Immo

Yeah, it's a nice instrument. Mostly good quality, though the tuners quickly died on me (one broke and fell apart and others became wobbly) and had to do a costly swap. And while I was at it, nut swap came as well - Tusq XL eats the cheapo plastic for breakfast. I swapped the bridge saddles for more stability, too. The rest of bits is fine. Frets are nicely rounded. Even the stock pickup wasn't half bad, but I wanted it to have more kick. It's a match made in... well, in some cool but formidable supernatural place.

Thanks! I was stepping on a narrow path, but I think I managed to pull that off. Wanted to try a matching pickguard and headstock thing for years now. I need to find a cool Squier decal or sticker to put on the headstock, though. I'm not ashamed of it being a Squier. Don't let it stop you. You can always do racing stripes with a wrap foil. I ordered a furniture decoration from a company that had great reviews on "resilience" and happened to have a perfect pattern on hand. Just asked them to scale it down for me and they did it an no extra charge. Here's a mockup I did in MS Paint before ordering (and deciding I will do the headstock, too) - as you can see the result is very close.

I found this weird thing - Musontek FurFur - when something tempted me to type "fuzz" into search bar of a local e-commerce platform. It immediately caught my attention do to its ridiculous looks, but I checked YouTube and was sold when a guy did nice Iommi with it and decided to chance it for bass. Turned out it is a wonderful general purpose fuzz with attitude and lots of tonal capabilities. It can be fine tuned from regular distortion to outrageous, screaming chugs. With a low gain OF before it it shines even more. It is tiny (think Mooer size), well-made (checked the guts, the PCB is nicer than in EHX stuff!), nicely packaged, and relatively cheap. Controls: FUR = Fuzz RUF = Volume (unity with clean signal at 9'o clock) L/M/H = voicing toggle (actually in a different order - I take it it's a 1-0-1 switch, so I'd argue the letters mean: L = Lancinate (bright), M = Muddy (dark), H = Heaving (medium); if the switch ever breaks, I'll substitute it with a rotary switch putting the modes in more intuitive order). It also has two easy-access trim-pots for BIAS and BODY on the side.

Thanks! To be honest, I fell for the stock Bronco in Tahitian Coral the first time I saw it because the color is just gorgeous and would look great with a floral pattern on the pickguard - so funky! But it quickly went from "funk machine" to "doom machine" since stoner and doom are my genres, and with the pickup that has a lot of oomph it turned out to be great for that purpose. It likes fuzzes.

Here is my doom machine I built a year ago. It's a Squier Sonic Bronco in Tahitian Coral, heavily modified and personalized, strung with Ernie Ball Bass Flats 2801. Such a fun instrument, easy to play and great sounding. And I think the customising work I've done made it quite a looker, too. Work done: - Swaps: Pickup to Seymour Duncan SCPB-3 "Quarter Pounder" (I had to attach an additional ply of MDF with threads to the bottom and add springs to make it adjustable) Tuners to Gotoh GB11W Nut to Tusq XL Bridge saddles to 3-slotted vintage ones I had laying around (don't know the make) string tree to Gotoh TB54 string retainer knobs to Hosco HK-MKF - Add-ons and personalisation: Fender Vintage Jazz Bass pickup cover in chrome custom order vinyl wrap on pickguard and headstock custom 12th fret "marker" done with ultra-thin vinyl wrap and GitD tape Fender Strap Blocks in Daphne Blue

It is a modified/personalized clone/upgrade of CoT-50 tweaked for bass. It's a booster and overdrive that saturates the sound and adds low to medium dirt to it. The level of overdrive is input-sensitive. The pots are Level and Sizzle (reversed bias for Boost mode). The toggle switches the LED color and toggles between no Boost (smaller lighting, blue LED) and Boost (bigger lightning, red LED); the rotary switch selects clipping between no added clipping (I), extra Schottky diode (II) or extra symmetrical pair of Schottky diodes (III). I is most low end and volume, least grit, III is the least low end and volume, but most grit, and II is somewhere in between. This thing does wonders with the rest of the pedals, adding more "scene" to the sound of other dirt pedals, also pushing them to more oomph, or, if they are properly dialed, gated and nasal tones. On its own it's also really cool, with warm, bluesey drive.

Back to the forum after a long while, I give you my current minimalist pedalboard after refurbishing the board itself with new Velcro and stuff, and putting the ever-faulty Polish Love and Polish Hate aside. Very doomy, but can also go quite funky, but that envelope filter will be replaced because it annoys me.

Re-arranged with new patch cables.

Many Encores of that era have magnets wrongfully installed - both coils have North facing the same direction. This creates hum. It is very easy to check - just get a magnet, hold it firmly and check if one coil pulls it and other pushes it away - if so, the pickup is OK. If both coils push/pull the magnet, the polarity is wrong. Easy fix, just use a screwdriver to gently pull one of the magnets out, flip it upside down and use a superglue to attach it back

Mooer Bass Sweeper -> Polish Hate Fuzz -> Polish Love Overdrive -> Muza FD800 Modulation ToneBox -> Artec SE-ADL Buffered Analog Delay Need to replace the stiff connectors with patch cables soon. The white fluff thing sticking to the pedalboard's surface is cat fur

Pretty! And well kept. Is the bridge in line with the neck? Is the pickup proper-polarized? These are the two most common issues with those. But the pickup sounds great indeed. I compared the tone of this pickup (bought for 10 quid) with Seymour Duncan APB-2 Lightin' Rods active PU (worth ~100 quid) and while the APB-2 has more clarity and evenness and sounded a bit darker, I totally wouldn't pay 10x more for a pickup when these exist, especially when I admire kinda lo-fi sound.

I need help from someone who's a "maestro" of electronics. Strap yourselves in and try to keep up with the story, I shall share all the details. I "color-coded" all the electronics issues I had with the bass so it'll be clearer. My TwinSplit bass guitar has, well, two split coil pickups. I bought a stock Encore bass, having a second split coil form a same bass model laying around. So I decided to build a P-P-Bass, wired like a Jazz Bass. Once all was wired, the innards looked like this: When plugged, there was no hum. However, when two pickups were set at the same volume, there was a strong comb filtering-like effect, basically, the lows vanished and it sounded out of phase. I did some research and found out the way to fix it was to switch hot and ground outputs of one of the pickups. While I was tinkering, I also added a treble bleed mod to the south pickup's volume pot - after all, the south pickup was there to deliver treble! So, after the mod was done, the innards looked like this: Now the both pickups set on the same volume had full-bodied sound. However, after a while - not sure when exactly - a hum issue with the North one appeared. Either solo or paired, it hummed like a badly shielded pickup. I thought it's due to bad shielding the bass has. Due to various personal issues and the fact the hum wasn't that horrible, I always promised myself to fix it "the next day". I always thought it is a shielding issue. Only today, after someone mentioned that Encores had this stupid pickup design that had both coil magnets polarized in the same direction, I checked it with a magnet and discovered the North one indeed has this issue, while the South one does not. I flipped the magnet of one of the coils upside down. This haven't removed the hum and even restored the loss of low end issue, so I also reversed the phase of the coils connection (switched red and black wires). So now, the mess inside looks like this: The North pickup's hum is gone. Both pickups have a full bodied sound. But a new issue occurs, one that was absent before! Said issue is twofold: - there is a constant silent hum that vanishes when the strings are touched; then both pickups work fine - the pickups start to buzz really loud when the pole pieces are touched, but only if strings aren't touched at the same time (especially the South one has that problem, but it's probably due a bit more protruding pole pieces) The pole pieces of the pickups are not grounded; they go through the coil's bobbin and touch the magnet on the underside. The pickup slots are still poorly shielded; is this a shielding issue? I will shield it anyway, but I can order the copper tape only after Christmas. But do I have to do something else, too? Switch hot and ground wires on South pickup maybe (wouldn't this restore the comb filtering?)? Or maybe just flip the wires at the cable jack as now everything inside is reversed? I'll just add that I can't afford to pointlessly tear the bass apart every 20 minutes as the pickguard is not stock and some screw holes are misaligned so each unscrewing ruins them further. Thanks in advance!

Rear is a bit ugly, yet quite, uh, "rural" in appearance. The front is pretty and unusual, I like it.

Sorry for resurecting an 4 years old dead thread, but I just found an ad with an Made in India Encore (early '90s) that was strippe d and finished in natural, so I was immediately reminded of this thread here: Definitely resembles korina.

If you're into heavy stuff, I recommend this album. It's astounding and bass is one of the key things that make it great.

[quote name='gareth' timestamp='1473260492' post='3128444'] Assuming the neck is not foto flamed, I would get a new body [/quote] I want to use the original body because of several reasons: 1. I want it to be genuine MiJ Fender and I can't afford another MiJ Fender body (costs nearly twice as much as the bass we're talking about); 2. I'd rather not cave a battery hole in another innocent bass body; 3. this body works fine (already routed - see #2 - plus nice and lightweight) aside form the unrepairable lacquer coating, so why waste it?; 4. sentiment for this bass as a whole (as it's my first Fender and a first big thing I bought entirely for the money I earned with honest work); 5. love of customizing everything I own; 6. I want to learn new guitar refurbishing and maintenance skills, including those requiring thinking outside the box.

[quote name='yorks5stringer' timestamp='1473259532' post='3128428'] On the subject of using a rattle can, you can get for a couple of £ a handle that fits over the can and the button and makes it much easier to use. This is an expensive one as an example:http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Can-Gun-1-Universal-Spray-Can-Tool-Recycled-Plastic-Ergonomic-Reusable-Paint-/321680557430?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368 [/quote] Cool idea, thanks! Wonder if anyone tried SprayPlast to, for example, cover the headstock with a protective layer. Wonder if it kills sustain. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1x500ML-MOTIP-SPRAYPLAST-RUBBER-REMOVEABLE-COATING-ORANGE-/142106577211?hash=item211636493b:g:mxcAAOSwhOdXowx5

I think I'll call local car paint shops and ask, but I'm pretty sceptic. But maybe I'm wrong? Anyway, the idea stated in the original post was to use quality spray paint. This guy presents it well and isn't really putting too much effort into the whole business while getting nice results ([url="https://www.youtube....7YrsbIPL6o18BLS"]five videos playlist[/url]). Hope the guitar's body is really lacquered with the spray nitro lacquer from the can.

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1473170518' post='3127624'] (...) it sounds like you're not look to sell any time soon. [/quote] Yup, aside from horrible looks, it's a great bass and my first Fender, first maple fretboard and first P-bass (I like each of the three notions ) [quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1473170518' post='3127624'] What finish do you want btw? [/quote] Sherwood Green. My goal is to get an effect similar to this: ...but with the thumbrest above the E string and with a custom pickguard, preferably with a paisley motif.

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1473091677' post='3126832'] You probably already know this, but nitrocellulose is not good for your lungs. If you're spraying it yourself make sure you have decent ventilation - preferably a proper spray booth with extractor fans if you can [/quote] Yeah, but as you probably deduced form my previous posts, I don't want this party to get too expensive, so I'll stick with mask. BTW, the Northwest Guitars made a nice 5 parts tutorial on how to use their spray-can-nitrocellulose-lacquer thingies properly. The way they show it, it looks ridiculously easy. Then again, with my low skills, dexterity and aptitude, I'll probably end up with severely bruised ribcage, green hair and will spell "Fender Precision Bass" like "ugl-glug-glug-lugs" for two weeks.

[quote name='markstuk' timestamp='1473081752' post='3126672'] Natural wear is acceptable :-) [/quote] Preferably Some fake relic jobs are quite OK.

[quote name='markstuk' timestamp='1473079199' post='3126626'] There are two types of people - those who like "reliced" basses and those that don't. I'm in the latter camp, I really don't understand the attraction of adding fake wear... But whatever floats your boat... [/quote] Relic, either fake or real, is acceptable. But the cracked body - it's hideous.

I paid 300 quid for the bass at the time the GBP was insanely low, so it costed me 1500 PLN (the pickup -SD Ligtnin' Rod - costs 600 PLN new, mind you). Painting by a pro costs 750 PLN and Warmoth replacement body in Sherwood Green + shipping costs 2000+ - 10 times the spray paint (postage included). No one in Poland would buy the body for more than 200 PLN, especially with the cracks and after the original owner had the fantasy to carve a stupid 9V battery hole under the pickguard in a random spot. EDIT: And if I had the money, I'd probably go with genuine MiJ Fender '57 RI, something like this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-57-RI-Fender-P-BASS-BODY-HARDWARE-Precision-Japan-Black-/381757002934?hash=item58e27d94b6:g:GIoAAOSw-kdXyavK

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1473060532' post='3126386'] Y'know, there are people who will actually pay good money to have the finish on their shiny, new bass wrecked. It's a funny old world ... [/quote] Most people assume there is little to no difference between reliced guitars and cracked FotoFlames. But there is. Those aren't parts of wood showing, looking like "man this guitar was played a lot!", but cracks looking like "man this guitar was poorly made". Not to mention the edges of those cracks are quite sharp and maybe they won't cut you, but they can interfere with the strap of a watch. And the dirt is getting underneath the lacquer.

[quote name='Manton Customs' timestamp='1473025142' post='3126261'] It'll be basswood or Alder and neither require grain filling so you'd be fine to prime, spray colour coats then clear. You could even skip primer, but you'll most likely use more colour getting the depth, primer will also fill any small pores better. So I'd spray primer first. [/quote] And that's the sort of answer I was both waiting and hoping for. Thanks, mate! P.S. just out of curiosity - how much Manton Customs would charge for such a job if the body was delivered stripped from the previous lacquer? Purely academic question, as I'm in Poland, but I wonder if in UK it's cheaper.