For those of you who thought my Stratocaster bass was an abomination, feast your eyes on this. The MusicmanBird. ThunderJazzRay. FenderManBird. I just call it FenderBird #2.
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Long-Scale Basses
Basses built with the standard scale length of 34 inches.
This started out as a broken Epiphone, one of the very nice Pro models. Turns out the Epi copy was a bit too authentic - it even reproduced the standard Gibson pop-off headstock. I removed the neck, re-finished the stump, routed out a neck pocket, and installed a Fender Mexico Precision neck. The pickups are stock, the active electronics are a replacement as the originals blew up. I also made the pickguard. The high frets are basically inaccessible, but the trade-off is much better balance.
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This OLP Stingray was one of the first basses I ever modded heavily. I routed a battery and a second pickup cavity, and did all sorts of experiments on it, before returning it to it's original single-pickup configuration, but with upgraded active electronics and pickup, and a nice new pearl pickguard.
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Solid poplar body, lightly stained and finished in polyurethane. Korean Squire neck, active electronics. Is it a reverse, or a non-reverse? Since this is a reverse of the original Thunderbird body ( more-or-less ) I say it is a reverse. If this is a non-reverse, then the original would have to be the reverse. Reverse of what? Makes no sense.
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Danelectro Silvertone 1443 Bass
This is a project that took a long time, mainly due to the lacquer sunburst, which took several tries to get right. In the end, I even 'bursted the back of the neck. While it looks like an old Silvertone, it is actually thoroughly modern inside. 90's Danelectro lipstick pickups - the good ones, wired in series with a selector switch like they should be.
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This is my attempt to recreate my very first bass, a "Montaya", as well as one of my first ventures into 'modding'. These SX's are great instruments. For 109 bucks you get an alder body with a beautiful 3-tone sunburst, a decent neck, functional bridge & tuners, and a flawless finish. What you don't get is any kind of useable pickups or strings. On this one, I installed a USA Fender pickup, my favorite d'Addario strings, and gave it a careful fret dressing and setup. I also added the tortoise pickguard, rosewood thumbrest, and ashtray for the looks only. At the time, I was going purely from memory, but I later found a picture of the original, and I got it dead right.
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Black Polyurethane body. This is during the polishing process, you can see it is not even clean. The front came out like black glass. I smoothed the orange-peel with 1500 grit wet, then 2000 and 3000. Then I switched to the random orbital with a red sponge cutting pad and Turtle Wax rubbing compound that claims to remove 1200 scratches. Shouldn't be any 1200 scratches, since I started with 1500. That came out shiny, but with swirl marks in the light. Then I switched to another red cutting pad with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, and finally a softer yellow pad with the same Meguiar's. At that point, it was pretty much a factory finish. I didn't work as hard on the back, it is nice, but will soon enough encounter a zipper or belt buckle, so the effort would be wasted.
More: Finishing ...