This is great! I wish I had thought of this for a project bass. Very fun.
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Here’s a theme song for you.
classic 
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@DaveT another treasure trove of crazy Soviet crappy basses is Etsy.
https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/BeautifulVintageUSSR?ref=l2-about-shopname§ion_id=34018883
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There are some pretty nutty Conn saxophone knockoffs from Russia. Instead of the iconic “naked lady” engraving they swap her out for the hammer and sickle but the rest is an “exact copy” but with lots of little Soviet weirdness that makes it not quite right.
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Why do you need Luck and a fast god, you bought at the best time ever to purchase gear?
But just in case, GL&GS (no, thats not a new instrument company).
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my entire bass was cheaper than that 
unrelated to the USSR, I might have access to some old fence planks ahead of schedule.
Plans:
1)Use various tools to get enough straight pieces to glue them into a body blank and make a top out of weathered wood.
2)My gut says I should buy a neck first time out. Though, I mean, I can always make a proper “old weathered neck” for it later once I’ve done some work
3)Try to keep all my original digits intact and not maimed.
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I think @Korrigan has you covered. He worked with MGD to get sn affordable starter part for cigar box basses. But cigar, weathered wood, whatever.
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Both Delanos are now in the Squier and sound fabulous! I’m very happy with this.
The P pickups were a little bit narrower than the stock and needed about a 3/32” shim to stop them from caving in toward each other using the same screw holes.
The J pickup was 3/32” too long to fit in the cavity. I was able to elongate the cavity using an 8” bastard file without disturbing the top finish.
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I am embarking on a new project bass today…
I have been looking now for a while for a bass to use as a ‘two-string slide bass’.
Q: Why?
A: Morphine
Morphine tunes are interesting to me because of the bass and bari sax, and I want to cover a bunch of them and learn this cool style of playing.
Mark Sandman took a crappy old Premier Scroll bass and converted it into a two string slide bass, that’s what gives him such a unique sound. Since doing that though, these basses are rare as hen’s teeth and go for $2500+ because everyone wants to convert them into a ‘Sandman Bass’.
He ripped out the pickups and put P pickups centerlined with the two middle strings, which are generally A and D (but D being the lower string), sometimes tuned to G and C.
He raised the nut by about 1/4" or so and jacked up the bridge so that when using a slide nothing ever comes in contact with the frets (which makes a really really horrible sound if it does btw).
So I have been looking for something different to use instead. I didn’t want to route anything or make this too complicated. So the only requirements were that there are two pickpu cavities that I can center the P pickups in and that it is cheap cheap cheap. I have a set of P pickups off my Ventera 50’s MIM P that are actually excellent pickups. After weeks and weeks of searching I came across Krappy Guitars, who makes one and two string (and zillion string) basses. They actually made several similar basses to the Sandman Bass, one is pictured here.
The gold hardware is kinda odd (was a request of the buyer) but you get the idea.
Krappy Guitars is a one man show, a guy named Kevin with a great business model…
https://krappyguitars.com/HTML/manifesto.html
He usually makes about 5-7 basses a month.
However, Patrick Hunter recently did a YouTube video stating his most favorite bass he owns is his Krappy Guitars bass, and you can guess what happened next. I am #489 on his waiting list. So, this route was a dead end.
So after a lot of searching for something in the same vein as these, and coming up empty, I decided to take a different route… thanks to @Wombat-metal.
I still had a hankering to try out a Harley Benton super cheap bass, and bassed on @Wombat-metal’s assessment, and the fact that a two string slide bass really doesn’t care much for fretboard quality, etc, I thought why not do something completely different. Last night I ordered a Harley Benton TB-70 SBK Deluxe Series, in all its $260 delivered glory ($185 plus $75 shipping).
I don’t have anything even remotely close to this shape, which is cool, the bridge is easily jack-up-able, it gets great reviews, and was CHEAP. Might even get away with using the pickups it came with (TBD). I don’t have to worry or care about how good the neck is etc.
Pickguard has to go, but that is easy.
Should arrive Monday, then to buy a new nut blank and off we go!
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Sounds like a fun project John and that’s a cool looking bass to use as a starting point, but why not go fretless rather than jack the nut and bridge?
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He does use a pick sometimes, and I want that option, otherwise, I would go that route.
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Wouldn’t a pick still work with fretless?
I’m sure I’ve seen footage of Tony Levin doing that.
I’m not being a smartass, I’ve never tried a fretless so genuinely curious.
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I guess, never tried, but even fretless you need to raise up the strings to get enough pressure with the slide to work without touching anything.
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Meh, I say rip out the frets and fill the gaps with coloured resin. 
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You got me interested mate. That is a bass I am curious on.ooking forwaard to see how it turns out
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my repair bills were literally higher than the monthly payments on my used RR. i still shudder thinking about that stupid truck.
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I’m hoping to at least build a “body blank” this weekend out of some 2x4 pieces I have laying around and fence boards 
My C-5 is not even 14" at its widest point (about what 4 2x4s are abreast) so it should be big enough, I think. Then I’ll make a 24x14" canvas in GIMP and get to work on a shape. All my basses fit well within these dimensions.
I wonder if OG Titebond or Titebond II makes the best toneglue? 
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When I was pondering 'poxy for my project bass (boat holding habits) @terb suggested ordinary wood glue. I would think that any glue that will give you even adhesion with a thin layer would be fine.
Really, I would imagine that regardless of the glue itself, the adhesive surface prep is the key thing, and the glue is secondary. Something that doesn’t instantly give you cancer is definitely preferable.
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Lol that’s what Titebond is, it’s just woodglue that “has a stronger bond than the wood itself” etc. I was just being cheeky about gluing multiple boards together (they are slightly rounded on the edges boards, too, so probably a lot of glue will get into them when I glue on the top)
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