Roy’s Jazz Bass Project page
The whole idea of this project came from the fact that I was missing playing the bass after a year or so out of the circle. I had a fairly nice body just hanging around in a cupboard from a couple of years ago when it used to be built up with a Mexican Fender Precision neck as shown below. It was a nice bass that sported a Badass II bridge and a pair of Bartolini's but I had to take it all apart to fund the ever waning student bank account but I kept the body to one side, just in case. The bass used to look like this:
So finally the day came when I decided to build it back up, perhaps not to its former glory due to lack of funds but at least to it being a respectable bass that I can have fun playing. I'd like the sound to be quite bright like the Fender Marcus Miller but also with a nice low end too, not quite sure how I'll get that since I intend to go all passive but I'll jump that hurdle when I get to it.
The Body:
I had this body lying around from a previous project; it’s a WD Music Products Alder body in Tobacco Sunburst and had quite a nice grain visible. The body has one major flaw, when I was screwing a bridge to it a couple of years ago I was using aluminium screws and the head of the middle screw sheared off and leaves a manky bit of metal sticking about 2mm above the surface, I’ll get it drilled out one day. When it was made up before the scratchplate was misaligned so I filled the holes with normal B&Q wood filler and let it dry for about 3 weeks while I got the parts together which is more than it needed but there you go. I also had the scratchplate hanging around which is good since I’m trying to keep the budget as low as possible with this one.
24/01/06:
Today I got the bridge in the post from guitarpartsresource.com, looks nice to me although there isn’t really any mass to it at all but to be honest I can’t see myself missing that. It seems fairly well made and went on without a hitch. This is all I can do for now, maybe one day I won’t be so poor. I'm waiting on a Mighty Mite Jazz Bass neck with a maple fretboard and a black control plate too, but they're both coming from the US so it might be a week or so before they get here.
26/01/06:
Today I've been toying with the idea of refinishing the body, not sure quite what colour I'd like to do yet but I've had a scan through a few websites looking at Fender's custom colours from the 1950's and 60's. I kind of like the look of Sherwood Green, Lake Placid Blue and Fiesta Red but I could also go for an all black bass. I've never refinished a guitar before so it might not turn out perfect but there's plenty of resources such as www.reranch.com available with really thorough guides on the process. Plus I think that if I refinished it in a solid colour I could go for the no scratchplate look like it was before, might look a bit strange on a solid colour but it could also make it stand out from the crowd.
27/01/06:
I've found a few pics of basses that I like the look of:
I like the look of the fiesta red and the black best, not quite sure how they'd look with black hardware. I think maybe the Fiesta Red one would look better than an all black bass. I'll have another nosey round to see if I can find any more I like.