NBD - Rivoli with restomod.

[Alanko]

I tracked down a 1997 Epi Rivoli locally and took ownership of it last night. It is in generally good condition with the exception of the electronics.



The baritone switch doesn't appear to work and the pots and output jack are worn out. The pickup is one of those 1.4 k ohm imposters!

The bass has been to a luthier for some fret work, but not recently. The nut has been cut as deep as you can get away with and then shaved down and oddly rounded over.




The frets have been visited by the roundwound faeries and are pretty tarnished.



The bridge is pretty dirty.



The inductor is still present.





I plan to cut an EB-2 style pickguard as I don't like the profile of the Epi guard. At some point I might try and cut an Epi-profile guard from thick tortoiseshell material.


The wiring is a head scratcher. The switch makes or breaks a connection from the hot lug of the volume pot to the primary of a small transformer and then through a cap (22 nF) to ground. This is essentially like having one switchable setting of a Gibson varitone switch? More of a passive notch filter than a bass cut?

I might preserve the stock wiring harness and require the switch to put a 4.7 nF cap in series with the pickup as a bass cut; more of a baritone sound than a notched mudbucker tone.



You become naked.

[morrow]

The classic Invasion bass!
Looks to be in surprisingly good condition , those things seriously thump!

[godofthunder]

  Those 90's Epis are really well built. I look forward to seeing the end result.  Allparts makes a really good 30k replacement mudbucker if you are inclined.

[Alanko]

The carcass is very solid! Beyond fretwork I think I can just buff out the finish a little and it is good to go.

Good to know there are other mudbuckers out there. I have an Artec one primed, but the pole spacing on it does look a little wide.

[morrow]

I had a Dimarzio Model 1 on the one I had , despite it having a pretty limited sound I regret selling it.

[Basvarken]

Great score. Looks beautiful!

[Alanko]

I've spent a bit of time sorting out the fretboard.

Before:



After:




I had to seriously level the frets. Beyond the usual playing wear some were lower than others, though not in any obvious pattern or distribution. The fourth fret was very low, for example. The frets themselves are very hard, so re-crowning and polishing was a bit of a mission.

Today I made a new pickguard! I found a shop selling repro EB-2 pickguards online. They helpfully included two rulers in their image, so I loaded this into MS Illustrator and resized until two inches on the rulers matched two two-inch long lines I generated in the software. Print at 100% and you have a template!

I transcribed this onto a sheet of MDF and cut with a jigsaw. I then toughened up the cut edges with CA.



I cut the pickguard itself from 5-ply material, routing the pickup cutout (mud hole?) separately.



Yes that is a Hipshot Supertone that snuck onto the bass.

I also dredged a set of nickel-finish tuners and bushings out my parts bin. These are lighter than the stock tuners and have shorter shafts, so it cuts down on the wing-nut appearance of the headstock.

[Pilgrim]

Man, that is looking nice!!!

[BTL]

Looking fantastic!

[Alanko]

Thanks both!

I have it roughly complete!




The pickguard is a second draft with a new outline. I added a slight concave arc to the shoulder, closer to an ES-335 outline. Gibson added meat to the pickguard up here, much as they did with the EB-0 pickguard. At a guess the mudbucker route made them too fragile up there? Who knows!

The bass sounds very rumbly. The bridge isn't grounded for some reason and I haven't added the switch back into the circuit. My thinking is to make it switch in a 1 nF cap between the pickup coils. This should block the low frequencies of one coil but maintain the high frequencies of both, so cancelling higher frequency noise in both positions while reducing the bass response slightly. It might work...

[Rob]

That cap trick is clever!

[Alanko]

If it works! I killed the Artec pickup somehow, so back to the drawing board!


What annoys me slightly is the huge pickup route in this bass. The route is bigger than the pickup cover, and very deep. You have to coke bolt the pickup right down. The pickup wire route exists the pickup cavity right by one of the mounting screws.

The '60s basses didn't have this daft big route??

[Dave W]

Nice work!

Aside from being one of the imposters, was there anything wrong with the stock pickup?

[Alanko]

Nice work!

Aside from being one of the imposters, was there anything wrong with the stock pickup?

It had a low output and just felt a bit brittle and underpowered in the way it translated playing into tone from the amp. I was thinking about recycling the flatwork but installing new coils, or something else like that.

[morrow]

Many immediately ditched the stock pickup in the Rivoli reissue.
A lot of them got Dimarzios.