hiram.k.hackenbacker

Yes, modified at Roger Sadowsky's. Looks fab to me.

Lull got round that by putting the B string through the body. Works 👍

That nice one is a Monarch (I think). The other one isn’t. That’s about the sum of my knowledge on that one as all I’ve ever had are Monarch’s. @molan would probably one of the better people to ask.

....and that sir, is all that counts 👍

GAS by Proxy 😂

Agreed. Many moons ago there was a Mk1 California Hard Core Aged in that colour and it looked lovely. Wish I had bought that. I’m not sure they even do that colour any more, do they?

Yes and yes it does. I take solace in the fact that they got it right on the four string Monarch. Headstock on mine....

Great guitars though them Tyler’s.

Having said that, the shape dictates the placement to a certain extent. Could be better IMHO.

The shape of that headstock doesn’t bother me, but the placement of the tuners does. I suspect it’s a vanity thing in that they didn’t want to have the A string right across the ‘Fodera’ on the truss rod cover. That B string is barely holding on 😂

Could I persuade you to take it and give it to me? 😀

Love a plain fretboard. I just think they look classy.

I know what you mean, but I think it's because we've been conditioned to see a bridge as rectangular and anything else looks odd. I did feel the same way and then chilled out over it. Then I bought one and wow! You're missing out.

I’ve recently satisfied my lust for a P with a J neck having bought a Lakland Bob Glaub. I’ve just put a set of flats on it and wow!

That does look the business. Would David go that far with a relic job?

As much as I love MHS basses, and I do love MHS basses, I might leave the headstock as is.

Noted with thanks John. Router it is then. As unexpected as this is, the idea of routing the body is the least worrying piece of this puzzle so far.

Calling @KiOgon - do I definitely need to get the router out? 😂 @Beedster - I keep wondering whether I should go for road worn shell pink on this, but as I still have the Flea and the opportunity is there to have almost any finish I can think of, it would daft to pass on that option. Trouble is, I’m OK when asked to choose between four colours, but when asked to pick a colour from any/every colour, I come unstuck. Do you have a thread for your build?

I think the issue is that I want stack knob controls and I don’t think mini-pots are an option for those. I may be wrong. John did mention mini pots being popular with Squier owners 😂.

Episode 3: ‘Out of Control’ We’re nearly up to date 👍. Anticipating that I’ll need to source pick-up’s and stack knob controls necessitated more web trawling. The obvious choice for pick-up’s for this bass seems to be.... They appear to be readily available and would seem to fit the theme of the bass. I’m happy to be steered elsewhere of course if anyone has any recommendations? Controls - Having read so many excellent comments regarding @KiOgon’s controls and wiring, I contacted John to see what he could offer and he came back with this, which I like very much.... It has a switch for series/parallel for an extra couple quid on top of the version that doesn’t. I couldn’t think of a reason not to have that option, so what the heck. You only live once. Whilst stripping the body of parts, I kept looking at the channel which the bell plate covers thinking that’s awfully narrow. It’s exactly 20mm to be precise. By now I’m starting to wise up that it’s best to check stuff fits to cater for unexpected surprises. After a quick message to John, he reported back the his stack controls are a little wider than 20mm.... The thing is, I really like the look of this unit, plus, it means I don’t have to get the soldering iron out. They are literally screw the wires into the terminal block and you’re good. It does, however, mean I have to get the router out 😬. Given that the whole body is getting refinished, what can go wrong? One of the things is that I’ll have to strip out that shielding in the control cavity. You can’t see most of it as it’s covered in black electrical tape for some reason. On a side note, the cavity for the bridge pick-up seems devoid of any shielding at all, so that will be another lesson to learn. I don’t know what to call the next episode as it hasn’t been written yet. It will probably be neck plate related. Stay tuned.

Deleted scene from Episode 2 I forgot to mention that the holes from the neck into the body marry up perfectly. The neck plate should arrive either today or tomorrow.

I seem to remember that my Flea does have a small rout to allow access to the heel, but it’s not actually big enough to make an adjustment without digging into the body. You can’t see any of it until you take the scratch plate off. I maybe have imagined this. I’ll check later.

Episode 2: ‘The Search for A Body’ Part of this comedy of errors is retrospective, but you’ll be up to speed in no time. My first thought about utilising the neck was to recreate another very special early ‘60’s bass. Up until very recently, that was what I was set on doing, then I had a change of heart, partly due to conversations I had with a couple of well known luthiers around these parts. This other ‘60’s bass might come to fruition in a compete custom build at a later date - not by my hand I should add. So I started looking around for jazz shaped bodies on eBay, Basschat, Reverb etc etc. There are quite a few out there, ranging from fully loaded to new and unfinished. I wasted a lot of time thinking about what body finish to go for, without giving any thought to a possible refinish. It never even crossed my mind until seeing the work of David Wilson on @AndyTravis Marcus Miller and one of @walshy’s. Around the same time Andy sent me some links to a couple of jazz bodies for sale that he had come across. One of them was this Squier body on Basschat.... Given I know stuff all about the variations of Jazz basses and their clones through the ages, it looked OK to me. Slap the neck on, string it up and we’ll see if it works - or is likely to with a few tweaks. This is where I started to get ahead of myself. The seller of this fine body said he would be willing to sell for a reduced price without the pick-up’s. I had kind of decided I wanted to go the stack pot route anyway, so we sorted that and I received the body as above without the knobs, jack, wiring and pick-up’s. Here it is without the scratch plate.... Yes, it does have a lot more holes than I have screws for, but David will be vanishing a few of them for me. I still can’t make my mind up about a finish, but that’s a way off yet (sometime in September hopefully). It occurred to me sometime between paying for the body and receiving it, that it might be an idea to get a neck plate and some bolts to bring the two together (you were warned that I don’t know what I’m doing). It seems that a lot of Fender spares are not making it over the water in goodly time these days thanks to COVID. All neck plates are out of stock at my usual haunt (Strings Direct), so I bought (a quite possibly not genuine) one off eBay. It wasn’t until I started researching neck plates that a learned there was such a variety. Thickness of metal, gasket or not, different logos, custom logos. Anyway, I decided it wouldn’t be right to have anything ‘Fender USA’ due to the neck being Made in Mexico. A ‘big F’ would have been my preference, but this one was cheap and looks like the thick metal variety so I went with that. I digress. When the body arrived, with fevered anticipation (it might just have been the heat) I married up the neck to the body to realise a slightly unforeseen technicality..... ....no access hole for the truss rod. I know, it’s not the end of the world, but I’m just kicking myself for not seeing it. Obviously I couldn’t bolt the two together (see above), but the heel sits in the pocket very nicely, better than I could have hoped for in fact. Stay tuned for Episode 3: ‘Out of Control’

Mmm. I could do, but it’s not very Jazz shaped. It would also have the worst neck dive in the history of basses 🙃.