The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs => Topic started by: Johnbob on July 22, 2011, 02:46:23 AM
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Ok, so I'm not sure if anyone remembers my Bachbird story but here's a little recap:
A little over a year ago I ordered a BTH-1 bass through Rob. It took awhile to get it and when I did finally receive it the headstock was cracked. Bummer. I was already having some buyers remorse right after I ordered it because I really couldn't afford it at the time so when it arrived broken it was a disappointment to say the least. Nothing's worse than purchasing something when you can't afford it and then that purchase not working out. You can't help but feel like your being punished for spending the money in the first place. Ha ha. Anyway, of course I contacted Rob and he too was bummed for obvious reasons. As much as it was a hassle for me, it was also a big hassle and headache for him. He had to contact Roman at Bach and had to deal with the shippers and file a claim with insurance, etc. It also made the situation difficult because the international shipping was so expensive that shipping it back would have been a waste since the cost of shipping would be lost. It took awhile but the shipping company finally reimbursed Rob and he was able to send me a new bass. Also, we agreed that I would sell the damaged bass on Ebay and we would split the profits after all the Paypal and Ebay fees. I have to give Rob credit for handling everything very professionally and making sure that I got my new bass and with no further costs to me. I know it was a big pain in the ass for him and I really do appreciate it so, thanks again Rob!!!
Ok, so on to the project. Of course I wanted to mod the bass and seeing some of the Bach mods on here got me inspired. Initially my game plan was to go for the same thing as Chromium's Ocean Turquoise Bachbird and then I stumbled on this all black NR Thunderbird on the internet. I always liked the look of the black on black Gibson Grabbers so when I saw the black on black Thunderbird I had to go for it. Plus I was a little intimidated to go for a metallic color so I figured....black it is.
I will say that this entire project has been kind of a nightmare since day one. Plenty of missteps and mistakes were made, many moments of feeling that I was in over my head and many loooong months with no progress being made because I had no money. It got to a point where I kind of regretted the fact that I didn't just keep it stock and play it. It was too late for that though since I had already stripped it so I had to keep chipping away at it and I am glad I did because after a little over a year, the bass is FINALLY done and I absolutely love it. I will be updating this thread and will show you guys the whole process. I hope you guys enjoy checking it out more than I enjoyed doing it. That shouldn't be too hard since I didn't exactly have fun doing it. Ha ha. Of course when progress was being made I had fun but the bumps in the road almost made me throw it in the garbage. Ha ha.
Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention one important part of this whole thing. I am a total ROOKIE!!! Some of you guys are cranking out some amazing stuff but I have only refinished two basses before and the first one sucked so bad I can't even count it. I have done a few relic jobs though and I love to check out the message boards and ask a lot of questions. But, although I have been a member of this board and a member of the Reranch board for years I have never done any major guitar building or luthier work. I certainly don't have any real woodworking tools to work with so I definitely bit off more than I could chew. Anyway, stay tuned for my first update hopefully tomorrow.
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Some projects are like that!
I had been thinking about getting a black/white/black pg for my black BaCH (for the same reason as you like the all black Grabbers: I like the all black Rippers and RDs).
Looking forward to your pics!
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Pics!!!!!!!!!!
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I'm looking forward to seeing how it progressed!
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Yeah!
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OK, so here's how it arrived.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic1.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic2.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic3.jpg)
I must say that right out of the Box the Bachbird is very nice. The finish looked great and it was tempting to keep it stock but there were a few reasons why I couldn't leave well enough alone. First off, one of my favorite things about the original NR birds is the thickness of the body. I love that the body is so thin and then you throw in the belly contour and it gets even thinner. I know that the second run of Bachbirds (the blue ones, etc.) were closer in the thickness and had the belly contour but these third run, cherry Bachbirds had super thick bodies and did not have the belly cuts. If they did I probably would have kept it the original finish. I still would have updated the rest of it, like the electronics, pick ups, tuners, etc. but I probably would have left it cherry. I played it for a few days but I just simply could not get into the thick body and no contour so I decided to move forward with the refinish and mods.
