ped

Unfortunately the slant is so slight that I can’t really make that argument 😂 it did cross my mind though

Thanks - I must admit having never taken a tuner apart or replaced one before I'm fully ignorant in the ways of the tuner. I'll have a look at how things fit together and see what needs doing. Another option is to have the Musicmaster neck defretted, giving me the option of the Mustang ebony neck which I could leave as-is.

Better now I've attached a strap to it that goes around my head

Thanks to the most excellent @Burns-bass I am now ready to celebrate the hootenanny!

Yeah I think it'll really show off the wood nicely - but will see what the luthier says. I'm only interested in it because it looks so nice but the more I read about it the more I'm leaning towards leaving it alone - if it needed some work anyway then I'd be leaning towards it but as it is - I'm not 100% sure. The material varies so much so I'll see what Steve says, what he has experience using, and go from there. Currently the relief is about right but I'll wait until it's finished to put my favourite and slightly heavier strings on it, and the new bridge. These strings are OK but I've forgotten how 'grabby' non coasted strings can be. All in all I'm really glad that the main parts function so well before the modifications/corrections take place. It also needs shielding, badly. Lots of hum when not touching anything but silent when you do. So: - Bridge is on the way - Neck needs coating - Musicmaster decal to be applied - Pickup surround on the way - New wiring loom being discussed (likely pan/tone with series/parallel option and possibly second capacitor mode - Shielding - investigate using original tuners (maybe) - Learn to play

Care to test that theory? 😄

I’ve got a dilemma now though. Recently picked up a fretless to match the fretted but it’s faded to nearly yellow. It’s going to be impossible to match a strap to it, and because I use a Backbeat it’ll be easier to have one strap for both. Gone for my old 90’s ‘Slapstrap’ which is super comfy and a bit of a classic

Updated pic with fretless neck attached

Maybe I need an angry parent to make me learn properly! RE the pickup surround - I talked to Tim at Gig.Ink https://gig.ink - despite offering a super cool range of designs, he was more than happy to do me a simple boring white rectangle. He sent 1:1 templates to test and we're all set. The bass looks quite cool with a surround around the bridge, too - so at a later date I might do that, or get surround(s) in other colours, maybe.

I think the lines are in the wrong place on mine

Yeah me too, at least this way I can use the bridge as an excuse

OK - the fretless neck is adjusted and the action/intonation is set. It plays beautifully - amazingly the intonation is pretty spot on - I can't get it exact because of the shared saddle arrangement, but the new Albridge will sort that. However, I will install that last, if I need to - I quite like the original bridge, so given the inaccuracy of my fretting, it might not need to be perfect. We'll wait and see. Along with the wiring harness, one other job is to correct the slight slant of the neck pickup. There's room under the pickguard to move the pickup by a few degrees, but doing so will necessitate cutting the scratchplate a little to make it fit. What I'd like to do is fit a bezel around the neck pickup, using w/b/w pickguard material in a rectangle, to go around the J pickup and hide the gaps left by the old position. I wondered if anyone on BC has the skills/time to make this, otherwise I could try a pickguard website (I have used tinyTone before with great results) It just wants to be like this, around a dimarzio J pickup

I sometimes wonder myself!

Precisely, so I can’t solo a pickup to check if just one cancels the hum. But from looking online it seems as though they definitely do.

Yeah that’s the sort of thing I was thinking of but then I saw a used version of the Soul Mate which seems to offer a similar set of features plus some useful additions. I really like FKY audio stuff (Had the Meridian Funk-u-lator made by the same guy but for Meridian guitars) so I’ll check out some more demos of it.

The original neck. It sounds like I should leave the truss rod alone when storing this, correct?

Fretless neck is here. Bolted on (first time I’ve done that) and tuned up. It’ll need time to settle but it sounds brilliant! I’ll leave it for a day or two as currently there’s a bit of back bow so once the strings add some force the other way it’ll either be right or need some truss rod adjustment. The fit and finish of the ebony board replacement is great, I think it’ll come up really nicely with some epoxy.

I'm going to have a fretless bass again soon, so I'm thinking about my pedalboard setup. My current pedalboard contains the following: Filter - OD - Fuzz - Bassballs - Comp - LPF Occasionally I put an octaver in the loop of the filter. Thing is, apart from the comp and LPF I probably wouldn't use many of these with fretless, but I don't really want to make a second board and have to bring both. I don't want to bring several extra pedals to put before or after my pedalboard either. Ideally, an all in one fretless pedal would work well, that I can bypass for fretted but switch in things as required. I've been toying with the idea of a multi fx, from the Zoom Multistomp through to a Helix, but those options are either possibly under or overkill! In my search I found this Trex 'Soul Mate Acoustic' The selection of effects are exactly what I'd like on fretless. Reverb, chorus, looper, comp, para EQ... this could happily go between my fretless bass and my pedalboard. It seems as though it would be great for bass - the para EQ frequency centres make sense and none of the effects are necessarily ones which would rob low end. What do you reckon?

If you haven’t seen it in ‘build diaries’ I’m about to turn this modified Musicmaster into a lovely fretless.

I’m not 100% sure but I might be right in thinking these dimarzio pickups are hum cancelling? I can’t solo either pickup to check but I think I read somewhere that this is the case - a happy accident if so, particularly as I’ll likely favour the bridge pickup for fretless. Can anyone confirm?

Musicmaster arrived today (amazing service from Rich Tone Music, Sheffield). Plugged it in, and it’s a blast! The weird electronics mean I get both pickups only but at least I know they both work. It has a really rich growly sound and it feels great. Neck is straight, possibly one or two high frets but no major issues. I can get the action very low and even the janky bridge allows near enough intonation. It’s a bit heavier than the Mustang but still light. The finish is really very yellow indeed which is lovely in person, more yellow than I expected but quite faithful to the pictures on the listing. The cream pickups look lovely against the body and I can see why the dimarzios are so well regarded. The finish seems to be a polyester coat although it must be quite thin as it’s worn away in places. It definitely fees and looks more like poly. Being ‘72 I think that checks out. It’s clear that the bass has been loved and thoughtfully modified thus far. It’s definitely been played and loved, and even though I’ll be making a few changes I don’t feel like I’m rescuing a basket case. Looking forward to the next step - fretless neck comes tomorrow, so I’ll put that on and give it a go although without pickup pan it won’t be ideal, but enough to give me an idea of the final sound. I have the new bridge on the way from the USA and still thinking about the wiring. Early Sept I’ll pass it on to my luthier and get cracking. In short, I’m relieved that the bass is ok. Much better than expected and I’m super excited to see how this ends up!! Not sure what sort of strap to get for it, as I have a wide RightOn strap for the mustang which matches perfectly. Maybe the same in black with a yellow stripe. I’ll also need a spare clip for the Backbeat. Then another pedalboard. Yellow stage clothes. The list goes on…

Take a crime number and bye 🙋🏻‍♂️

I ended up getting the Albridge linked in the first post as they messaged back and said they had one ready to send. The Halon guy is away from today for a few weeks so even though I’m not in a rush I went for the Albridge which worked out about the same price.