My Bachbird Project.... FINALLY!!!

[Johnbob]

You didn't sand through to the truss rod, so if it isn't that much thinner than John's, probably no need to worry about anything happening later on.

Yeah, I didn't come anywhere near the truss rod. Once I compared it to the other Bachbird I knew it was going to to be fine. I'm glad I found another Bachbird owner locally for me to compare it to and put my mind at ease about it.

I did the exact same thing on one of the first basses I stripped.  I used a similar fix and it worked out fine.  Good recovery.

Yeah, I'm definitely happy with the save. It may have been a bit unnecessary but I'm still glad I did it because I know it would drive my nuts every time I played it and I felt that little ripple. It's funny because if it came from the factory like that it probably wouldn't have bothered me that much but the fact that I screwed it up bothered me more for some reason.

[Johnbob]

Here's a picture of the body after the grain filler and sand and sealer were applied. From what I understand, 60's Gibsons, unlike Fenders, didn't have a white primer coat so I skipped that part. I used this stuff called Timbermate for the grain filler and Reranch sand and sealer. Obviously the control cavity has been rerouted too.


Here's a picture of the neck too

[dadagoboi]

Great looking project!

Unlike the 'mahogany' BaCH uses, 60's Gibsons didn't NEED grain filler.  Genuine (Honduras) mahogany has a much tighter grain pattern.  All it takes is a good quality sanding sealer.  You can check my current S.D. Curlee refin thread to see an example of Honduras done this way.

Fender basses that ended up black were usually botched sunbursts that they reshot without stripping the original finish.  They used something called Fullerplast developed in house to seal/grain fill bodies from the early 60s.

[Johnbob]

Unlike the 'mahogany' BaCH uses, 60's Gibsons didn't NEED grain filler.

I had to grain fill the entire bass; the body, neck and the front and back of the headstock. Yeah, skipping grain filling on this would have been great. I did 3 coats because I kept finding little pinholes where the grain filler didn't catch. It was a lot of grain filling but I knew it would pay off.

[dadagoboi]

I had to grain fill the entire bass; the body, neck and the front and back of the headstock. Yeah, skipping grain filling on this would have been great. I did 3 coats because I kept finding little pinholes where the grain filler didn't catch. It was a lot of grain filling but I knew it would pay off.

I still remember refinishing my '60 EBO in '72.  No filler or sealer, just many coats of clear nitro with a Preval spray bottle over a few weeks and lots of sanding in between.    There's always a steep learning curve with the first one!

[Johnbob]

Some pics after the color coats were sprayed. I used sand and sealer, multiple coats of black and then multiple coats of clear. I used all Reranch stuff and it's all nitro.



Sorry, this last picture is pretty bad. Not that the other ones are so good but this last one is especially bad.

[Johnbob]

I eventually took it to John Karras

Whoops, I mean John Kallas not Karres. Sorry about that John.

[Johnbob]

So where did I leave off?

I laid down the color coats and then a bunch of clear coats. I then wet sanded it up to 2000 and then moved on to micro mesh. This was only my third refinish (like a said before though, my first one shouldn't even count since it was so bad) but I can never seem to get all the surface scratches out for some reason. I actually don't have pictures of any of these steps unfortunately but you're not missing much.

Ok, so in addition to doing the body/neck work and the finishing I was also accumulating the parts I needed to complete the bass. I picked up a set of used Fender vintage reissue reverse nickel tuners, a truss rod cover with the Gibson logo on it, a black/white/black pickguard blank, some Mike Lull pickup covers and pickup ring and a pair of Seymour Duncun SSB4 pickups. I wanted to buy a full set of Mike Lull's but I just couldn't justify the price and this stuff was also purchased before the Thunderbuckers were completed and available otherwise I would have probably bought those. I was getting closer to getting this thing together and then I reached out to John Kallas AKA JohnK.

