instead of the wider P-bass widths. Roasted flame maple with a rosewood fretboard, stainless steel frets, white pearloid piano key style inlays, no binding. It should also better match the aesthetic I’ve made the rest of the bass into than the existing neck. I never really cared for the cream colored binding on the current neck against the white pearloid block inlays and the white pearloid pick guard and all black hardware.
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OK, I admit, it’s not a bass but today I finished (it still needs laquer) my first acoustic guitar. It has taken 6 weeks on and off, and I have developed admiration for people who make acoustic instruments for a living because it is so much more involved than a solid body.
I don’t play guitar, this is for my wife’s eldest nephews middle daughter (it has taken so long I have missed her 12th birthday); built to her design choices, it is a mixture of classical and acoustic guitar with an offset body and under-bridge piezo pickup.
Maple, Iroko and Ebono. I have no idea what the wood choices mean for the sound or sustain of the instrument but it makes acoustic guitar type noises.
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Gorgeous, absolutely Gorgeous!
When will the matching acoustic BASS be finished?
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