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First order of business, strip it!!! I used a heat gun and the finish melted off the body very quickly which was a pleasant surprise. I didn't think it was a good idea to use the heat gun on the neck so I sanded that and I got a little bit carried away (more on that later). Anyway, no turning back now.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic4.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic5.jpg)
Now the next thing on my list (and one of the most important in my opinion) was to thin out the body. But how? I posted some questions on Reranch and I started asking some friends with woodworking experience and I was told that it could be a potential disaster and that I shouldn't mess with it. Obviously sanding it by hand would be a total nightmare because it would be impossible to keep it even and sand it perfectly flat. Not to mention how much work it would be. I wanted to thin it down considerably too so I was at least smart enough to not go that route. It was definitely a tricky one because it's a set neck bass. If I could remove the neck then I might have been able to just plain the body but obviously sending the whole bass through the plainer, especially with that giant headstock angled the way it is would big a HUGE mistake. My friend has a wood shop and he was the one that helped me with some of the work. I kept bugging him with different ways to approach it but he didn't think any of the ideas would work. Basically every idea fell into the "ah, maybe it could work but maybe it will screw it up really bad too" category. There didn't seem to be a safe bet. I'm sure some of you guys would have been able to pull it off but again, I'm a rookie. So after many discussions with my friend we finally came up with a solution. It was a sketchy one though. Sorry, I don't have pictures of this part (I know, lame, right? especially since this was the most interesting and difficult part). So my friend also goes to another wood shop for certain things and he said that they had a huge drum sander. It basically looks like a huge plainer but instead of blades it has huge drums covered in sand paper. I'm sure some of you guys have seen them. OK, so what's the game plan I ask? Basically we would have to run it through the sander, almost like we were going to plain it but instead it's getting sanded instead. Why is this better then just running it through the plainer? Well, if we were to run it through the plainer we would have to send it all the way through and it of course would also plain most of the headstock off. We thought maybe we could send it through and then stop the machine once the body goes through but my friend thought that would be a potential disaster. With the drum sander we could run it through and then pull it back out since it's only sanding and not cutting. And we could sand it a little at a time and go slow and steady with it. Basically more control. We needed to find a way to hold onto the bass though so we could push it in and then pull it out so the bass wouldn't go all the way through. Hum, what should we use? I know, the bass neck! So we ended up using the neck as a handle to send the bass into this huge drum sander and to pull it back out repeatedly until we got the bass to the thickness that we wanted. Pretty sketchy to say the least but it worked like a charm. Oh and also, another problem was that we couldn't lay the bass flat on it's front because the fret board would get in the way so we had to screw on a few 1/4 boards on the the front of it to make it level when we laid it flat so the fretboard wouldn't get damaged. Man I wish I had pictures of this whole process. By the way, I went to the vintage Guitar Center in Hollywood to take measurements of their vintage sunburst NR bird. I measured the thickness of the body, measured the thickness and placement of the belly contour and where exactly to put the route for the second pickup. I wanted to make sure I got everything correct and since they had a real vintage one there I figured I should take advantage of the situation. Oh, they want $10,999 for that bass by the way. Yikes!!! It is beautiful though and it does play like a dream but I guess it should for that much money.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic6.jpg)
Here's how it looked after the sanding. Perfect. Now I need to route all the edges again and the control cavity.
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Cool project! Been curious to see if anyone would try plaining one of the thick BBs down.
I think I saved a photo of the black-on-black NR you're talking about - was it this one?
(http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k125/0chromium0/forums/thunderbird/main_5814.jpg)
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Yup, that's the bass. I saw it and I knew that that was what I needed to go for. I'm actually torn about getting the bird etched into the pickguard on mine. Usually I like the bird logo on Thunderbirds but I kind of like the way that this one doesn't have the bird logo. We'll see.
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Here's a picture after routing the edges. Obviously it's before the control cavity was re-routed
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic7.jpg)
And here's a picture to give you guys an idea of how much the body was thinned out. You can see the hole from where the strap button was. Obviously before I thinned it down that hole was centered evenly and now it's way off.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic8.jpg)
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Yes indeed, my kind of lunacy...!
There's no problem with a project taking as long as it takes, JB; slow and steady wins the race...
There are two sides to this sort of thing...
Carlo (Dadagoboi) is working at making Fenderbirds, and as this is a financial+work-of-love thing the builds go rapidly - for him it as much a working out how to create something from nothing as it is to build them; by that I mean the classic Peter Cook thing - the one man in his shed (or when I used to visit PC, one man in his garage!)
