Some exciting stuff today. I got the pickup set that I’m going to use. Interestingly enough the bridge pickup doesn’t fit! That’s ok though, since I have one of those that fits perfectly and is same type. The other pickup is fine, though and that’s the one I really needed. I screwed them into the existing mounting holes in the body to do a check fit of the pickguard. The pickups are a very tight fit in the guard, and it needs to be enlarged for it to work right. There’s also another problem, with the pickups mounted and the guard sitting in the correct way over them, there is a gap at the neck pocket. That’s not going to fly for me! I have two options here. One is to come up with something to fill that gap. The other is to relocate the pickup so that the pickguard fits flush with the neck where it should.

I’m going with option 2, as it will look nicer, and because this pickguard comes from a U.S.A. built Fender, which means the pickup location this guard has built in is in the place Leo Fender intended. Now, will 1/8 of an inch really make a sound difference? Doubtful! But I’m a perfectionist, remember? After all, having a pickguard that fits like this is not going to work for me. Moving the pickup forward an eighth of an inch is pretty trivial. All I need to do is plug the old holes, line up the pickguard in the proper place, and then mark where new holes need to go. What do you plug the holes with? I found that some simple wooden toothpicks work quite well, coupled with a little wood glue they work perfectly for this task. All it took was 1 toothpick, too. I put a little glue in the hole, shoved the toothpick in, and broke it off to where the plug is flush with the cavity bottom. Nobody will ever see them, so I don’t need to worry about coloring them at all. The pickup cavities will be completely shielded with copper foil as well. The pickup is now mounted right where it needs to be, although I mauled the pickguard while trimming it. If I can’t clean it up nice enough I’ll just buy a new one eventually. At least all my measurements are now correct! However, since pickguards vary greatly from one to the next with the screw holes, I’ll wait until I decide for sure if I’m going to use this one before I drill the holes. In the meantime I can just tape it to the body for anything I need.

The next task is to figure out how the bridge mounting is going to go. I now have the pickups. What I did for this was to put the pickups in place, and then tape an old string up by the nut on the neck, so that I can see where the string will go in relation to the pickup pole pieces while holding the string over the bridge saddle. This is one thing that can make a guitar or bass look cheap and sloppy is if the strings do not go close to center between the two pole pieces on the pickups. Whether it makes a sound difference or not is debated, but I want it to look nice! I also taped the bridge in place of where I think it should be mounted, and then made sure the strings go between the poles. It looks like they are going to go almost dead center on each string, as can be seen in the above picture. Very nice! I just have to measure now and make sure the bridge is forward or back far enough so that the scale length (34” from the nut to bridge) is correct, but it shouldn’t be far off. I am having second thoughts on using this neck, though. I don’t like it all that much and I’ve managed to acquire a couple other necks which I had been previously unable to find, which were my first choice originally for the one I wanted to use.. They should be here this week, and hopefully at least one of them fits without much work. Then I’ll be in really good shape! For now I need to double check some measurements, and also try and fix the deformed pickguard. I need to improve my skill with the dremel tool before trying that again!

I spent some more time with the wood filler today; since I’m just that much of a perfectionist and the really small nuances in the feel of the plugged holes weren’t good enough for me. Such imperfections would easily be solved once the primer is applied, but I like the idea of it being as perfect as I can get it and have things leveled out with wood rather than primer. It’s just another one of my obsessions with perfection. The electronics should be here in a couple days, and then I can assemble everything and see how it looks. I’m still torn on color choices though.

