Mod_Machine

We are opening for Foreign Office (of NME awards tour fame) with further support lent by the very cool Dead Models. [b]Wednesday 26th Jan[/b] or for something a litte less city bound we also have an intimate little pub gig at the :- [b]red lion in Stevenage on the 27th Jan[/b] or for something a little more chilled:- [b]The White Loung, Ivory,Hitchin Sunday 30th Jan[/b] OR a quick visit to recession proof Milton Keynes 7th February: where we will be supporting Glasgows 'Phantom Band' as part of their album support tour. Definately beats rehearsing!

Hi - GT85 is similar to wd40 but leaves a coating of teflon to aid lubrication, unlike wd40 which is just a disperser. eg in mountain biking its great for levers, cogs etc as displaces the dirt and moisture that cause rust but leaves teflon down which helps lubricate and reduces wear. Surely the switch being a slider is a moving part running over a sensor, or completing, the circuit? icastle, It thought the earth was the length (originally a long piece of solder) running from the volume control to the bridge? (its been cut in the pics) I now understand by what you mean by dodgy soldering - explains why my mates soldering looks so much better on the jack socket he soldered in front of me! So best is to change the cables and re solder pretty much everything as a standard = not hard. If im doing that is there somewhere else better to solder the slider switch earth - or is it not really needed? This is supposed to be a very simple passive job and i know that when other people have taken Jedson to guitar techs with noise they have regularly been told it has been miswired at factory. Cheers for the support and understanding

Hello, Been a user for a while, and guess its time i exposed my sub standard playing to the real pro's. [i]Kilto Take were due to release a debut ep called origins of science about 12 months ago but our lead singer walked (and is dead to us now) so the label pulled it. [/i] The lead guitarist had singing lessons, we wrote a whole new set that was for us rather than the label, and fortunately the label didnt drop us! Fun but exhaustive 12 months as also moved house and had a baby. Things are looking up for the band now though with very favourable reviews of the EP, a few 'tipped for 2011' accolades and randomly the Huddersfield Examiner even favourably centred on my playing as the strength in the band - which was nice and now makes Huddersfield my favourite place ive never been to ! [url="http://www.kiltotake.com/music_video.html"]http://www.kiltotake.com/music_video.html[/url]

'Perhaps I should point out that I don't think moving the button will have a big effect either way. ' Probably right - just one of those things i thought id ask to be save rather than sorry - another of those 'wondered but always been afraid to ask in case i look stupid' questions thats seems both meaningless and simple! However good to see both a little science and personal feel behind the responses so i feel a little less ridiculous!

Oh - and when you say the soldering looks suspect what do you mean (just messy or wrong places?) , and how would that impact in what way? (sorry for niave questions but the resto project is supposed to get me involved and find out things that previously i didnt know but was too afraid to ask at fear of looking stupid!)

Hi, Original plan was to replace the pickups and all wiring, but i dont now want to replace anything i dont have to. There is no noise at all when selected, so with my 'mechs' head on ill start with the cheapest thing and work backwards, replacing all the cabling, then up the 'chain' of replacements to get rid of the noise. Not a rush for me to remove as a) a resto only when both switched to off and i never switch my pickups off anyway. I think ill get a much better idea as to how bad the sound is once hooked up to an amp now i have strings etc on. As for cleaning the switches - i know that WD40 is a bad idea as doesnt lube - but would GT85 work (leaves a layer of teflon)?

Oh - how/where do i sort that out?

