Hi All,
I purchased a Hondo Professional II from a certain well known online auction site for a project.
It has obviously had a hard life:
- parts of the bridge are missing
- the original (Dimarzio I believe) pickup has been removed and replaced with, I guess, a cheap pickup
- parts of one of the machine heads are missing
- the neck has been poorly defretted
- roundwound strings have been used on the defretted neck, marking it further
- the neck has been partly sanded
- and the usual knocks of a bass this age.
As might be expected with this type of symmetrical design, it is somewhat neck heavy, despite the body being [b]heavy[/b].
The plan is to bring it back to life as a balanced headless:
- refinish and repaint
- refret
- install a decent pickup (if anyone has a hex pole p bass style pickup, working or not, that they want to find a good home, please PM me)
- make headless, that is strings secured at headstock end in a reduced headstock, and use Steinberger type bridge tuner.
So turning my attention to the neck whilst gathering other parts.
The fret slots look like they have been filled with tile grout. I've done a test slot, and with a bit of care and time I can clear the grout out of the slots. So far so good. However, I'm not sure about what to do about the sanding that has been done. I assume that the fretboard is maple judging by the colour. The varnish/lacquer that is normally present on maple necks has been partly sanded off. The gloss and thickness has gone, and is down to the bare wood in a few places. Over most of it though is what seems to be a thin almost plastic layer, which I assume is the remains of the original finish. So the question is whether to leave it as it is, or to sand it down back to bare wood. I don't know if the original fretboard radius has been preserved (I suspect not given the state of the defret job), so my inclination is to take it back to the bare wood.
What do you think?