Scott and Bill (godofthunder and drbassman) are more proficient than me (by considerably more than a country mile ;D) but have had projects bubbling along on the back-burner for some time now...
The advantage of a site like this is no different than writing books (I have five on the go, two of which exceed 300 A4/letter pages, one of which has involved over a decade of on/off research with 3 published chapters) - the completion of the work still gives you the story... War And Peace is still War And Peace whether it is in "episodes" or not... ;)
Bring it on...
:popcorn:
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Man, that's a lot of work to get it ready for finishing. Of course, I've only done this 6 or 7 times, so I feel your pain and know how driven you feel. There's no challenge like stripping an unknown finish from a bass. You never know what your going to have to do or find underneath. Patience is a real virtue in times like these!
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There's no challenge like stripping an unknown finish from a bass. You never know what your going to have to do or find underneath. Patience is a real virtue in times like these!
Tell me about it. The finish on the Smurf Ripper rolled off like a pencil eraser when I tried to sand it, but I wanted to save the original finish underneath so it's taken me ages, constantly sidetracked by other projects (motorcycles mostly).
I like how dark the wood is on Johnbob's bass during the stripping process.
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I've had a similar story going on here, My Tobaccoburst BB arrived with a hairline crack around the neck join and without a belly cut. The body is already quite thin though. My thing was that I wanted an NR in that colour but almost like something Gibson would produce now if they ever decided to do a re-issue. Mine came with a volute which I figure due to all the headstock breakages with the originals would be something that would make sense for Gibson to do on a modern reissue. So using this kind of logic I've had the belly cut done and the headstock painted black as was the norm on the original Tobacco burst models. I've put in a switchcraft jack, a Sprague orange drop and I A/B'd 4 sets of pots. CTS, new Gibson ones, Gotoh's and some Vintage reissue Gibson ones. I went for the new Gibson ones for 2 reasons. Firstly I was very surprised how little difference there was between them all and secondly I figure if the bass was a reissue these would be the pots that Gibson would use today. For those interested IMHO the Gotoh's actually won by the thinnest whisker. The Vintage reissue Gibson ones were still fine but probably came in last if I had to pick. After the headstock repaint I put on a set of Gotoh vintage reverse resolites which have impressed me greatly. I put a Gotoh 201 bridge on my Dean edge recently and I cant say enough about how good I've found the Gotoh products to be.
When the headstock was done I had a new (white) nut made up to replace the black one. The neck on mine was a little thicker than I expected and Rob tells me it was thicker than a lot of the other BB's but to be honest its such a nice feeling and comfortable neck for me to play that I'm not fussed about it at all.
The hairline crack was only superficial as it turned out and was touched up during the painting of the headstock and belly cut.
As many others have already proclaimed the Artec pups really sound quite good but in keeping with my theme I ordered a pair of 66 Thunderbuckers from Steve. I'm at the stage now of making the mods to the body to fit these pups.
I need to get a little routing done on the pup cavities to suit the Thunderbuckers. I want to keep the front pup ring free so I'm probably going to have to get a new PG.
Getting closer and closer to being an awesome bass. The tone and feel even with the Artecs is just great.
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that bach looks familiar. ;)
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that bach looks familiar.
Haha,yes, this bass should look very familiar.
JohnK played a huge part in getting this bass to where it is today. Amazing work. More on his involvement later. But he definitely helped take it to another level. Thanks again John.
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Here's a picture of the belly contour all mapped and ready to be carved out.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic9.jpg)
Had to route the body for the bridge pickup since I bought the one pickup model. My friend helped me with all the routing. Also had to drill another hole for the second volume knob. Some of the holes on the face of the bass are from the pickguard and bridge/tail piece but all the extra ones are from when I screwed the 1/4 boards on it to make it level in order to run it through the drum sander.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic10.jpg)
And the actual carving begins. I carved it out by hand using a rasp for most of it and eventually sanded it to get it nice and smooth.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic11.jpg)
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I'm actually torn about getting the bird etched into the pickguard on mine. Usually I like the bird logo on Thunderbirds but I kind of like the way that this one doesn't have the bird logo. We'll see.
I think it'd look fine without it.
