The weather was pretty miserable here over the weekend so I got to spend a little time with the Hofner on the bench.
Apart from a few little cosmetic jobs like removing all the MIC and CE stickers, and refinishing the truss rod cover to remove the awful looking B-bass logo I decided to have a go at upgrading the bridge to a genuine Hofner Germany item.
The stock bridge is made from a relatively lightweight wood, I’m not sure what it actually is. It wasn’t well fitted to the body contours so I reckoned since I’d have to reshape it anyway I may as well switch it for a German part since the labour would be the same.
It didn’t look like any attempt had been made to contour the original Chinese bridge as it was only contacting the body for less than 50% of its surface.
I was then able to move the frets on the bridge around to intonate properly.
The end result is a properly intonated instrument with a much improved tone. I suspect I could have achieved pretty much the same results by fettling the original bridge, but the German bridge is much nicer.
Still to do: Swap out the nut. I ran out of time this session, and the original nut looks like it’ll be a bit trickier than usual to remove due to the way the headstock finish has been butted up against it.
Sort of an impulse buy. But, this was just sitting out there…for sale…Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with it. I’m thinking a p bass body. What’s you favorite bridge? Also, trying to decide about pickups. Don’t want to deal with soldering, thinking either some EMG Geezer’s or going the obsidian wire route again. Looking for a little more of a growly/rock tone with this one. What do you think?
I purchased this bass about two years ago. It has a Fender P Bass neck, Fender high mass bridge, a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound pickup, and Hipshot tuners. The body is an aftermarket that was stained brown and not sealed.
Have the Stonewall pickups in my Rascal and it sounds great. I’m not sure I have the wiring perfect, but I’ve found a local luthier and may have him take a look when I get to his neck of the woods.
But even with sub perfect wiring, it sounds great. Fat, and clear. In chatting with Stonewall himself he suggests rounds, and I may try them out.
In other upgrade news, my pickguard for Herbie has shipped, and so has the pickup!!! So that will be going soon.
And in my final upgrade news, I have my new pickguard for the Bass VI and so will be pulling that apart soon too.
And that’s all my upgrades and plans for upgrades, and basses.
Last week they said this week. This week they said next week
But I believe them, as they must be quite nervous by now, due to my constant email and chat terror about delivery.
Also I can’t wait to order the other upgrades … as soon as I know what the exact stock parts are on that bass…
Last but not least I might order exactly the same bass for playing outside in the park, but leave that more or less “virgin” … except: everything that is not black will be replaced by black parts. It will be my Ninja bass…
Not sure yet what I’ll do, but … the ouput level on Greenie (DiMarzio DP122) is sometimes hard to manage. During a jam session I needed to lower the volume on the amp each time I was on stage because Greenie had a way higher output level than the other basses.
Also it’s not rare that I clip on the output stage of some amplifiers, before the gain pot, so I can’t do anything else than lower the volume directly on the bass, which I don’t like at all. It’s not my habbit, as I’ve always used the volume pots as gain pots on guitars with saturated amps, or simply as on/off “rotary switches”.
Considering that I planed to change the tone pot on Greenie for a 500k for a bit more grit (DiMarzio specifies a 500k for volume and 250k for tone, that’s the current wiring on Greenine), my idea is to use a push-push 500k where the switching function would allow a “low output” mode. It would require only one resistor and some wires, nothing complicated at all.
