Jean-Luc Pickguard

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.

I think you're right. I just did a search on Ali Express and found some jaguar guitars with the same weird shaped control plates.

Anyone recognise this bass? I'm pretty sure its not a Fender but looks like something cheap with a dodgy decal. I don't recognise the weird control plates. The tuners appear to be the same as those used on some Harley Bentons. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185379483099

Gear Acquisition Syndrome

At least

I have one of those (actually an '81 with an S9 serial). The only problem is that cherry burst was used on Ash bodies, and the ash bodies Fender was making at that time would have been lighter had they been made of cast iron.

I never used to enjoy soldering as I could never get the solder to flow well. I eventually came to the conclusion that the soldering iron I bought from Maplin wasn't suitable for working with the only solder Maplin sold - ie lead-free. Once I managed to source some decent lead/tin solder my soldering skills improved as if by magic and it was fun again.

Making a loom for a bass a couple of days ago reminded me of something I should confess: The first few times I used cloth covered wire I was cursing how fiddly it was to trim the insulation from the ends as wire strippers didn't work well on it. It was only relatively recently that I realised you just push the insulation up to expose the core.