Maude

The singer and guitarist in one of my bands have always been in bands together and one of their bands many moons ago had Muse as a support act, a fact which the guitarist has mentioned to me once or twice, to which I remind him he's in a band with me and ask, "Whatever became of Muse?" 😄

If it's only slightly too small then a wrap or two of tape would do the trick. No good if they're far to small obviously. 🙂

I'd have thought just saving the money from gigs, sales of recordings, session payments or whatever it is that you're using your current bass for would be the best way of saving for a new bass if the day job won't cover it. If you're not getting revenue from any of the above type of avenues then I can't really see why you'd be needing a 2.5k bass. Of course there's no reason why you shouldn't have a 2.5k bass for home noodling if your funds allow, but it appears they don't and asking others to pay for it is, to me, out of order.

I had to google that. Evaaaaar! 😆👍

I'm going to design some t-shirts with the slogan 'Plywood Is Not A Sin!' I like to think of it as a scruffy little street urchin who's grown up and turning his life around. 😁

This is the first colour I've gone for. It's a 70s Vauxhall colour I've always loved called 'Columbian Brown' (readily available from all branches of Escobar department stores) with an extra bit of pearl gold thrown in to get more copper tones from it. I'm doing the front of the body and headstock in this brown/Copper and the back of the body, headstock and neck in a deep cream colour reminiscent of those 70s plastic Bontempi organs with the fan inside. It'll have a black demarcation line between the two colours. If it looks like I envisage it should look like a slightly classier version of terrible 70s plastic tat. 🙂 It's quite hard to photograph the correct colour as the pearl gold changes it from deep chocolate brown to a bright copper but here's an attempt. Also this isn't the finished paint, it's had no polishing, once the cream and the black line are done it'll all have another two or three coats of lacquer to lose the join lines between colours.

Well, all the nicks, dinks and chips were sorted and I'd got it primed yesterday, so it would've been plain rude not to stick it in the booth today and give it the first layer of what should be a fittingly disgusting colour scheme. No pictures yet as it's air drying overnight, I've made the mistake of baking a plywood body before, it pops air out everywhere from the layers and cause little bubbles in the finish around the edges. As long as it's hard enough to mask onto I will hopefully get the second colour on tomorrow. On the microphonic pickup front, I'm not sure it is. It's quiet without excessive noise from body handling. Tapping or talking into the pickup doesn't really do anything and the only thing that makes a sound of any significant level is plucking or tapping a string. The coil certainly isn't just rattling around inside the housing.

How has nobody suggested getting a bass vi yet? Get a bass vi. 🙂

Cor look at that beauty, isn't she erm....... er......... well....... oh would you look at that, someone's at the door, gotta go! 😁

Don't these have a floating bridge? I'd bet the bridge is just slightly in the wrong place.

I like that, I'll have to remember Etsy. 👍

Ooh you absolute biatch! 😁

This is what I think, but it's very well blended together on the main run of the neck. Also there's ply and there's ply, this isn't going to be shuttering ply for a bit concreting. But as @Reggaebasssays, you can't see it on the shoulders of the head or heel end where you'd think it should be blindingly obvious. Either way, as I said earlier, it's still stable and straight after nearly half a century so it'll probably be alright for another couple of years.

What, the painting? 😄

Oh yeah, these are definitely made from the finest Taiwanese shonkywood.

I've been looking at the neck and can't decide if it's ply or not. Certain things say most definitely ply but from other angles it looks like a 'normal' neck. These look 'normal', Where as these look like ply, and these two scream ply, Also when cleaning the gunk of the fretboard it reveal a rather nice wood pattern, but I think it may just be the stain coming off a cheap wood that's been stained to look like rosewood. I quite like it though. Also, who needs frets that go all the way to the edge of the fretboard, possibly a result of the 'plek' treatment these clearly went through. 😂

Well whadya know, it's a '69 😆 Pulled it all apart ready for refinishing, I think I have a colour scheme in mind but we'll see what stupid ideas pop into my head today. The heel had a balsa shim superglued to it and after a bit of scraping the numbers were visible. The bass was disgustingly manky under the controls and scratchplate, and some quality routing of a plywood cavity. All the hardware has been cleaned and the scratchplate will be polished tomorrow, being careful not to remove the Kay logo, everyone needs to know what this beauty is. Talking of such, does anyone here make waterslide logos for the headstock? I want a gold Kay logo on there as well.

👍 I think it's meant to have a weird L shaped bridge with a bracket through the A and D strings to screw the ashtray to.

Yeah I've got an Hohner Arbor Series fretless P with a ply body and it's just perfect.

I don't know yet, I'll be stripping it down later so will let you know, I'm guessing it'll say 1969 though. I'm always amused at the absolute contempt for a plywood body or neck but the self wetting excitement of a multi-laminate construction. As far as I'm concerned, if this is from the early seventies and the neck is still straight with a good action then that's a decent neck construction. Of course it's cheap shite but it's made it through nearly half a decade and I'm going to show it a bit of love. The money side of it doesn't matter, it's a bit of fun. Folks happily spend money down the pub on a few drinks or a meal with nothing to show at the end, I'll have a good condition terrible bass at the end 😂

I'm not sure I like your tone young man! 😂 Are you suggesting my lovely new bass isn't really worth bothering with? 😉 Haha, thanks for the info, I know it's a bit shite but that kind of why I like the poor thing. We're having a bit of a quiet spell at work and this'll give me something to potter with. It'll be lovely when I'm done, just wait and see. 😁

Also notice the red painted on fret markers on the wrong side of the neck, I didn't even see those until I got home. 😆 Silver flake would look kool and suit the kitschness of it.

I was thinking along the lines of surf green, or something 50's and pastel. 🤔

The bridge is in the wrong place as the seller said he can't get the E string to intonate and the spacing is all to pot, as you can see by the G string nearly hanging of the edge of the board. It'll need a new nut as the one on there has been filed for a lefty and then just left as is when put back to righty, so G string in an E string sized slot. But with a new nut and bridge I can narrow down the string spacing to how I like it.

That's right word puzzle lovers, that's 'new what the f**k have I bought this for bass day'. I saw an old Kay bass listed cheap enough on Facebook just ten minutes away so I went to have a look. I really quite liked the look of it and fancied another little project (like I'm not trying to do enough already) and expected it to be awful. But it looked OK, good frets, reasonable action, all original parts bar the bridge, and when plugged in I was even more surprised, it didn't hum, crackle or buzz and sounded really good, apart from a fairly non existing tone control. We had a chat and it turns out it is a righty, but was converted to lefty and then put back to righty, hence the upside down painting of the hotrod (yeah I don't know why you would either). Anyway it looked and sounded so good that I bought it, it's great in a kitsch, tacky way but I don't know whether to refinish it in a totally different style as per original plan, or try to remove the painting and just restore it. Also if anyone knows from the serial number what year it is that would be interesting, calling @Bassassin 😉 Here's the awful thing in all it's, erm glory? 😂