I stumbled upon John's website, he had a Bachbird project on his site and he had tried both the Duncuns and the Lull's out so I reached out to him for his opinion. I asked him if he could put the Duncuns in the Lull covers for me and he said sure so I drove out to his place to drop them off. It was great too because he had his Bachbird there with the same mod. He had just taken the Lull's out of his bird and put the Duncuns back in so it gave me a chance to hear the Bachbird with the same pickups that I was going to use. I was very pleased with the sound. I really like the Seymour Duncuns a lot, much more than I thought I would. I have been hearing rave reviews about the Lull's and the Thunderbuckers so I can't even imagine how amazing they must sound since I'm already very impressed with the Duncuns. Especially for the price. I got the the Duncuns through a friend who had a hook up with Duncun for $79, so the price was definitely right for me. I am really so happy I hooked up with John because he ended up bringing way more to the table than I could have hoped for. He was initially just going to mod my pickups but after playing some his other basses, I asked him if he could help me finish the rest of my bass. I can't begin to stress how amazing his work is. I played a number of basses at his house, one that he built from scratch, one that he had modded, an amazing 66 Jazz bass clone he built and of course his Bachbird. I must say that every single bass played like the best bass I had ever played. I knew that as much work that I had put into my bass it would never come close to anything that he had done. His attention to detail was amazing, frets, set up, finish work, everything was just perfect. I knew I wanted him to finish my bass but my funds were limited. I asked him if would be interested in wiring up my bass and he told me to bring it by and he would check it out. He knew I was on a budget and said he would help me out but he really went so above and beyond I don't even know what to say. We started going through the bass and coming up with a laundry list of things that needed to be done and parts I still needed. I didn't think I could afford to get everything done so I had to pick and choose the things that were the most important to me but in the end he ended up doing everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) for the amount that I had. You can tell that he just didn't want that bass leaving his house until it was as amazing as possible. Ha ha. He loves what he does too much to half ass something. Anyway, here's the pics. I'll go into detail about all of the things that John did to it after.





I also beat the bass up a little already because I felt it looked too new. I didn't get too carried away but I needed to age it a little.





Okay, where do we start?
Here's a long list of the things that John Kallas did to this bass:

LABOR:
1- He buffed out the entire bass which made a HUGE difference. When I brought it to him it had tons of little surface scratches and swirl marks and he threw it on the wheel, buffed it out and turned it into a factory looking finish. Awesome!
2- Cut divots in the headstock for the tuning keys and mounted them.
3- Installed the Duncan pickups into the chrome Lull covers.
4- Cut out wooden blocks to fill in the pickup cavities because they were too deep.
5- Fabricated treble pickup spacer (the black plastic spacer that goes underneath the chrome ring around the treble pickup).
6- Cut the pickguard and mounted it.
7- Fabricated a new back control plate cover.
8- Cut out the nut and installed it.
9- Cleaned and re-oil sealed the fingerboard which was covered in tape residue from me leaving the painters tape on there way too long.
10- Leveled, re-crowned and polished the frets.
11- Mounted the strap buttons.
12- Mounted the trussrod cover plate.
13- Strung it up with round stainless strings.
14- Adjusted the neck.
15- Adjusted the action.
16- Mounted the pots and jack.
17- Wired up the control harness.
18- Strobe intonation.

He also provided me with a bunch of parts that I still hadn't bought or ordered yet. Which really did save me some money because I didn't have to pay shipping for all these little parts which can really add up. You guys know how that goes, $7 shipping on a $3 part and some places don't have everything you need so you have spend even more to ship from multiple places. Luckily he had everything I was missing which worked out great for me. I also gave him a bunch of really crappy, cheap screws for everything and he replaced all of them with the accurate, better quality screws. We're talking everything, pickguard, pickup, bridge screws, etc.

