1967 EB-0 "restomod"

[FrankieTbird]

  Is it just me or did he remove a lot of material from the body unnecessarily?

Absolutely.  Just dowel the bridge holes and fill the pickup rout, done.

[Dave W]

He did remove a lot. We don't know what the customer's budget was, though, and what they discussed. I'm guessing that the customer is okay with what he's doing.

Absolutely.  Just dowel the bridge holes and fill the pickup rout, done.

As he pointed out, that often causes the outlines of the plugs to telegraph through the finish. Veneering eliminates that problem.

[ilan]

Here's a question. After plugging, veneering and refinishing, will the bass be more or less original than if he'd just replace the P pickup with a second mudbucker and leave the original worn finish?

[amptech]

Here's a question. After plugging, veneering and refinishing, will the bass be more or less original than if he'd just replace the P pickup with a second mudbucker and leave the original worn finish?

In my opinion, it's no difference. I still say go for it, if you have a good Gibson bass that is allready tampered with, it's OK to make it your own dream bass. What someone else did to it in the past does not matter,  or what you do to it. But to have such a job done to it (like in the vid) will depend on your wallet size. I'd rather have a plug popping through the fin (and I do have a couple) than have someone veneer it.

[Rob]

In my opinion, it's no difference. I still say go for it, if you have a good Gibson bass that is allready tampered with, it's OK to make it your own dream bass. What someone else did to it in the past does not matter,  or what you do to it. But to have such a job done to it (like in the vid) will depend on your wallet size. I'd rather have a plug popping through the fin (and I do have a couple) than have someone veneer it.

[Dave W]

Here's a question. After plugging, veneering and refinishing, will the bass be more or less original than if he'd just replace the P pickup with a second mudbucker and leave the original worn finish?

Less original. Wouldn't look good with the cracks showing, of course, and that's probably why the customer chose the way he did.

Re: mudbuckers, since he removed the Model One, is he planning to replace it with a period-correct mudbucker, or reinstall it? With all of the non-original body modifications, seems pointless to replace the Model One. We'll see.

[Dave W]

Part 4 is up. All about pulling the frets. He should have sped up parts of it.

At one point, when he was having trouble with a fret, he said "geez Louise!" I never heard anyone say that until I first moved north of the Mason-Dixon line. So I did a little searching. Turns out he's located in Arvada, Colorado. Go figure.

[Pilgrim]

We'uns here in Coloradio are noted fer our moderate speechifying.

[Dave W]

He does have some tasty looking Tele-inspired guitars at reasonable prices in his Reverb shop.

[Alanko]

I also think he removed way too much wood. By all means plug the additional routes and bridge holes. At that point route a shallow rectangle into the top of the body and then patch this section in (Dan Erlewine did similar to a Telecaster that has a big Bigsby route in the body, on Youtube). Hogging out all that wood to depth of the P pickup route seems like total overkill.

I would like to see a breakdown of costs before I buy the line that the owner was working to a budget, or whatever. This method requires more time hogging out the wood and more mahogany to perform the repair.

From all of this I get the feeling that people are more precious about the level of invasive work when restoring a Fender instrument. Gibson basses are more likely to see big, invasive repair work for fairly trivial jobs. The guys putting pre-CBS P basses back to 1962 specs try and preserve as much of the original bass as possible. This guy restoring a '67 EB-0 basically blew 1/4 of the original wood into the wind to save a bit of time and effort. I sense the playing field isn't level here.

[Dave W]

Part 5 is just out.

[BTL]

Nice!

[Basvarken]

Nice work. But completely over the top if you ask me.
With less effort you could make an entire new body that was as good as the original. Without all the hassle that he's putting the poor thing through.

But hey, he loves what he's doing. That's what matters most I guess.

[steveonbass]

I agree Rob. 

I do enjoy when he says things like "...so you don't dick it up".

[FrankieTbird]

This guy seems to like to make a lot of extra work for himself.