Factory Mods
These are factory instruments that I either significantly modified, restored or refurbished.
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.
More: SX SPB-57 Ursa Bass ...
This is the big brother to the Silvertone 1448, vintage 1964-67. Construction is basically the same, but with a full-scale neck, two pickups, and a much better amp. For a lot of details, see the 1448 page. This guitar is in excellent condition for being almost sixty years old, and apart from cleaning and re-stringing, it needed nothing.
More: Silvertone 1457 Guitar & Amp ...
This beauty is Evets' reissue of a 1960s Danelectro Hornet. The solid-body Hornet has the same body outline as the Silvertone 1452, a sort-of cross between a 1457 and a Fender Jazzmaster. But unlike the slab-sided 1452, the body of the Hornet is a continuous curve, front and back, with a completely rounded edge. ( This is as sexy as a guitar gets, but makes it a little slippery on your knee. ) The reissue from Evets has the same contours as the original, and even the same 'lightshow' pickguard. The three-tone sunburst on this one was an exclusive to Guitar Center. I picked this one up as an 'open-box' from their subsidiary Music123 for a song, so to speak. The body was originally slathered in dullcote, which I polished off, resulting in a beautiful shine with just a bit of orange peel that I left.
