Hondo H 1015 resto-modding.

[Alanko]

I saw this "Vintage Professional Bass" listed on Ebay and had to take a punt.



I recognised it as being the same bass as one I owned about a decade ago, namely a Hondo H 1015.



The seller didn't know what it was. Somebody somewhere has had a lot of fun with it, leaving it in fairly horrible aesthetic condition. Luckily though, the frets and wood itself are okay. Even the bridge is in good condition visually, though I will take the bass apart and appraise it fully once the EB-1 is finished.

This is a turn up:



My old bass was black, and I assumed this was black as well.  I've done some test sanding of the body. I can tell that it was sprayed red with the black 'ombre' sprayed over the top. Under the red is a black layer, which I assumed was the factory lacquer. The sunburst headstock suggests this was originally a sunburst bass, albeit a very mild burst overall. Maybe the black layer I uncovered is a primer of some sort, or maybe the body and neck are from different basses? Time will tell.


My plan is to strip this back to the bare wood, with the exception of the headstock face. I plan to learn to route on this bass, so it will be getting a Dimarzio Model One pickup up near the neck. The 3-pointer bridge will either say or be replaced with the big brass bridge I posted about in the other thread. I will keep the original pickup as it is either a Dimarzio Model P or some sort of licenced/OEM facsimile, and it works! It just needs new covers.

Wish me luck!

[Granny Gremlin]

Looks like this belonged to Paul Simonon's understudy.  Also Loved the snow pic (as did the kids looking over my shoulder).  Cool body shape.  Good luck

[Pilgrim]

I wonder if the "professional" in the listing always played with two strings?

[Dave W]

I hope you'll be keeping those fret numbers. 

[Pilgrim]

I hope you'll be keeping those fret numbers. 

True, all the "professionals" probably use them.

I wouldn't know, being a mere amachooor myownself.

[Alanko]

The fret numbers have been tricky to remove! Cellulose thinners just takes the black ink off them, leaving white squares. I've had to shave them off individually with a Stanley blade.

They must have been on a while as there are tanlines:



I'm stripping the neck a lot more carefully and slowly than I did the Epi EB-1, which I mostly did with a Mouse sander. I'm using Stanley blades and various grits of sandpaper to get back to white wood.



I'm not sure why the tuner mounting screws have bled out into the wood like this. My plan is to use Grover Titans on this bass.




The original pickup halves exploded on me when I tried to remove them from the bass. They weren't Dimarzio Model Ps, but some sort of offshoot/licensed copy.  I removed the pole pieces to clean them and the whole pickup fell apart into the top and bottom flatwork and the coil. There was no spacer or bobbin, just the wire wound straight around the threaded poles. No signs of wax potting, etc.

I've replaced them with these 'PAF' Dimarzio Model Ps.





Old and dirty, so I'm going to try and either clean up or replace the poles.

I also have this cued up for the neck position:



This is the first Model One I've seen in the flesh, and the quality is a bit weird. it looks like the cover was crudely sprayed with matt enamel paint. The guts of the pickup are hidden in a rough epoxy box. This is a new pickup, so I'm assuming this is just how Dimarzio have always made them?

[Dave W]

Yes, that looks like a typical Model One.

[Highlander]

What he said...
Had one in the PC back in the early 80's and have one to fit to one of my beasties courtesy of Scott's pile of spares... 

[Pilgrim]

Looks a lot like the one in my EB-0.

[Highlander]

It is, from what I remember of an earlier discussion... pretty much nothing else like it...

I wouldn't be surprised if the Model G is the same set-up in a different case... I know Scott has had both pups in different instruments, but without doing a "swap" test no way of truly knowing... I know it was designed to be a cleaner pup to replace a Mud, with split coils wiring...

[Alanko]

Dimarzio helpfully give you the start and end wire for each coil and a separate chassis ground, so you could do all sorts of stuff. The DC resistance on this thing is  11.33 k ohms with the coils wired in series.

David Schwab has stated somewhere that a Dimarzio Model G is an X2N guitar pickup with the rails swapped out for eight poles. The one picture I've seen of an exploded Model One shows that it has similar bobbins to an X2N but with a brass plate between the top of the coils and the cover of the pickup. I can just see the edges of the brass plate on mine.

By eyeballing it, I guess Dimarzio use something like a silicon jelly mould to make these pickups? It looks like they're created in a single pour, with a bit of heat generated that results in the bubbles and lumps. I was expecting the coils, magnets etc to be in some sort of wee box rather than a cube of rough black epoxy, but it appears to work.

[Dave W]

Here's a top exposed view of the Model One.

[Alanko]

Ahha! There's that brass plate I can see in mine. Interesting that they use yellow and blue bobbins if they won't be seen at all.

I've been doing some work on the body.



Using some low-odour, family friendly paint stripper. This stuff gets put on for an hour then scraped off. This leaves you with big blobs of paint-saturated paste that is a bit of a mess to clean up. Luckily the aerosol paint cleaned straight off:



Revealing the original sunburst. As you can see however, it was keyed up to accept the paint, and in some places it looks like it got a few loose passes with 80 grit paper as there are many scratches and striations. Time to break out the heat gun.



Like my EB-1 project, this is always a 'what am I doing' moment. However the poly finish came off really easily, with no signs of a sealer coat. I have some charring to bleach out of the wood, and some of the glue joins opened a wee bit, but this can all be dealt with.

Oddly enough it is a five-piece body. The front is composed of two parts with a roughly central seam. The back is composed of three parts in an off-kilter and subtly v-shaped formation. The body is a bit like a Norlin-era 'pancake' body without the central fillet of wood.



In other news, the headstock has cleaned up pretty well so I might keep the original finish on there.

[OldManC]

I think that would be a good call on the headstock. It looks great!

[Stjofön Big]

Interesting! It will be nice to watch your work develop! Pics of it all, thank you!