My Bachbird Project.... FINALLY!!!

[Johnbob]

Ok, so I'm not sure if anyone remembers my Bachbird story but here's a little recap:

A little over a year ago I ordered a BTH-1 bass through Rob. It took awhile to get it and when I did finally receive it the headstock was cracked. Bummer. I was already having some buyers remorse right after I ordered it because I really couldn't afford it at the time so when it arrived broken it was a disappointment to say the least. Nothing's worse than purchasing something when you can't afford it and then that purchase not working out. You can't help but feel like your being punished for spending the money in the first place. Ha ha. Anyway, of course I contacted Rob and he too was bummed for obvious reasons. As much as it was a hassle for me, it was also a big hassle and headache for him. He had to contact Roman at Bach and had to deal with the shippers and file a claim with insurance, etc. It also made the situation difficult because the international shipping was so expensive that shipping it back would have been a waste since the cost of shipping would be lost. It took awhile but the shipping company finally reimbursed Rob and he was able to send me a new bass. Also, we agreed that I would sell the damaged bass on Ebay and we would split the profits after all the Paypal and Ebay fees. I have to give Rob credit for handling everything very professionally and making sure that I got my new bass and with no further costs to me. I know it was a big pain in the ass for him and I really do appreciate it so, thanks again Rob!!!

Ok, so on to the project. Of course I wanted to mod the bass and seeing some of the Bach mods on here got me inspired. Initially my game plan was to go for the same thing as Chromium's Ocean Turquoise Bachbird and then I stumbled on this all black NR Thunderbird on the internet. I always liked the look of the black on black Gibson Grabbers so when I saw the black on black Thunderbird I had to go for it. Plus I was a little intimidated to go for a metallic color so I figured....black it is.

I will say that this entire project has been kind of a nightmare since day one. Plenty of missteps and mistakes were made, many moments of feeling that I was in over my head and many loooong months with no progress being made because I had no money. It got to a point where I kind of regretted the fact that I didn't just keep it stock and play it. It was too late for that though since I had already stripped it so I had to keep chipping away at it and I am glad I did because after a little over a year, the bass is FINALLY done and I absolutely love it. I will be updating this thread and will show you guys the whole process. I hope you guys enjoy checking it out more than I enjoyed doing it. That shouldn't be too hard since I didn't exactly have fun doing it. Ha ha. Of course when progress was being made I had fun but the bumps in the road almost made me throw it in the garbage. Ha ha.

Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention one important part of this whole thing. I am a total ROOKIE!!! Some of you guys are cranking out some amazing stuff but I have only refinished two basses before and the first one sucked so bad I can't even count it. I have done a few relic jobs though and I love to check out the message boards and ask a lot of questions. But, although I have been a member of this board and a member of the Reranch board for years I have never done any major guitar building or luthier work. I certainly don't have any real woodworking tools to work with so I definitely bit off more than I could chew. Anyway, stay tuned for my first update hopefully tomorrow.

[Denis]

Some projects are like that!

I had been thinking about getting a black/white/black pg for my black BaCH (for the same reason as you like the all black Grabbers: I like the all black Rippers and RDs).

Looking forward to your pics!

[godofthunder]

Pics!!!!!!!!!!

[OldManC]

I'm looking forward to seeing how it progressed!

[dadagoboi]

Yeah!

[Johnbob]

OK, so here's how it arrived.



I must say that right out of the Box the Bachbird is very nice. The finish looked great and it was tempting to keep it stock but there were a few reasons why I couldn't leave well enough alone. First off, one of my favorite things about the original NR birds is the thickness of the body. I love that the body is so thin and then you throw in the belly contour and it gets even thinner. I know that the second run of Bachbirds (the blue ones, etc.) were closer in the thickness and had the belly contour but these third run, cherry Bachbirds had super thick bodies and did not have the belly cuts. If they did I probably would have kept it the original finish. I still would have updated the rest of it, like the electronics, pick ups, tuners, etc. but I probably would have left it cherry. I played it for a few days but I just simply could not get into the thick body and no contour so I decided to move forward with the refinish and mods.

