I've been working on this bass longer than I'd like to admit, but it's finally in one piece and I can play it.
It's a 70's Hondo II Jazz copy. Rather than the plywood like most of them I've seen, this one's made of ash (or something that looks like ash anyway) I took all the electronics out (they didn't work anyway) and Our Intrepid Leader gave me a bridge to replace the terrible one it came with (Thank you again, Dave!) I found some "Firebird style Mini-Humbuckers" on ebay for less than $20 for the pair. These are something like within 1/4" of the same size as what came out of it, are most likely Artec pickups that sounded good in my other hacked-together bass
I also found a "pre-wired Jazz bass control panel" for less than $30, probably a used take-out from something because it had really long leads for the pickups.
I had wired everything up a couple times, and it never really worked. I could wire either of the mini-buckers to the output jack and get noise, but not thru the pots. I futzed and futzed and ended up just re wiring it with new pots and the diagram from SD
http://www.buzzardsbass.com/electronics/wiring/diagrams/J-Bass/Jazz.gifNow it makes noise, but turning the knobs doesn't seem to affect anything, like the sound doesn't change. After seeing the amazing builds you guys put up here I'm kinda embarrased to show my hack-work around here,
but I have a couple questions for you experts:
1. could my lack of tone change be from bad parts (everything was as cheap as I could afford) or more likely me just wiring it up wrong?
2 Would just wiring it vol/tone/3-way make more sense than the v/v/t (or blend knob or whatever) make more sense? (and be less likely for me to screw up)
3. I did notice on playing it for the first time that the "G" string was a lot quieter than the other 3. Also, after measuring it 543264326 times to get the bridge in the right place,
the pup routs are shifted way over to the "E" side, I'm guessing my quiet string is because the pups are not under the strings quite right?
They SEEM to be OK, but who knows... with the old ones, if I centered the pickup under the strings, the top of the pup route could be seen under the pickup ring.
I centered these pretty evenly, but that one string is still not as loud as the others.
4. The action is WAY higher than it used to be- I guess spending 4 years in my basement didn't do it any good...
I strung it up and raised the bridge up enough to get it to stop buzzing, and now it's the stereotypical "half-inch high action". I've never actually adjusted a truss rod before, go figure, and don't wanna break this one (it's totally not worth getting a new neck for, not that I could either afford one, or know how to adapt a standard one to this odd ball shaped thing. It does have a headstock adjusted truss rod, and the nut on it appears to adjust with an Allen key,
but the one I have that fits the nut doesn't seem to want to move at all, and I don't want to snap anything. Also, I don't actually know which way I should be turning it in the first place, so I thought I should consult the experts before I make stuff worse. Can I even adjust this out, or is the neck now warped too much to have a playable bass? THe action was nowhere near this high when I bought it, or I wouldn't have gotten it in the first place. I should mention that the neck has never come off it since I got it, and it's been in my basement pretty much the whole time, other than when I worked on it outside in the summer a couple times. I figured it was more humid down there in the winter than upstairs in our wood-heated house, but I could be wrong...
THank you guys, especially for having me in the coolest bass hang-out on the net.