As an aside, if you do decide to get the logo engraving done, I came across an easy way to in-fill the pattern. There's a product called Markal Lacquer-Stiks, and you can get them in various colors (including white). Looks like a big crayon, and you color over the engraving and rub off the excess with a cloth. It fills in the pattern flush with the surface, hardens/cures and doesn't require clear coat. I've tried it on some equipment panels and it seems to hold up well...
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31Y9hSm0tkL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BY8HKS/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B002BXJ906&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=130V84V2RTW7FH52GJ2H
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Cool, thanks for tip. That looks like a great option and they are nice and cheap too. I was just going to use white acrylic paint. That's if I end up adding the bird.
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Cool, thanks for tip. That looks like a great option and they are nice and cheap too. I was just going to use white acrylic paint. That's if I end up adding the bird.
Rob did that on a 'guard (IIRC), and it came out great. There's a post about it here somewhere...
This is just another way to do it that I recently came across.
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Here's that old thread;
http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=2556.msg56972#msg56972
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Here's that old thread;
http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=2556.msg56972#msg56972
Yeah, that's where I got the idea.
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A few pics of the belly contour all carved out and sanded smooth. I must say I was a little scared to do the contour but I am very happy with the way it came out. Also note how nice the body cleaned up after some light sanding.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic12.jpg)
I rounded the edges of the contour too so the routing matched the rest of the body.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic13.jpg)
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Looking good!
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Smooooooooooooooooth.
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Nice work. From the results, hard to believe you're a rookie at this.
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Nice work. From the results, hard to believe you're a rookie at this.
Thanks but my next update will show some evidence of me being a rookie for sure. Ha ha. I screwed the neck up a bit when I was sanding it. It's not too bad though.
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Ok, so this is when things started to get a little squirrelly for me. I sanded the poly off of the neck and I got a little carried away. I ran into two problems. The first problem: I kind of sanded a little ripple in the back of the neck around the 10th-11th fret. It wasn't too bad but I felt that every time I tried to sand it to even it out I was taking a little bit more off the neck and that started to worry me. I figured I had 2 options, one, just leave it since it wasn't that bad and maybe not noticeable (unless I pointed it out) but at the end of the day I would notice it and I knew it would bother me forever so I decided to go with option 2. Option 2: I decided to rub a really thin coat of quickwood over the area and to sand it flat. After going to about 3 stores I still couldn't find the correct color but I knew I was painting it black anyway so I just used whatever color they had. I applied it and sanded it. I'm very happy with the results. It might not look pretty when looking at the unfinished neck but once I painted it you would never know. It looks and feels perfect so I'm glad I didn't just leave it. Here's a picture of it. Again, I know the off color makes it an eyesore but you can't see it now so I'm fine with it.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic14.jpg)
The second problem: In general I took a little more off of the neck than I would have liked. I didn't think that was the case until my bandmate got a new Gibson Custom Shop NR Firebird. The neck on his was a huge baseball bat compared to my bass. I didn't remember if mine was like that when I got it because it had been so long and I barely played it before I started stripping it. At this point I was totally convinced that I took way too much off of the neck and that I had ruined it which lead to me putting it aside for months. I was pretty bummed. Especially since the necks on those basses are already so thin. I kind of figured it was f***ed. I painted it and stuff but it sat around unassembled for a long time before I revisited it. I eventually took it to John Karras, known on this board as John_K and I compared it to his original Bachbird. I came to find out that, although mine was a little thiner than his it was much closer than I thought. Thank God. His neck was also very thin and he convinced me that mine was totally fine. He also reminded me that the Bachbird's were finished in a thick poly and mine was a thin nitro which was also something to consider. I really thought mine was a goner before I compared the two basses. Anyway, as I stated earlier, he helped a great deal with mine but again, I'll get more into that later.
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You didn't sand through to the truss rod, so if it isn't that much thinner than John's, probably no need to worry about anything happening later on.
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I did the exact same thing on one of the first basses I stripped. I used a similar fix and it worked out fine. Good recovery.
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You didn't sand through to the truss rod, so if it isn't that much thinner than John's, probably no need to worry about anything happening later on.
Yeah, I didn't come anywhere near the truss rod. Once I compared it to the other Bachbird I knew it was going to to be fine. I'm glad I found another Bachbird owner locally for me to compare it to and put my mind at ease about it.
I did the exact same thing on one of the first basses I stripped. I used a similar fix and it worked out fine. Good recovery.