[Johnbob]

First order of business, strip it!!! I used a heat gun and the finish melted off the body very quickly which was a pleasant surprise. I didn't think it was a good idea to use the heat gun on the neck so I sanded that and I got a little bit carried away (more on that later). Anyway, no turning back now.


Now the next thing on my list (and one of the most important in my opinion) was to thin out the body. But how? I posted some questions on Reranch and I started asking some friends with woodworking experience and I was told that it could be a potential disaster and that I shouldn't mess with it. Obviously sanding it by hand would be a total nightmare because it would be impossible to keep it even and sand it perfectly flat. Not to mention how much work it would be. I wanted to thin it down considerably too so I was at least smart enough to not go that route. It was definitely a tricky one because it's a set neck bass. If I could remove the neck then I might have been able to just plain the body but obviously sending the whole bass through the plainer, especially with that giant headstock angled the way it is would big a HUGE mistake. My friend has a wood shop and he was the one that helped me with some of the work. I kept bugging him with different ways to approach it but he didn't think any of the ideas would work. Basically every idea fell into the "ah, maybe it could work but maybe it will screw it up really bad too" category. There didn't seem to be a safe bet. I'm sure some of you guys would have been able to pull it off but again, I'm a rookie. So after many discussions with my friend we finally came up with a solution. It was a sketchy one though. Sorry, I don't have pictures of this part (I know, lame, right? especially since this was the most interesting and difficult part). So my friend also goes to another wood shop for certain things and he said that they had a huge drum sander. It basically looks like a huge plainer but instead of blades it has huge drums covered in sand paper. I'm sure some of you guys have seen them. OK, so what's the game plan I ask? Basically we would have to run it through the sander, almost like we were going to plain it but instead it's getting sanded instead. Why is this better then just running it through the plainer? Well, if we were to run it through the plainer we would have to send it all the way through and it of course would also plain most of the headstock off. We thought maybe we could send it through and then stop the machine once the body goes through but my friend thought that would be a potential disaster. With the drum sander we could run it through and then pull it back out since it's only sanding and not cutting. And we could sand it a little at a time and go slow and steady with it. Basically more control. We needed to find a way to hold onto the bass though so we could push it in and then pull it out so the bass wouldn't go all the way through. Hum, what should we use? I know, the bass neck! So we ended up using the neck as a handle to send the bass into this huge drum sander and to pull it back out repeatedly until we got the bass to the thickness that we wanted. Pretty sketchy to say the least but it worked like a charm. Oh and also, another problem was that we couldn't lay the bass flat on it's front because the fret board would get in the way so we had to screw on a few 1/4 boards on the the front of it to make it level when we laid it flat so the fretboard wouldn't get damaged. Man I wish I had pictures of this whole process. By the way, I went to the vintage Guitar Center in Hollywood to take measurements of their vintage sunburst NR bird. I measured the thickness of the body, measured the thickness and placement of the belly contour and where exactly to put the route for the second pickup. I wanted to make sure I got everything correct and since they had a real vintage one there I figured I should take advantage of the situation. Oh, they want $10,999 for that bass by the way. Yikes!!! It is beautiful though and it does play like a dream but I guess it should for that much money.

Here's how it looked after the sanding. Perfect. Now I need to route all the edges again and the control cavity.

[chromium]

Cool project!  Been curious to see if anyone would try plaining one of the thick BBs down.

I think I saved a photo of the black-on-black NR you're talking about - was it this one?

[Johnbob]

Yup, that's the bass. I saw it and I knew that that was what I needed to go for. I'm actually torn about getting the bird etched into the pickguard on mine. Usually I like the bird logo on Thunderbirds but I kind of like the way that this one doesn't have the bird logo. We'll see.

[Johnbob]

Here's a picture after routing the edges. Obviously it's before the control cavity was re-routed

And here's a picture to give you guys an idea of how much the body was thinned out. You can see the hole from where the strap button was. Obviously before I thinned it down that hole was centered evenly and now it's way off.

[Highlander]

Yes indeed, my kind of lunacy...!

There's no problem with a project taking as long as it takes, JB; slow and steady wins the race...

There are two sides to this sort of thing...
Carlo (Dadagoboi) is working at making Fenderbirds, and as this is a financial+work-of-love thing the builds go rapidly - for him it as much a working out how to create something from nothing as it is to build them; by that I mean the classic Peter Cook thing - the one man in his shed (or when I used to visit PC, one man in his garage!)
Scott and Bill (godofthunder and drbassman) are more proficient than me (by considerably more than a country mile ) but have had projects bubbling along on the back-burner for some time now...

The advantage of a site like this is no different than writing books (I have five on the go, two of which exceed 300 A4/letter pages, one of which has involved over a decade of on/off research with 3 published chapters) - the completion of the work still gives you the story... War And Peace is still War And Peace whether it is in "episodes" or not...

Bring it on...

[drbassman]

Man, that's a lot of work to get it ready for finishing.  Of course, I've only done this 6 or 7 times, so I feel your pain and know how driven you feel.  There's no challenge like stripping an unknown finish from a bass.  You never know what your going to have to do or find underneath.  Patience is a real virtue in times like these!

[Denis]

There's no challenge like stripping an unknown finish from a bass.  You never know what your going to have to do or find underneath.  Patience is a real virtue in times like these!

Tell me about it. The finish on the Smurf Ripper rolled off like a pencil eraser when I tried to sand it, but I wanted to save the original finish underneath so it's taken me ages, constantly sidetracked by other projects (motorcycles mostly).

I like how dark the wood is on Johnbob's  bass during the stripping process.

[Freuds_Cat]

I've had a similar story going on here, My Tobaccoburst BB arrived with a hairline crack around the neck join and without a belly cut. The body is already quite thin though. My thing was that I wanted an NR in that colour but almost like something Gibson would produce now if they ever decided to do a re-issue. Mine came with a volute which I figure due to all the headstock breakages with the originals would be something that would make sense for Gibson to do on a modern reissue. So using this kind of logic I've had the belly cut done and the headstock painted black as was the norm on the original Tobacco burst models. I've put in a switchcraft jack, a Sprague orange drop and I A/B'd 4 sets of pots. CTS, new Gibson ones, Gotoh's and some Vintage reissue Gibson ones. I went for the new Gibson ones for 2 reasons. Firstly I was very surprised how little difference there was between them all and secondly I figure if the bass was a reissue these would be the pots that Gibson would use today. For those interested IMHO the Gotoh's actually won by the thinnest whisker. The Vintage reissue Gibson ones were still fine but probably came in last if I had to pick. After the headstock repaint I put on a set of Gotoh vintage reverse resolites which have impressed me greatly. I put a Gotoh 201 bridge on my Dean edge recently and I cant say enough about how good I've found the Gotoh products to be.
When the headstock was done I had a new (white) nut made up to replace the black one. The neck on mine was a little thicker than I expected and Rob tells me it was thicker than a lot of the other BB's but to be honest its such a nice feeling and comfortable neck for me to play that I'm not fussed about it at all.

The hairline crack was only superficial as it turned out and was touched up during the painting of the headstock and belly cut.
As many others have already proclaimed the Artec pups really sound quite good but in keeping with my theme I ordered a pair of 66 Thunderbuckers from Steve. I'm at the stage now of making the mods to the body to fit these pups.
I need to get a little routing  done on the pup cavities to suit the Thunderbuckers. I want to keep the front pup ring free so I'm probably going to have to get a new PG.

Getting closer and closer to being an awesome bass. The tone and feel even with the Artecs is just great.

[johnk]

that bach looks familiar.