Hello, Doing an old jedson tele bass resto. Iwas well aware before buying that the two main issues are tuning/intonation and noisey electrics. [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=119103"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=119103[/url] The intonation seems to have been sorted by acknowledging that the bridge is supposed to be a floating space roller bridge, but for some reason they were bolted to the body when manufactured. However the electronics are another kettle of fish. I havent played it yet - however all elctrics seem fine (supple wires etc) and i have replaced jack socket. Certainly appears to be wired up acoording to a standard pasive wiring diagram. Without it being attached to the bass i plugged into an amp (all pickups and electrics are held to the scrath plate) to see if noisey when nothing going through it. With either one or both single coil pick ups selected you can hear when i 'knock' or 'touch' the pick up with a small screw driver/biro etc. These are un noisey though will get a better idea when attached to bass and an earth run to the bridge. However when i slide the two independant selectors to the 'off' position it becomes noisey! the pick ups dont pick up anything it just gets a bit 'hissy'. Any ideas whats causing it and how to erradicate? (The thread above includes pictures of the electronics if it helps)

Ok - that makes sense. So best thing would be to strap her up, play it a while and see what needs to be changed, moving the button down towards the centre if the neck is diving to help balance it up if needed. Cool.

Cool - that would be good! Its a 3/4 small scale so not particularly heavy and has a 1 1/4 inch screw going in nice and straight. As its smaller, and im due to cover over the bridge pick up area with string cover i would probably be wear ing a little lower to compensate and allow me a comfortable arm position to dig in between the pick ups - the neck being angled up a bit would also certainly help this. Im guessing that due to this getting strap locks might be good idea.... I have used a red rubber 'bottle' donut on my jetking to keep the strap on that so if anyone else has any similar cheap alternatives to buying a couple of proper strap locks let me know!

[attachment=69855:restore_strap_pin.jpg]Hi - im resto-ing an old jdeson telecaster bass [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=119103"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=119103[/url] Although all photos ive ever seen of these little oddities show them as being quite central to the back end of the body, mine is placed further up and round a bit! Having already stripped and resprayed i know it has been like this from factory. Im contemplating re locating but first thought i would ask, is there an issue with it being where it is? Will it place undue strain on me or bass? Mod

Meant to say - i picked her up off the wall hanger this mornin and still in tune! very surprised. I do however have a question - every other photo of a jedson bass i have seen shows the back strap pin dead centre. However mine is up towards the curveture of the body. I originally thought this has been moved at some point but having stripped back to wood can see its been like this since factory! (Sorry photo taken on a bit of an angle) You can also see ive replaced the orginal bridge plate screws as the original ones were flat head and one had snapped off in the body at some point in the past. Therefore the whole bridge plate where the strings sit has been moved up appro 3 mil. [attachment=69854:restore_strap_pin.jpg] Im think about re-locating it more central. HOWEVER - is there any need to do so - will i put uncessary strain in the wrong area by leaving it where it is? ANY ADVICE WELCOME!??