Yeah, I'm definitely happy with the save. It may have been a bit unnecessary but I'm still glad I did it because I know it would drive my nuts every time I played it and I felt that little ripple. It's funny because if it came from the factory like that it probably wouldn't have bothered me that much but the fact that I screwed it up bothered me more for some reason.
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Here's a picture of the body after the grain filler and sand and sealer were applied. From what I understand, 60's Gibsons, unlike Fenders, didn't have a white primer coat so I skipped that part. I used this stuff called Timbermate for the grain filler and Reranch sand and sealer. Obviously the control cavity has been rerouted too.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic15.jpg)
Here's a picture of the neck too
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic16.jpg)
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Great looking project!
Unlike the 'mahogany' BaCH uses, 60's Gibsons didn't NEED grain filler. Genuine (Honduras) mahogany has a much tighter grain pattern. All it takes is a good quality sanding sealer. You can check my current S.D. Curlee refin thread to see an example of Honduras done this way.
Fender basses that ended up black were usually botched sunbursts that they reshot without stripping the original finish. They used something called Fullerplast developed in house to seal/grain fill bodies from the early 60s.
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Unlike the 'mahogany' BaCH uses, 60's Gibsons didn't NEED grain filler.
I had to grain fill the entire bass; the body, neck and the front and back of the headstock. Yeah, skipping grain filling on this would have been great. I did 3 coats because I kept finding little pinholes where the grain filler didn't catch. It was a lot of grain filling but I knew it would pay off.
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I had to grain fill the entire bass; the body, neck and the front and back of the headstock. Yeah, skipping grain filling on this would have been great. I did 3 coats because I kept finding little pinholes where the grain filler didn't catch. It was a lot of grain filling but I knew it would pay off.
I still remember refinishing my '60 EBO in '72. No filler or sealer, just many coats of clear nitro with a Preval spray bottle over a few weeks and lots of sanding in between. There's always a steep learning curve with the first one!
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Some pics after the color coats were sprayed. I used sand and sealer, multiple coats of black and then multiple coats of clear. I used all Reranch stuff and it's all nitro.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic17.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic18.jpg)
Sorry, this last picture is pretty bad. Not that the other ones are so good but this last one is especially bad.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic19.jpg)
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I eventually took it to John Karras
Whoops, I mean John Kallas not Karres. Sorry about that John.
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So where did I leave off?
I laid down the color coats and then a bunch of clear coats. I then wet sanded it up to 2000 and then moved on to micro mesh. This was only my third refinish (like a said before though, my first one shouldn't even count since it was so bad) but I can never seem to get all the surface scratches out for some reason. I actually don't have pictures of any of these steps unfortunately but you're not missing much.
Ok, so in addition to doing the body/neck work and the finishing I was also accumulating the parts I needed to complete the bass. I picked up a set of used Fender vintage reissue reverse nickel tuners, a truss rod cover with the Gibson logo on it, a black/white/black pickguard blank, some Mike Lull pickup covers and pickup ring and a pair of Seymour Duncun SSB4 pickups. I wanted to buy a full set of Mike Lull's but I just couldn't justify the price and this stuff was also purchased before the Thunderbuckers were completed and available otherwise I would have probably bought those. I was getting closer to getting this thing together and then I reached out to John Kallas AKA JohnK.
