spacecowboy

Tan line! She's flashing her white bits!

Decided against a refin build diary, a good diary stripping lacquer does not make, so here's a couple of photos from the basses first reveal coat of oil, this is applied with sandpaper and should reveal any lumps and bumps I've missed, after 4 hours or so I can lightly sand it again and then start getting the oil on it properly, feels so much better than the heavy lacquer before it. Can't whack stroking a good bit of wood! The neck woods are also a lot clearer now, definitely Walnut sides, wenge stringers, but, the jury is still out on the center wood though... could be an Ash or Oak... the neck and body look alot more balanced tonally, should be a stunning looking bass when done.

Thank you Al, It'll certainly be getting some love and care, I have one of those electro cleaner things at work so I can chuck all the metal in that and it should come out all sparkly... hopefully, the wood just needs a lovely feed of oil and then a wax sealer, the poor timber has been well preserved in a sea of lacquer! good news there is that hopefully alot of these scratches are just lacquer deep and I don't need to sand too much.

I'm sorry mate! I had a feeling there would be a few people from here looking at it, If things don't work out with it I'll be happy to give you first refusal!

Yes, interestingly I was wondering if the body wood was Afzelia as it is incredibly similar to an old Streamer Stage 2 of mine, same figuring and density, the only difference is this looks slightly more dark red and my Stage 2 was for want of a better word Orange!

So... this was a bass I was watching with a very keen eye on eBay last week. It's a ZAK bass, which, from some of Mayones history information, seems to be an export brand name used by Mayones in the mid nineties... check out this old catalog page for instance... vintage! The ZAK branding appearing in the upper right of the page. And here's Mayones founder at a trade expo showcasing the basses in the early nineties... So for the moderately small sum of £215 I got; The Zak BeJJ BO4 bass £? A new Warwick Rockbag worth £70 A brand new unused 5 Pot pre wired Bartolini preamp HR5.2AP/918 worth £145 Ernie Ball replacement knobs worth £13 So already a bit of a good deal all things considered...BUT... this just isn't a cheap bass... it can't be, the quality for a start is superb, for a bass that must be 25 - 28 years old it's oozing quality parts and timbers. The body wood is Etimoe, which is highly curved and shaped, very much like the early Warwick Basses, note the matching control cavity cover and look at this cuuuurve! The timber also has lovely figuring and good matching, and is solid, very solid. Speaking of Warwick Basses... I was pleasantly surprised to see this... I thought, a ha! a fake Warwick Bridge... but no, a Schaller Bridge manufactured to Warwicks Design! Again really solid, nice and heavy, very classy. The neck is a 5 piece, if it's maple it's very dark, possibly cherry / mahogany but I can't see it being much else, stringers are either Wenge or Ebony, but again under the lacquer they're very dark, stamped number 54. Japanese Gotoh tuners. Matching headstock veener cap and truss rod cover. Plastic nut, Wenge fingerboard and mother of pearl inlays. I'm currently stripping the lacquer off the bass as it's very very thick and glossy which I can't stand and I'll be giving this a brief sand before oiling and waxing the finish, but from the parts shown above the bass has the following hardware; Japanese Gotoh Tuners Schaller / Warwick Bridge & Tailpiece MEC active 2 band EQ MEC active jazz pickups it's a super looking and feeling bass, with a little TLC i'll get it looking a little fresher and hopefully for £215 have myself a bloody bargain at long last! I'll be doing a refin build diary over in the build diaries forum for anyone who wants to track that. Cheers!

Looking great!!

For what it's worth I have had the whole "you don't need a Marshall 4x10 and JCM 800 head for this tiny practice room" argument too many times, they also don't usually understand that the drummer plays loud, cause they play loud, and as someone else mentioned get the guitarists bass / low knob cut to zero. The best solution for me has always been let the drummer just play and everyone volume up to them. If the drummer smashes the hell out of his drums at practice... leave the band.

Really cool! Nice and clean! Great job!

I like these ideas! super glue to the rescue?! Let me try that tomorrow!!

Sad update! The bridge in this guise just doesn't work, I've let the bass settle and set it up, I can get a great action and the level of adjust ability is perfect, but the problem is the saddles and them locking in to the side walls of the timber, over time they are slipping causing unreliable intonation, worse still if the grub screw has bitten in to the timber and then slipped it becomes slightly loose and then you get an awful buzz ringing from the loose component while the string moves, so a bit of a disaster. To get a metal bridge milled to my design is too much money and there's no guarantee of success and an off the shelf bridge doesn't work due to how my strings are loaded through the body so I'm a little bit stuck. The only thing to really do here is to accept that this build wasn't successful, but was a hell of a lot of fun and I've learned so much. I'm going to start a new build of this design soon with a bought bridge and nut and less of the conceptual elements. This one is done, but expect a new diary soon, I'm off to shop woods!