The Fender P bass pickguard has arrived in the mail, and it looks like a perfect fit! This looks like it will work very well for this project. I’m just waiting on the pickup set to arrive now and I will have all the pieces I need. I could probably mark and drill the holes for the screws on the body now that I have a correct pickguard, but I want to mount the pickups to the body before doing that to make sure I get the adjustment exactly right so something isn’t a little off after the holes are drilled. Another interesting thing is the bridge pickup is closer to the neck than is typical on this configuration. It sits only 1.5” from the bottom of the neck pickup, as opposed to the 2” or so that my other basses have. The main questions are still color choices, but I’ll get to that eventually. I could route the body for the larger pots, but I would need to also drill a hole in the side of the body for a side jack mount. I might also just add a hole to the pickguard since the body is already routed up there, which would allow for the pots and the input jack to all remain top mounted. The pieces are starting to come together…

Neck choices

After keeping an eye out for deals, I have found the donor for a neck for this project. Thanks to Craigslist, I have purchased a Johnson J style bass on the cheap that I will use the neck from to put on this bass. I will attempt to re-sell the body and hopefully will nearly break even with what I paid for the entire bass. Even so, it is a great deal even if I can’t sell the body for much. Here’s what the donor looks like. I’m not crazy about the headstock shape. I guess for the price I don’t have much room to complain though. It is VERY “blocky” feeling so I will need to do some smoothing around the edges in order to make it feel less cheap. I haven’t decided if I plan to refinish the neck yet either. I might leave it satin, but if I paint the body an interesting color, I might also do the neck. The headstock will be matched to the body regardless. I’m not sure of the condition of the frets; they seem okay and will be dealt with much later in this project if there is a serious issue there.

Upon test fitting the neck to the body, as expected the pocket is slightly too narrow. With a little grinding and some dremel work, the pocket now fits this neck snugly and securely. It might be a little TOO snug though. I will probably open it just a hair more so that there won’t be a fitment issue when finish is applied to the neck if I choose to do that. Now that I have a workable neck, I can finish up the sanding on the body and measure where the bridge is going to be. I could look up the specs on bridge placement, but since I’m not sure how exact this body is to Fender spec I will make sure it’s right before drilling any holes. Test fitting after a slight pocket mod looks pretty good~! It looks like the bridge is going to be mounted close to where some existing holes were. It shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do, just measure twice (or 3 times) and then mark the holes with the bridge sitting on it. Then drill them out and we’re good to go. I’m now awaiting the arrival of the pickguard and the set of electronics I’ve purchased from members of the www.talkbass.com forums which should provide me with everything I need to get this bass assembled! I still have to decide on a color to use though. I’m starting to have an idea what I want to use this bass for eventually, but that will remain a secret! The goal for now is to get all body routing and mounting hole drilling done, and then get the body finished in white primer. Once that is done I can pick a color and have everything else already roughly completed and all the parts will just have to be mounted to it. I also have some work to do on the neck, as it’s not as smooth as I’d like yet. I’m also considering reshaping the headstock, though I’m not sure what I would make out of it.

More stripping...

After scraping all the loose finish off the body and then wiping it clean with mineral spirits, the previous modifications are visible.


Apparently, whether it was factory on the bass or not, it at one time had string through body ferrules in it. They have since been (poorly) filled and then covered up by the finish. They are clearly visible now from the back side.








At least half of the pickguard screws were also filled and covered, making me wonder what kind of guard they were using. Another point of interest is the fact that the bridge ground hole was filled in at some point in the process. It would have been impossible for it to work well without the bridge ground. Maybe this project was never actually finished and used or they would have found out that issue as soon as they plugged it in. Anyhow, it’s been located and re-opened and it goes all the way into the control cavity, so it will be easy for me to put a ground back in there. I don’t believe I am going to use string through
body on this project, so I will finish filling the holes and level them out so they won’t be visible through the finish like they were before. I also plan to fill all of the bridge screw holes since I have no idea what type of bridge was being used. The holes that exist are not the Fender standard pattern so I will have to drill new holes to use a standard style bridge.


















The construction of this body is also not typical hard wood like alder or ash. It’s a multi ply which is seen on either really low end or really high end basses. This one is obviously the low end, but I have heard some great sounding plywood basses before. Seeing as I am doing this for the experience rather than the final product, this makes little difference to me as I’m sure it will sound fine even if it isn’t a super great tone wood body. .