RESPRAYING Ok after stripping i began the arduous task of repainting. I started by giving the whole thing a couple of coats of primer, sanded back with coarse then medium sandpaper. I then added three coats of undercoat, again sanded bewteen each coat. This was more to help with the leveling process. I then finished this off with another coat of primer, sanded back - this time to a fine level, and one last coat of primer. The last coat i sanded back with medium, then fine and then turtle scratch remover from halfords. I did this to give the primer a little pit of a satin sheen and ensure everything looked pretty level. I had originally set out to respray in the butterscotch cream colour, had over the last week or so decided that as i was now keeping it alot more oirginal than originally anticpated i would choose a non standard colour. I eventually settled on a TWEED GREY, as seen on classic minis that was both keeping in period for the bass and look very cool with all the chrome and white scratch plate. However on a whim i put everything back up against the bass and even though in primer could see the new wave flavour of a white bass, especially as the scrathc plate and nicely warmed over the years to a slightly off white. I therefore chose ARCTIC WHITE by NISSAN!! This was down purely to a nissan Juke being outside my house and the slightly less 'appliance' white glow appealed and made me think of the coulour a white would go after about 30 years if well looked after - just want im going for. I applied layer afer layer of the stuff and between each coat used an extra fine, super extra fine and then scratch removing paste to get each layer nice a buff and level for the next coat. all in all i must have applied 5 or 6 coats. I wanted it to show a little wear, along the contours where it would be expected after 30 odd years so looked at a 'pristine' japanese tele from the late sixties and copied the wear pattern...very very minimal and i havent been able to catch it in photos due to it looking like shine! To stop the paint sitting in these areas i had used a little wax. After a non stop day of polishing with extra fine sandpaper and scratch removing paste i was able to put everything back together. [attachment=69849:restore_full.jpg] Im sure you will agree it now looks lush, but the next important thing is set up. I didnt have a short scale set available though due to pick up some tom. Therefore i strung up with a set of standard spare nanowebs. Unfortuanately i had forgotten that all i had left were an old set that i kept in case of emergencies but i only wanted to see if the bridge would sit so i strung it up! [attachment=69850:restore_bridge.jpg] As you can see the rubber foot bridge system allows the bridge to shift around, and allows it to also angle towards the bridge pickup. I tuned yesterday and can confirm that the intonation can be altered using the manual back and forth bridge set up. However i havent set it up perfectly yet as the earth has to run out of a small hole under the bridge and attach to a very small nut and bolt design knocked up by mate who is a sheet metal engineer. This will allow the bridge to still move freely and maintain the earth. Til thats done im not keen to plug in! However no fret buzz and a really quick smooth playing feel which as a small bloke i really quite liked-more fun than professional feeling. Even the girlf was pretty surprised. This photo also gives an indication of the deep mirror shine i achieved-very happy. The other things i decided to do were to restore the original rusty scratch plate screws as i couldnt find any similar to hand that had a nice 30 year old feel - ie too chromy! I did this by soaking each one in autosol chrome restorer, then emptying into a cap full of the cheapest full fat Coke audi had to offer. Three hours later they were perfect! [attachment=69852:restore_screws.jpg] Certainly getting there now.

Hi, Good to see you on the site. Ive found it really useful over the last couple of years. I looked at a couple with a great deal more body damage than the new jack socket seat drilled into yours. They really do seem to sell on ebay - just recently one guy even listed the body and neck seperately.

ISSUES/SOLUTIONS/QUERIES INTONATION Ok so i unscrewed the bridge and know that once repainted that the bridge has to go back on. I have set the action and intonation on about 4 different guitars including a Gretsch Jet so happy about doing this. HOWEVER my understanding (in a brief synopsis) is that a bridge is set up so that up and down alters action, backwards and forwards allows you to get the note in tune when fretted on the 12th. Its nice and easy though frustrating and time consuming. So the first thing that hit me was the bridge fitted to the jedson doesnt have any springs etc to move each indvidual string backwards and forwards or even as a group/pair etc - only up and down. (have a quick look at original pick to see bridge as factory fitted) This would certainly explain the probs people have historically encountered with intonation on jedsons. I was going to bin this factory fitted bridge and get a standard fender style, after all if i cant use the bridge to get intonation correct what use is it. However im also commited now to using original parts as much as is viable so on a whim started doing a little internet research to see if there was anything else out there similar....maybe it was even possibly missing a part?!! After a few hours on friday morning i come across a picture of a Gretsch space control roller bridge (link below to a photo if interested) [url="http://www.gretschguitars.org/vintage-gretsch-roller-control-bridge/"]http://www.gretschguitars.org/vintage-gret...control-bridge/[/url] Look familiar? [attachment=69286:Image0480.jpg] A little more digging on the gretsch websites gave me the details on how these work. Its basically a floating bridge used by Gretsch in the 50s and upto mid/late 60s before being superseded. You manually move the high and low string ends of the whole bridge to get the intonation correct for those two strings, and then the rest of the strings should fall into place! Chet Atkins was a massive follower and fan of these and used them on all his recordings apparantly. Certainly hear no intonation probs there! The little rollers allow you to move the distance between strings which is both to help you play and also to further aid the intonation slightly if needed. The wooden lower arch helps it stay in place once strings tghtened due to the tension. All sounds cool if its a gretsch. So i got to assuming the jedson bridge is a cheap but direct knock off of this simplistic approach to intonation. (is it possible they even had old parts laying around from excess stock following gretsch moving away from this bridge?) Its a cheap design with a proven track record of working but at some point the methodolgy of the bridge has got lost and the factory have screwed these directly into the body so they stay straight, look like they are supposed to (even alot of the gretsch promo shots show them perfectly level though in reality they sit on an angle). Some are placed close enough for the intonation to be bearable, some are way off - leading to real inconsistencies in tuning between exactly the same model. My first ambition now is to see if this bridge can therefore be used in the way the design it has stolen is used. If you look closer at my jedson bridge above i have now added two very small rubber feet on to the metal base. Between these and the tension caused by the strings it should help stop it from moving around once in place but let me set the intonation each time i change the strings/guage etc. I believe the theory works but interested in what others think?