PARTS:
4- Pickup mounting screws
10- Pickguard screws (Gibson)
6- Bezel screws
3- CTS pots @ $5 ea
1- Switchraft jack
2- Pickup foam sponges
1- Set Daddarrio stainless EPS165
3- Knobs
3- Tail piece screws
1- Bridge pickup spacer plate

And if that wasn't enough. When I came to pick it up I brought my Fender 62 Reissue Jazz Bass with me because I wanted his opinion on the neck because it was tweaked beyond repair. At least that's what I was told by a bunch of different luthiers and it was actually looked at by a few techs over at Fender and they all said that the neck was warped beyond repair. I wanted to see what John thought of it and I wanted to see if he could recommend a good replacement neck. Well, while we were talking he took the bass apart the bass, replaced the truss rod nut, which was broken and he did all kinds of tweaking to the neck. He also fixed the string nut which was also funky, fixed one of the pots and then set the bass up. He even took off the pickguard and buffed it all out. Not sure if any of you have experienced this but for some reason I have gotten a few Fender pickguards over the years that have had the protective plastic on them for too long and when I removed it it left a weird imprinted pattern into the guard which is kind of etched in to it. Has this happened to anyone else? Anyway, he buffed all of that out. Oh, he also didn't charge me for the work on the Fender Jazz bass. It plays amazingly. I couldn't believe it, I basically brought him these 2 piece of crap basses (I mean crap because I had turned them into crap, not because the were initially made crappy) and he transformed both of them into 2 amazing sounding and playing basses. I couldn't be more happy with either of these basses. Thanks again John for everything and working with my budget and helping me turn both of those basses into the great basses that they are, especially the Thunderbird which sat around unplayable for over a year.


PS. Sorry for this ridiculously long post. Seriously, I know it's a bit much to get through. Ha ha.

[dadagoboi]

Great looking bass, kudos to JohnK.

Re the SD's vs ThunderBuckers.  Every LBOer who purchased an SD equipped JAEbird replaced them with ThunderBuckers.  I think they'd agree with me they're very different sounding.  Listening to the posted sound clips on Lull's site his pickups sound much more like SDs than they do vintage Thunderbird pickups.

One more thing about JohnK that has had me wondering since he trashed a JAEbird Standard in a review...Please ask him WHY, after he slagged me so badly on Talk Bass they banned him, he decided to keep the bass after I offered to pay him every cent he spent plus return shipping.  He's done similar to other builders.  Nice to know he's making amends.

http://johnkvintageguitars.homestead.com/JAEBird.html

[chromium]

Love it! That came out absolutely beautiful!!!!

Great work guys 

[drbassman]

Nice outcome!

[Highlander]

+1

[godofthunder]

 Thats a NR to be proud of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Johnbob]

Thanks guys, I'm really stoked on this bass. I have been playing it non-stop. I might get the Thunderbuckers at some point. I figure I could sell the SD's and probably get some ok money for them especially since they have been modded with the Lull covers which were another $40 plus the cost of modding them. But I don't think I will do it for awhile, it took me so long to get this bass up and running, I don't want to take it apart and put it back into "project" mode again even though it wouldn't be out of commission for that long. I just want to spend some time playing it.

One more thing about JohnK that has had me wondering since he trashed a JAEbird Standard in a review...Please ask him WHY, after he slagged me so badly on Talk Bass they banned him, he decided to keep the bass after I offered to pay him every cent he spent plus return shipping.  He's done similar to other builders.  Nice to know he's making amends.

As far as all this is concerned.... just from meeting up with him a few times, I will say that it seems pretty obvious that John is a stickler for every little detail and I'm sure a tough guy to please, especially since his work seems to be pretty impeccable from what I saw, but I really don't want to even speculate what his or your thoughts are on the whole debacle or why he kept the bass if he wasn't happy with it. Also, I really wouldn't want to drag this thing out again because it could easily spiral out of control again and I definitely wouldn't want to be the one that stoked the fire again. Let's all just try to get along. Ha ha.

[Nocturnal]

That project turned out fantastic!! I just ordered the parts to take my BachBird from stock to my own vision for it. Nothing as extreme as this project was tho. Good job JohnBob!!