The Last Bass Outpost

That must be the bass version of what one of the early guitarists for Prince played (Dez Dickerson, and I just searched for ages to find a pic of him with it...) I'd have given my left nut to get that bass when it was new. A friend of mine had a Lotus Explorer copy he painted up like the bass above, he'd go back and forth between that and a paint job like the Scorpions guy had.

It's lovely to have you around Daan!

I hope so. It kind of sucks getting asked to leave forums...
I wish I had pix of the NR Firebird the cool neighbor guy had when I was growing up. I do have pix of his Firebird CAR (and doing a smoky burnout while holding a PBR out the window, guess how much my parents liked me hanging out at his place? )

Like this, with all the different wood laminations:

They had one at the local used store. It played nice, it felt pretty good (unlike the no less than 5 "Nikki Sixx Blackbird"s they had hanging by it) Not that I need any more basses, but the more I hang out here the more I wanna get rid of all my crappy basses and just have ONE decent one. You know, "is it better to have one, $2000 instrument, or 20, $100 ones?"
And, no, I can't go trading mine there, I'd give them all 4 of my basses and still have to pay 75% of what they're asking. Or I need to learn how to negotiate better...

Dummies. Everybody knows you're supposed to use an old-fashioned crank telephone (or if you have one, an Army field radio with the crank) instead of explosives... (My job when fishing with my inbred relatives when I was a little kid was to sit on the blanket-covered phone in case the DNR guys showed up  )

OK I keep hearing about these guys and apparently I'm the last person on earth to hear any of their music. ("But I'm hearin' good things, maaan..") What's a good starting point for them? Is this just another case of "music industry shenanigans" that I've never heard them, or is it just because I'm from rural Wisconsin?
I inherited my father-in-law's record collection and I've been going on kind of a "70's music binge" lately. It'd be nice to add some more I'm not familiar with to the pile.

Does it have to be STEEL steel wool? I do have some of that copper looking stuff on hand (and a TON of those 3M scuffing pads) but I can buy SW when I get (around to) buying my neck screws. I already tried auto buffing compound on the plate and it didn't do anything to it. Maybe if we can find the collett thing for my dad's Dremel that would make the polish job go better. Or, I could just leave the plate alone, and actually finish putting the bass together so I can play it?

One of the gouges in the back.

Who knew it was so hard to take a pic of clear superglue laying on clear finish? Anyway I have quite a bit on there, and all I did was the back. I will be trying to level it out in the next couple days when it dries (assuming with the way my luck runs, something will fall onto it and get glued to the back of the guitar in the meantime  )
So speaking of luck, today's adventure was working on the tuners. The stockers, besides looking like pot-metal and not holding tune all that well, buzzed and rattled. THe "elephant ear" part were loose on 3 of them, one so much I could pull it off the tuner shaft. I got a "gift card" as a bonus from work a couple days ago, so I decided to get some tuners. I ordered what I could afford with my bonus (Wilkinson-brand ones, they looked waay better than the stockers) but when they arrived, this is how they looked:

Now, that ain't right... I called the CS people and they sent me a new set pretty quick,

They went the right way but kind of "overlapped" each other, like the shaft holes were 1/2mm too close together or something. I was complaining about working on this to my Dad and he offered to come over with his Dremel tool to help out. Once he got here (and dinner was done and the kids were in bed) he discovered he lost the collett-thingy somewhere, so we couldn't use the power tools to fix it. So I got to spend some quality time with my Dad filing down the edges with...well, files. They fit OK now, other than one of the holes is just too big for the bushing to stay in by itself. It's cool though 'cause I got to work on my bass and BS with my Dad for a couple hours.

Sorry about the crummy cell phone pics, I gotta start bringing my "real" camera with me places.
so I finally had some time to futz with this (and partly just had too much fun playing it to take it apart)
I was wondering what the hole next to the bridge was, it looks like someone used a screwdriver to make the hole for the ground wire. Also the pup routes are pretty clean (the hole itself, there's tons of ...I don't know what, but I gotta clean it out pronto. I thought it might be buffing stuff, but there's none in the control cavity or the front pup hole.) There was a hole above the bridge pup hole. I thought maybe a Jazz-style pup route got enlarged to put these humbuckers in, but they both look too clean to be anything other than stock. The hole I saw was because the black plate around the pup wasn't cut big enough to cover the route hole.

I got a real J style control plate (OK it's from another copy, but it's better than what I had) you can see how much bigger that is than what mine came with (plus it's actually made of metal and has better components.

You can see how dark the finish got over the last 30 years. It's nice ash-looking wood, the grain looks really nice(too bad most of it's under the guard plate) I'm having a hard time not sanding it all down (there's like 80 million scratches and dings on here) and just Tru-Oiling the whole thing, but I know if I do that it'll be a loooong time before it's all back in one piece again. Plus I kind of like the orangy color it's darkened to.

Oh yeah, it's definitely not the same shape as a "real" Jazz, here's a Fender guardplate sitting on top of it.

(Ask at the store for used parts enough, and they'll let you pick thru them. Or ask me not to come back...) The neck is totally squared off on the end, and since I've never had a "real" Jazz, I didn't know those were rounded. Not like I want to make mine just like a real one, there are tons of those around. Mine is different, I think it sounds cool and I just plan on making it better than it was, not a more exact copy of a bass that there are thousands of them around. Besides if I was gonna change it more, I'd be buying new parts for it, not rooting around in people's spares bins...