lol -im sure your not! My old man was born and bought up in Liverpool so had little choice who to play along to...and was a guitarist. not very succesful though - many years later when i was born my mum was so sick of hearing him play 12 bar blues she cut the strings off his guitar and banned it from the house! Yeah, i did a lot of research (well background reading available all over the internet) into Jedson - there is even an american fan site set up to them. The general concenus is that everyones first bass was a jedson and if they didnt turn you off the bass most players have spent their lives trying to forget about them. Biggest complaints seem to be inconsistent build quality resulting in:- [list=1] [/list]noisy electrics [list=1] [/list]Poor or complete in ability to tune, stay in tune or get into tune higher up the neck My next post (probably in a minute) will discuss my findings on both of these. However on the subject of the pickups i did my first 'contact' test with the pick ups plugged into a small 10 what fender amp. Picks up the noise me tapping the 'mock' poles nice and evenly. no exceess noise when one or both pick ups selected,which is better than expected. HOWEVER very noisey when both pick ups but to the OFF position. Any ideas? Also the pick ups have no springs keeping them from the body!! just nut and bolted straight onto the scratch plate. So could you give me more info on what you mean by isolating using rubber tubing (ie how and what!??) and also what wax potting the pick ups is? im afraid it means nothing to me! sorry! Cheers for the comments and interst guys, nice to know people are reading even though a really cheap almost pointles rebuild and certainly against the grain of the more interesting or worthy threads in this section. Its also helping me get everything into context and see what ive achieved since i took delivery Jan 12th!

Following the sanding of the body i wiped over with white spirit. I used this as less likely to cause swelling like water will if it gets into the grain when clearing out all that exess dust. NECK/FRETBOARD/HEAD I decided to use a little spit (not much) and polish (a little amount) on the frets and find out their true condition. After this i gave the fretboard a look and a little research on the internet later, gave it a good going over with mineral oil. it absorbed the first light coating like a recovering alchoholic bonzai tree so i re applied three coats. Last coat left i small bit of residue so i used a fast fret cloth to wipe up the excess. Im amazed as it looks like brand new and this sentiment was echoed when my mate came over to lend me his soldering iron. Really happy. However having removed the machine heads i found the new ones used a slightly larger enclosed mech and the holes needed enlargening by a couple of mil . To lend more control to this process i am conducting this by hand using a very small knife - ive got the time and find it a little like stress relief! As part of this process i have also decided to strip the varnish and little dinks and knicks off the head down to the angles so the neck, which has only a couple of very very small line dinks, retains its gloss finish which i find speeds up my playing also. When i did this it highlighted the join between the main piece of wood flowing from the neck to the end of the head, and the more 'scroll' bottom 1/4 which is from a joined piece. sanded back again from coarse, to medium, to fine and given a nice coating of mineral oil the head looks lush. It celebrates what this bass is all about for me, the 40 year old approach to design and build and encapsulates some of its history. But mostly it looks less cheap than a really heavily varnished glossy head, especially with the new chrome machine heads, and polished string tree. I have spent a night or two polishing up all the chrome that comes as standard on the bass, and soldered in a brand new socket jack. The chrome has all come up in better condition than that on my 18 month old ibanez jetking so im again both chuffed AND surprised. Finally i re-offered everything up to make sure there had been no unnoticed swelling or lost products before setting up the shed for body primering. [attachment=69275:Image0483.jpg]