I stumbled upon John's website, he had a Bachbird project on his site and he had tried both the Duncuns and the Lull's out so I reached out to him for his opinion. I asked him if he could put the Duncuns in the Lull covers for me and he said sure so I drove out to his place to drop them off. It was great too because he had his Bachbird there with the same mod. He had just taken the Lull's out of his bird and put the Duncuns back in so it gave me a chance to hear the Bachbird with the same pickups that I was going to use. I was very pleased with the sound. I really like the Seymour Duncuns a lot, much more than I thought I would. I have been hearing rave reviews about the Lull's and the Thunderbuckers so I can't even imagine how amazing they must sound since I'm already very impressed with the Duncuns. Especially for the price. I got the the Duncuns through a friend who had a hook up with Duncun for $79, so the price was definitely right for me. I am really so happy I hooked up with John because he ended up bringing way more to the table than I could have hoped for. He was initially just going to mod my pickups but after playing some his other basses, I asked him if he could help me finish the rest of my bass. I can't begin to stress how amazing his work is. I played a number of basses at his house, one that he built from scratch, one that he had modded, an amazing 66 Jazz bass clone he built and of course his Bachbird. I must say that every single bass played like the best bass I had ever played. I knew that as much work that I had put into my bass it would never come close to anything that he had done. His attention to detail was amazing, frets, set up, finish work, everything was just perfect. I knew I wanted him to finish my bass but my funds were limited. I asked him if would be interested in wiring up my bass and he told me to bring it by and he would check it out. He knew I was on a budget and said he would help me out but he really went so above and beyond I don't even know what to say. We started going through the bass and coming up with a laundry list of things that needed to be done and parts I still needed. I didn't think I could afford to get everything done so I had to pick and choose the things that were the most important to me but in the end he ended up doing everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) for the amount that I had. You can tell that he just didn't want that bass leaving his house until it was as amazing as possible. Ha ha. He loves what he does too much to half ass something. Anyway, here's the pics. I'll go into detail about all of the things that John did to it after.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic20.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic21.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic22.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic23.jpg)
I also beat the bass up a little already because I felt it looked too new. I didn't get too carried away but I needed to age it a little.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic24.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic25.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic26.jpg)
Okay, where do we start?
Here's a long list of the things that John Kallas did to this bass:
LABOR:
1- He buffed out the entire bass which made a HUGE difference. When I brought it to him it had tons of little surface scratches and swirl marks and he threw it on the wheel, buffed it out and turned it into a factory looking finish. Awesome!
2- Cut divots in the headstock for the tuning keys and mounted them.
3- Installed the Duncan pickups into the chrome Lull covers.
4- Cut out wooden blocks to fill in the pickup cavities because they were too deep.
5- Fabricated treble pickup spacer (the black plastic spacer that goes underneath the chrome ring around the treble pickup).
6- Cut the pickguard and mounted it.
7- Fabricated a new back control plate cover.
8- Cut out the nut and installed it.
9- Cleaned and re-oil sealed the fingerboard which was covered in tape residue from me leaving the painters tape on there way too long.
10- Leveled, re-crowned and polished the frets.
11- Mounted the strap buttons.
12- Mounted the trussrod cover plate.
13- Strung it up with round stainless strings.
14- Adjusted the neck.
15- Adjusted the action.
16- Mounted the pots and jack.
17- Wired up the control harness.
18- Strobe intonation.
He also provided me with a bunch of parts that I still hadn't bought or ordered yet. Which really did save me some money because I didn't have to pay shipping for all these little parts which can really add up. You guys know how that goes, $7 shipping on a $3 part and some places don't have everything you need so you have spend even more to ship from multiple places. Luckily he had everything I was missing which worked out great for me. I also gave him a bunch of really crappy, cheap screws for everything and he replaced all of them with the accurate, better quality screws. We're talking everything, pickguard, pickup, bridge screws, etc.
PARTS:
4- Pickup mounting screws
10- Pickguard screws (Gibson)
6- Bezel screws
3- CTS pots @ $5 ea
1- Switchraft jack
2- Pickup foam sponges
1- Set Daddarrio stainless EPS165
3- Knobs
3- Tail piece screws
1- Bridge pickup spacer plate
And if that wasn't enough. When I came to pick it up I brought my Fender 62 Reissue Jazz Bass with me because I wanted his opinion on the neck because it was tweaked beyond repair. At least that's what I was told by a bunch of different luthiers and it was actually looked at by a few techs over at Fender and they all said that the neck was warped beyond repair. I wanted to see what John thought of it and I wanted to see if he could recommend a good replacement neck. Well, while we were talking he took the bass apart the bass, replaced the truss rod nut, which was broken and he did all kinds of tweaking to the neck. He also fixed the string nut which was also funky, fixed one of the pots and then set the bass up. He even took off the pickguard and buffed it all out. Not sure if any of you have experienced this but for some reason I have gotten a few Fender pickguards over the years that have had the protective plastic on them for too long and when I removed it it left a weird imprinted pattern into the guard which is kind of etched in to it. Has this happened to anyone else? Anyway, he buffed all of that out. Oh, he also didn't charge me for the work on the Fender Jazz bass. It plays amazingly. I couldn't believe it, I basically brought him these 2 piece of crap basses (I mean crap because I had turned them into crap, not because the were initially made crappy) and he transformed both of them into 2 amazing sounding and playing basses. I couldn't be more happy with either of these basses. Thanks again John for everything and working with my budget and helping me turn both of those basses into the great basses that they are, especially the Thunderbird which sat around unplayable for over a year.