After finishing the stripping process and getting the body relatively smoothed out, I applied a sand and sealer coat to it. This goes on slightly tacky and glossy and is sanded to a smooth satin look and feel. This can be used to fill in slightly uneven areas of the body and to seal it from absorbing moisture. In humid Florida, this is definitely necessary to do since I won’t be applying a primer or finish coat for a while. This is how the body looks after the coat is applied.




















































Here's the body sanded and sealed:






























The next step is going to be getting some wood filler and filling in all the screw holes, both those that have been partially filled and all the others. I’m going to start fresh with new holes for everything since I’m not sure what pickguard I’ll be using yet and I don’t want many sets of holes to exist, whether they are hidden or not. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with this sand and sealer getting the edges of the body smoothed and rounded, much better detail than was done in the original manufacture of this bass body. It’s a nice inexpensive piece of lumber and it makes little difference how much I mess it up at this point, so I might as well use it to improve my woodworking skills as they are a decent thing to have. The body now has a nice satin look and a silky smooth feel to it. I’m taking a break on this for now until I get some filler to work on getting the holes filled and leveled out.

I picked up some wood filler from Home Depot to fill the bridge and pickguard screw holes with. I vaguely remember using this type of thing before, but it’s been a while so I need to get used to applying it. It fills nicely and is a good color that blends well with the body color. This is how it looks before being sanded smooth. Once the excess is sanded off, all you see is the little dot where the hole was and it smoothes out very well. Now that the screw hole filling is complete, I need to figure out all of the potential routing I might have to do in the body. I’m still missing a neck for this bass, so I don’t want to drill the bridge holes yet until I make sure the scale length is going to be correct. The control cavity might need to be enlarged if I want to use CTS sized pots in it. I might just go with the budget type as they are going to be included with the pickups I am buying for this project, so if they work correctly I might not spend the money on new ones for now. However, I don’t want to have to route the body after it’s been painted, so I might do this cavity enlargement just in case, as it’s best to do it when there’s no finish to damage. I need to wait for the pickguard to arrive before I can accurately tell exactly where it needs to be routed out though.

The pickguard is another issue I ran into. I have a white SX P-style pickguard from a different project on hand. Upon doing a test fit, it doesn’t appear that this one will work for this bass. The neck pocket does not cover enough, and it doesn’t look like it goes up far enough on the body, either. A Fender pickguard might be a better fit, so I purchased a cheap one that should be arriving soon. I will then use that one to figure out which holes I need to drill to mount it. It is going to be white in color, but I will likely paint it something else depending on what color(s) I end up using for the body. Plastic paints work well for these. This is what the SX guard looks like and why it won’t work for this bass. The neck pocket itself measures to be Fender spec, but upon test fitting necks it seems to be just slightly on the slim side. I will probably widen it just a bit so that a neck will fit snugly. I still need to find a neck to use for this bass. The SX P style neck I have doesn’t fit this body, so I will have to find another option. I’ve been attempting to locate an SX J neck, as they are a little narrower at the heel, but have so far not been able to.

The new project...it begins

And it begins....

Wanting another project bass since my last one has been complete and is now being played regularly, I responded to a Craigslist ad for some guitar and bass bodies that were being sold. I ended up with a Strat style guitar body and a P/J style bass body. The guitar body is a project for another time. The bass body was my favorite pickup combination so I decided to pick it up and see what I could do with it. The finish was flaking off in several places; it was a metallic green paint job which was done rather poorly to begin with. This makes it perfect for my purposes.

I forgot to take a picture before I started working on it since I was quite excited and anxious to see what I was dealing with. This is what it looked like about halfway through the stripping process. The green stuff came off rather easily, and as soon as the stripper touched it, it started coming up and made for a very clean and easy strip down to the wood. Upon getting all the green finish and underlying grey primer off, it seems this bass has had some work done to it before.

Additional photos of the stripping process: