Jean-Luc Pickguard

My favourite Nick Drake song is 'Poor boy'

Mine would be the same as Mr Meldal-Johnson’s signature mustang in Daphne blue, but made to replicate how a 1966 bass would have come off the production line - ie the colour would be brighter and there would be no roadworn malarkey. If that’s not allowed due to it being based on someone else’s signature bass, I’d get a Fender version of my Squier short scale jaguar bass in candy apple red with rolled fingerboard edges, Fender hi mass bridge, Fender yosemite PJ pickups with CTS/ switchcraft bits inc a greasebucket circuit and more substantial tuners.

JHS make the packrat which is a load of different flavours of rar in one box. Josh Scott also make this video:

Surely if it was originally a solid colour it would have been alder?

I have ‘em on a few basses. My JMJ mustang even came with one in the right place. I also fitted them to some basses on the treble side, but that’s more an affectation to be vintage correct rather than for practical use as I never use those as a tug bar. Can anyone briefly outline the finer points of the floating thumb technique? Or is it just a fancy name for playing without a thumb rest?

I don't have a preference.

I doubt the 40% sale nonsense will fool anyone

Looks like they were going for a sadowsky vibe—except for the bridge/tailpiece combo which seems a weird choice for a jazz bass.

Damn! mucked it up. I tried to get the angles right on the tuners but they seem to have come out in alignment. I couldnt find the angle grinder or my biro so I couldn't do the scrotal tuner reshape and had to put on a voodoo-decals logo.

Depends on the bass. My favourite tuners are the ones I have fitted to my thunderbird vintage pros - Gotoh res-o-lite GB640 (non-reverse) in a nickel finish, but they probably wouldn't look right on a short scale bass

The tuners are reversable! Not sure this is in keeping with the spirit of the project though as it takes a job away from the angle grinder. Maybe if I use the angle grinder to carve the tuner ears into a scrotal shape it'll get back on track. This will of course have to be done freehand so they all end up different sizes.

Added to the to-do list

Perfect! I'll just need to get the angle grinder out. Then it'll be time to flip it over to handwrite a logo & today's date with a biro.

Good idea!

Now that the headstock has been reshaped its time to put my PB50 back together. I found a spare set of squier (ping?) tuners in one of my miscellaneous bits boxes. These seem to be a slight upgrade from the stock HB ones. The holes don't match so I've filled the original ones and now need to make some new ones. Then I had an idea that will help me to be able to tune up when I'm wearing mittens. What do we all think? Should I do it?

Pah! He didn't test whether tone is in the fingers by cutting off his fingers and replacing them with 1. carrots; 2 hot dogs; 3.donor fingers from a cadaver

Ding ding ding - I think we have a winner

if you want to spend as little as possible your best bet might be the behringer bass limiter pedal. This is a type of compressor that works well in a live setting to keep your dynamics under control. If you can stretch to something costing a little more, the tc spectracomp is a great choice.

The intonation on my fretless is fully adjustable, but for some reason it always sounds out of tune unless I’m playing an open string.

I have the ibanez tube screamer mini - it’s on my geetar board between the mosky mini muff (big muff clone) & silver horse (klon clone). It sounds just like a tube screamer should and as I bought it secondhand on ebay it was only a few quid more than a mini clone which would have been the wrong shade of green.

350€ seems like a good price for the bass and case, however I am surprised that a luthier would be able to state that the issue was not structural purely from photos - ie without the bass in their hands. Saying that, the 'crack' is very likely to be due to the wood of the neck expanding/shrinking with temperature/humidity changes and the fingerboard & binding not being affected by temperature/humidity. I had a Fender bass which had a similar appearance, but between the walnut skunk stripe and the maple of the neck. Very fine wet & dry paper smoothed it out. The 'crack' disappeared and could no longer be felt in the hand. If it is such a minor issue on the hagstrom which can be as easily fixed, I would be asking why the seller has not fixed it or had the luthier fix it?

Totally bonkers

good idea. If I can find something cheaper than the Fender ones I might do that

I used a superfine sanding pad to remove the remaining parts of of the logo. This came off easily and the face of the headstock still has a complete layer of the original thin finish, so it won't need any additional finishing before applying a waterslide decal. I have ordered a new decal from voodoo decals in Portugal. He doesn't have any harley benton ones so I had to order a Fender Precsion bass (1957 style) one instead!

I asked a friend for ideas for how to reshape the headstock of my PB50. He suggested using an angle grinder with a velcro sanding pad and various grades of abrasive. I would never have thought of this and had no idea of how well it would work, but as he had the necessary tools and offered to do the job, I took the neck over to his place yesterday and he had a go. I think it came out really well. I just need to do a bit of hand sanding and it will be ready for refinishing.