PS. Sorry for this ridiculously long post. Seriously, I know it's a bit much to get through. Ha ha.
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Great looking bass, kudos to JohnK.
Re the SD's vs ThunderBuckers. Every LBOer who purchased an SD equipped JAEbird replaced them with ThunderBuckers. I think they'd agree with me they're very different sounding. Listening to the posted sound clips on Lull's site his pickups sound much more like SDs than they do vintage Thunderbird pickups.
One more thing about JohnK that has had me wondering since he trashed a JAEbird Standard in a review...Please ask him WHY, after he slagged me so badly on Talk Bass they banned him, he decided to keep the bass after I offered to pay him every cent he spent plus return shipping. He's done similar to other builders. Nice to know he's making amends.
http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead.com/JAEBird.html
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Love it! That came out absolutely beautiful!!!!
Great work guys :vader:
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Nice outcome!
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+1
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Thats a NR to be proud of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Thanks guys, I'm really stoked on this bass. I have been playing it non-stop. I might get the Thunderbuckers at some point. I figure I could sell the SD's and probably get some ok money for them especially since they have been modded with the Lull covers which were another $40 plus the cost of modding them. But I don't think I will do it for awhile, it took me so long to get this bass up and running, I don't want to take it apart and put it back into "project" mode again even though it wouldn't be out of commission for that long. I just want to spend some time playing it.
One more thing about JohnK that has had me wondering since he trashed a JAEbird Standard in a review...Please ask him WHY, after he slagged me so badly on Talk Bass they banned him, he decided to keep the bass after I offered to pay him every cent he spent plus return shipping. He's done similar to other builders. Nice to know he's making amends.
As far as all this is concerned.... just from meeting up with him a few times, I will say that it seems pretty obvious that John is a stickler for every little detail and I'm sure a tough guy to please, especially since his work seems to be pretty impeccable from what I saw, but I really don't want to even speculate what his or your thoughts are on the whole debacle or why he kept the bass if he wasn't happy with it. Also, I really wouldn't want to drag this thing out again because it could easily spiral out of control again and I definitely wouldn't want to be the one that stoked the fire again. Let's all just try to get along. Ha ha.
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That project turned out fantastic!! I just ordered the parts to take my BachBird from stock to my own vision for it. Nothing as extreme as this project was tho. Good job JohnBob!!
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Very cool. Nice to see so
Many personalized BaCHbirds.
That was the whole idea when we started it back in
the Dudepit days. :toast:
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Thanks guys! Even though I had many moments when I regretted starting this project, now I, of course, want to make another one in another color. Ha ha. I'll hold off for a little while though.
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Ah, the final piece in the puzzle. The case. So, as we all know, finding a case big enough for these basses is pretty challenging. It took a long time but I finally found the right Epiphone case. Of course, we also all know that you can't find one for a non-reverse so I took some inspiration from Rob's case and decided to go the same route with mine and it worked out perfectly.
Started off with the reverse case....
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic27.jpg)
Ripped out the foam.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic28.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic29.jpg)
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic30.jpg)
I had to cut out the foam piece so I could flip it over to fit the non-reverse shape
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic31.jpg)
I had to glue and tape in some of the foam pieces I cut out to fill in the gaps in order to make it a snug fit.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic32.jpg)
Here it is all done and fits like a glove.
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i417/tambiharon/Pic33.jpg)
When looking for a case I was initially trying to find one of the cases that had the body part of it wide open instead of one with the specific body shape so I wouldn't have to go through this whole process. I'm glad I couldn't find one though because in the end I'm much happier that I was forced to get this one because the mod ended up being very easy and the bass fits perfectly now and I would much rather have the bass fit in there very snug instead of moving around in the open shaped case.
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That's one sweet bass! Love the black PG on it.
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Nice job!
Now all you need is a white bird on the black pickguard!
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That really turned out nice. Once you do one of these, there is no stopping.
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looks great. I know it is not stock but i like the second ring on the neck pup. more chrome the merrier ;D