My next project bass.
Will keep updated when it gets here and as parts arrive.
I must admit, I love the color.
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You could check Warmoth.com for a neck and Hipshot.com is great for hardware. If you decide to go with Hipshot, search around for better prices than what’s on their website.
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We need to make a template of these bodies @T_dub to make homes for all this leftover chrome hardware and stock pickups and preamps. Lol. Or maybe a design of our own…
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So I got a Hipshot bridge off Reverb for $30 plus shipping and tax, so just under $40. it is lightly used, but not damaged in anyway.
Also, I found a guy with Kent Armstrong pickups on Ebay, and he had “Make Offer”, with like $7 shipping, so I offered him what would equal two pick ups, tax and shipping for just under $100, $98 and some change to be exact, so I got the pick ups on the way too.
I also got the pick guard off Ebay for like $23, all black, no white stripe in the middle
Just need Tuners, maybe a black nut, and possibly a string tree, although, I should have one laying around here somewhere. I need black stingray knobs, but I should be able to get all of that for under $50, under $40 if I am careful.
So, I should have all parts, pick ups and hardware for under $200, and the bass, after tax and shipping was $230 something, so if I can get it rocking and sell it for $500, I can make $50, and start all over.
Yes, Jesse @Reasonably_Happy, we should come up with some bodies and necks to start making parts casters with all the left over bridges and tuners and pick guards and control plates, and even. pick ups. If that pick up ran thru a passive bass, it probably wouldn’t be too hot to add any treble to. So, yeah, literally, we just need necks and bodies. Al @Al1885 can 3d print ramps and pick up covers and pick guards, and true rod covers, etc…
I am a terrible wood worker, even with a last name of wood, I have always been more of a metal worker, but if it fits in a machine, I can make whatever you want, we just need a machine big enough to cut bodies and necks out of.
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I just 3D printed mine.
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@T_dub I’m looking around for a sub hundred dollar bass to do it on. It’s easier to start complete for the first one. I’ve seen a thread on some forum somewhere where someone reshaped a Yamaha RBX body. Not a lot but accentuated the curves a little and it looked stellar. Those things pop up cheap enough now and again. Strip it. Reshape it. Accommodate the parts changes. Fretwork and finish. Way too much time versus value but I think it would be fun. Scratch builds need to happen after the other prototype is finished.
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I just pointed you to a thread of a $100 bass, but you told me you were broke.
I thinks thats a little exaggeration, its more like you are spending time with the family in Baldy for the weekend (and yes, spending money), but having no way in hell to sneak away and get that down in Orange, and chances its still available after the weekend, at that price, yeah, just saying you don’t have the money for it was the easier way to explain it.
Sure we would need a few others so we can mix and match things and make total frankenbasses, but those can be cool as hell too.
I am going to have ANOTHER set of SBMM Ray4 Tuners in my drawer soon, to go with the Squire ones. I think I gave you yours back, so I guess its not as bad as I thought.
But getting small headstock bass necks, and throwing huge clover open gear tuners on them, and then give it some sort of totally different body (maybe a Tele Caster body from a squire). open the neck pocked up a little, reposition some things and make franked tele basses.
Cool to do one with a Strat body as well
I have this small Ibanez gIO guitar that I am doing absolutely nothing with, we can use that for a body some how, and find a neck somewhere, and we got a lot of hardware. HMMM. something to consider.
I know a guy does this over in England, and sells them for pretty reasonable prices, but he is a one man shop, and does not mass produce or have lots of stock on hands. He has made another clone of the 78 mm 2 band preamp tho, and seems a little more rustic, and maybe a little cheaper.
Guitar bodies, bass necks, or in some cases, if we just swap out the nut, we can use the guitar and make a really small scale bass, but 32 t0 34" basses from guitar bodies sounds fun actually.
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I think I might try these in my Mikro 5 for funsies:
$50-$60 for a set of quiet active J pickups seems fun (ones with dip switches for EQ are a few $ more). Or, y’know, caution to the wind and put in the EMG Trujilio set lol…
It’s weird, though. The Mikro has the same size J pickups, and a true J has a slightly wider bridge pickup. At least that’s what I remember measuring, and these GFS pickups are the slightly wider for bridge. 
Maybe I’ll grab a router template and see if my handy friend has a router I can use to ruin a perfectly good instrument modify pickup routs with.
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At 2 or 3am I might have ordered a cheap, old, beat to hell and back Soviet bass from the Ukraine…
…wish me luck and godspeed XD
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This is excellent comrade.
Can’t wait to see and hear it.
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Have it swept for bugs and other listening devices @Koldunya
Just in case
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Now THAT sounds interesting. How does one even find such a thing?
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While it would be amusing to point at my username, which is indeed a Russian word, the answer is Reverb. I don’t recall specifically how I stumbled across it. But just search for USSR guitar, Soviet bass, etc and a lot of ugly as hell instruments should come up. I don’t even know how this thing will take to being restrung XD I plan to tread carefully…
Edit Now they are starting to show up in my YouTube feed. Fuck. Expect prices to rise when hipsters figure them out… 
Edit Apparently the thing is “only” from the late 80s. I was actually hoping as bit older lol. Oh well.
I’m still going to call it my Soviet Space Bass
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Late '80s is still Soviet!
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It should have ICs inside it, judging by the guts of a similar guitar I’ve seen opened, so in theory I can kinda date it. or find some way to decode the garishly painted number on the back of it showing it as a state asset 
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You know this means you need to buy it a SovTek-era EHX pedal, right?
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it came with a built-in effect of some type. No idea what and they often don’t work on these lol. The guitars have a fuzz and a phaser which is what was making me think 70s or something. Maybe they are and the person citing 80s was wrong. I guess I’ll know once it arrives XD
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Definite coolness factor.
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