Starting Tele Bass Project

[drbassman]

Leaving it in tact is a good idea.  It is a genuine Fender neck, vintage even!  Yeah, I'm gonna leave mine alone as well.  If I make another like it, then I can do whatever I want with it.

[Pilgrim]

The Musicmaster neck is in, and it shows the wear one would expect...but not abuse.  Looks like the tuner holes in the headstock may be a little different diameter than most tuners today, but I haven't had time for careful measurement yet. 

I did determine that the base of the neck is just slightly wider than the rout in the bass body which has been cut, but that's not a show stopper.

I'm absolutely stacked up with stuff until May, but hopefully can get started on it then.  I still have to figure out which body to use, so I'll check in again when I decide which direction to go with that. 

[drbassman]

It's good the neck is a little bigger.  It's a lot easier to rout out the cavity, than make it smaller!

If you'd like a neck routing template, let me know and I'll make one from my Musicmaster neck for you.

The older MM necks used the smaller tuners with little posts, hard to find these days, but they do pop up occasionally on eBay.  You might want to enlarge the holes and use something larger/newer.  BTW, the Hipshot RIC style tuners might fit in there pretty good.  Check out their specs on the Hipshot web site.