I had a look on an old portable hard drive today for the first time in several years. I found some photos of my early bass modification projects. Some results were quite good, some were quite terrible. Learn from my mistakes!
So far so safe. A nice Westone Thunder I body mated to a Samick shortscale neck from a 'Greg Bennett' bass. This is where I learned that if you chop four inches off the scale length of a bass you have to move the bridge inland.
The body of the Samick bass was paired to a Squier Bronco neck. This bass was wired in stereo, with the option to mute the D-G coil of the P pickup. I was interested in stereo bass rigs, pushing the extremes of treble and bass response from one instrument. I think this had dual concentric pots, so one volume and tone per stereo channel. A rough bass but a fun idea to play around with.
An Aria Jazz Bass copy bought for the sole purpose of installing two Artec mudbuckers.
My poor Jazz Bass. This was my first "proper" bass, bought when I landed my first serious job after college. My love/hate relationship with Jazz Basses started as soon as the bass was home. I wanted more meat, more girth... after much modding and pickup swaps it ended up like this. The neck was a left handed Fender Mexico neck I bought from Italy. It had had a ski jump shaved down at some point as the fretboard got thinner above the 15th fret. The pickguard was a custom job I paid a guy in England to make and the pickups were bought as used Dimarzios, but almost certainly weren't. I've seen the body for sale twice since I sold it on. I should have kept the bass for sentimental reasons I guess, but I just don't enjoy Jazz Basses enough.
An OLP Stingray copy with two Epiphone Thunderbird pickups in Rickenbacker 4003 pickup locations. This bass sounded outrageous.
A Cort GB Bass with an Epiphone Thunderbird pickup installed in the neck position. I ditched the stock preamp and had an Alembic Stratoblaster clone in there. This was my one attempt at giving active basses a shot. The damn thing ran down its battery overnight, so I ditched the Stratoblaster circuit and had some exotic mix of bass cut and coil split controls going on.
To make sure I didn't go back to active electronics I filled stuck a toy car in the battery box route and brimmed the compartment with blue epoxy resin. The dye in the epoxy turned green due to the heat of the stuff curing:
Finally, a Tuscany 'Bird' bass. This was the worst bass I've ever owned, due to the cheap construction and finish. I tried to make it closer to Rickenbacker specs/aesthetics with a toaster pickup. I also opted for a simplified wiring harness.
This bass ended up getting attacked with a saw until it could fit in a bin. Around this time my wife asked me "why do you keep buying basses that look like Rickenbackers or modifying basses to sound like Rickenbackers? Why not just buy a Rickenbacker?"
If you tally up how much I spent on shit basses she maybe had a point!
