blablas

You can never be sure, the best you can do is check the seller's feedback and hope for the best. I've never heard or read of an AliExpress faker that was perfect straight from the box, they always seem to have smaller or bigger issues. And to be honest, what can you expect for the price you pay over there! If something costs a fraction of the price of the real deal they must have cut corners somewhere.

Thanks for the info. My post above is the headstock of my lefty AliExpress 4005 interpretation. Picture straight after unboxing. And a picture in almost full modified glory, only thing still missing was the new trussrod cover. It needed some attention in several spots before I was really happy with it. Most of of what I had to do was fixing 'just off' things. - Center aligned the pickups to the strings, the bridge pu was moved over by 3 millimeters, the neck pu by 1 millimeter. - Due to the moving of the pickups I also had to move the pickguard. - Reshaped the nut, they just put on a right handed one so this needed to be seriously modified, I'll probably make a new one in the future. - Gave the tuner bushings a few knocks on their head, they were mounted crooked, tuners are also not up to my standard so will be replaced later on. - The fingerboard had several less good looking and finished spots, re-finished these. - Crowned the frets where needed and polished them, they were level but rough finished in a lot of spots. - Changed the rotation direction of the pots, they were wired lefty so nothing wrong there, I just can't and won't cope with this reversed crap! - Done a full shielding of the controls cavity, there was none whatsoever. - Made a thumb rest. - Replaced the strap holders, what was on there was mounted with very thin and short screws, to leave those would have been waiting for an accident to happen. - Checked if all the screws and bolts were tightened and if they weren't tightened them (more often than not they were loose!). - Did a full and thorough setup. Conclusion: After all the things I did I mentioned above this bass has transformed into a very nice, good working and playing Rick 4005 interpretation. Sound wise it has some settings that can resemble the Rick sound very closely, luckily it also has it's own sound, the pickups sound good enough for me, only minus is that the bridge pickup is slightly microphonic but I can live with that. The lacquer and finish is not bad - there are some blemishes and rough spots, most blemishes are underneath the lacquer! This is another AliExpress bass I would advise not to buy to most people. If you are into tinkering it can be turned into something very good, if you are not you should stay away from these basses. The build quality on this one was a lot better in comparison to the two lefty Jazz V basses I bought through AliExpress before. These two needed some serious work to make them playable, straight from the box they were unusable. A better view of the new pickup alignment. Detail shot of the thumb rest.

Am I allowed to show more?

P split pickups claim a lot of real-estate, when looking at them in the original housing it's not that obvious but once you try to cover them up you realize how big they are. Had this experience when I replaced the P pickup on my old Westone Thunder I, it needed a BIG pickup-ring to cover up the original cavity!

Looks fantastic! The only thing I'm not really fond of are those gigantic pickup covers, way too big for the design of the bass to my taste.

My current DIY project is another single cut... sort of. [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/269591-de-afwerking-mk6-6s-mk6-g6-blablas-is-doing-a-double-build/"]Build diary[/url].

Ordered the Pickups for the bass, Delano JSBC 6 HE. Controls will be passive - stacked ala 62 Jazz Bass. Simplicity itself.

A lot.... but somehow that's always one or two short. [size=1]Currently: 42 (plus one on it's way from China at the moment)[/size]

The new headstock attached to the rest. This is it, happy! Bass template is done, still the guitar to go.

Did some refining of the headstock design. Placed the tuners closer together and added a lower wing to the headstock, looks more balanced to me now and now it can be put in a guitar hanger, given the body shape it probably won't fit a guitar stand.

[quote name='roman_sub' timestamp='1452685932' post='2952346']from looking at this a bit more, I think the body shape could also work as a "headless" instrument! [/quote] It sure does but I don't want to go headless due to the very limited choice in hardware and high pricing of what's available. I could make the stuff myself (been there, done that) but that's a serious amount of extra work I'm not looking for. The 'been there, done that' bass.

I prefer to call it influence. I was sort of thinking of the Parker headstock but tried to do my own thing, afterwards I did a search and luckily mine looks seriously different from the Parker ones. Parker Mine

Refined the body shape and now it's to my liking. Also designed the headstock. Now it's waiting for the wishes from the customer for further designing of the guitar version.

I think it will. It will be a short scale bass and a guitar so not a very long neck that sticks out, there's a lot more wood (weight) at the bridge end than with a traditional style body. And if it doesn't, too bad, most of the time I play sitting down anyway.

Finally done something with the design of the body today. It's not fully there yet but gives an indication where I want to go, I've had it for now and I'm first going to let sink in what I've got at the moment.

[url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brasso-RB0125759-175ml-Metal-Polish/dp/B002G0BULU"]Brasso[/url] gets you the same result for a fraction of the price.

[quote name='PaulGibsonBass' timestamp='1452096262' post='2946360'] Please can someone who knows better than I explain the difference between the Stingray and the Cutlass please? [/quote] [quote]The Cutlass I and II were Music Man's attempt to join in the graphite neck revolution by teaming up with Modulus Graphite to produce two short-lived models. Earliest examples used existing body stock (some going back to 1979) and three-bolt neck plates, although these were soon changed to rectangular 4-bolt plates. The 3-bolt version also had through-body stringing whereas the 4-bolt was fitted with a top load bridge unit. The Cutlass I was essentially a Stingray and the Cutlass II a Sabre, each using those distinctive body shapes and hardware, although the Cutlass II did not retain the exposed pole pieces as seen on the Sabre's twin pickups and also offered a simplified circuit too. The Cutlass may have been all about the graphite neck but it was obviously not that popular at the time as very few units were actually built.[/quote] [url="http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/cool-and-classic-basses-music-man-cutlass-bass-573243"]source[/url]

I don't get all this for or against nagging, if you like it buy or build one, if you don't just don't! I don't like most of the designs and made my own, just to see if it was possible to come up with something that's pleasing to me.

Last week I finally found the last Gremlin that was hiding in my mk5-4f wiring. The neck pickup was dropping out every once in a while and there was a crackling noise with all the pots. Tried all sorts of things over time, replaced the secondhand neck pickup with a new one - problem still there! It must be something else, replaced the balance pot - no luck, still there! Checked the soldering connections but they all looked okay, as a last resort took a closer look at the jack - and there it was!! I used a mono jack with three soldering eyelets, it looked like two were attached to ground and one was hot. Upon closer inspection, and after measuring the resistance, one of these two ground eyelets wasn't as attached to ground as I thought. Three guesses which one I used for ground, the bad one, re-soldered the ground to the other eyelet and now everything appears to work like a charm - no more crackling or dropouts! Moral of this story - blablas doesn't know much about electronics but in the end he will solve it!!

I think you should try to make new pickup covers with better aligned mounting holes. Right now what you've got is a letdown for a nicely built and looking instrument.

Modified this one Into this The Black Beast

The looks depend very much on who builds them, there are ugly ones and ones that look good out there. This is a very subjective matter, same as in that some people say you only need a P-bass for the perfect sound and looks.

Neck stability, the body starts somewhere around the 12th fret.

Can't really choose between two or three, I would probably decide the moment right before I started sawing the thing. Two appears like the more "traditional" look for a burl top, three has a charm of its own. One isn't doing it for me.

[url="http://www.thomann.de/"]Thomann[/url].