Next up was to strip the paint. Had a nice big tin of nitromors so coated the top of the now accessory-less body. Approach was to coat top first, nice and thick and let it fall over the edge, then scrape back with a plastic scraper. I used a plastic one to try and reduce the chances of it gouging the wood. Turn over and do the same across the back of the body, again letting it fall over the edge so by time i came to strip the sides the nitromors already applied should have taken full effect. I left it on an hour and went to scrape it back however found it really hadnt caused any blistering and hadnt marked the poly gloss finish. Not to be deterred i re-applied and left on for 6 hours! Much better and left a few glossy bits which were easily sanded off. I think some of this refusal to budge may have been down to using a plastic scraper but i felt better to be safe rather than sorry - especially as the painting technique im going to use will rely on the quality of the surface its being applied to in order to appear of a specific quality. Im going to be using a technique ive used on my Vespa for some 'Small Faces' artwork. It is duarable but takes on the feel of a 40 year old mirror finish that has faded to a glossy feel (though not shabby chic or road worn). Idea is for it to appear unplayed and untouched but its age rather than brand new. [attachment=69273:Image0191.jpg][attachment=69274:Image0200.jpg] i had the same problem with the rear of the body which proved to be even more stubborn:- [attachment=69270:Image0475.jpg][attachment=69269:Image0474.jpg] In the end the back required me to carefully attack with a razor blade! But needs must. I finally sanded the whole thing down using first a coarse, then medium and finally a fine grade sandpaper to get it nice and smooth. The best treatment this bass has ever had - in fact its probably the best treatment a piece of marine plywood has ever got....but should be well worth it in the end. [attachment=69271:Image0477.jpg][attachment=69272:Image0478.jpg] Fortunately none of the damage had made its way down to the wood so all the cracked paint and missing 'lumps' were superficial and no filling required. Dead chuffed and amazing to think such a cheap bass has held up so well when its old enough to have been the instrument my own dad would have learnt to play along to beatles tracks on!

(Sorry for loads of posts in succession but this is to show all the work attributable to the last 7 days) Within a couple of days the jedson showed up and i got my girlf who was at home to take delivery. I got her to run over it with a fine toothcomb and relay every scratch and dink to me over the phone. Eventually i got bored, left work early to see what i had (it was a personal present for my b'day after all and i was anxious to start stripping! erm....i mean the wood not the girlf) Pleasantly surprised as the neck looks good and straight, truss rod is good (well there!) and all parts as described. Screws were pretty rusty as was the jack socket and the neck fret board looked pretty thirsty but other than a random fret right next to nut all the other frets looked untouched but like all the metal dull. nice thick layer of dust finished it all off. I thus carefully undid everything and was especially careful as expecting wiring to be brittle. [attachment=69264:Image0470.jpg] All the wiring was soft and although cheap (length of solder used to run through body popping out underneath the bridge as the earth for example!) all seemed in good condition. Knobs turned nicely and no cracks in the plastic casing. I took a couple of photos of the wiring just to be on the safe side incase any wiring came away so i knew where to put it back-though as a passive guitar not alot to forget. I was also armed with a hand drawn wiring diagram i found somewhere on the internet which looks about as useful as a ships biscuit and a rusty nail. [attachment=69265:Image0472.jpg][attachment=69266:Image0473.jpg][attachment=69267:Image0471.jpg] (boring pics i know - but evidence of my approach) The electrics are to be dealt with later though. By this stage (Jan 13th) part of me wanted to 'restore' this to a more factory look and keep everything as original as possible. As i was now swaying in my original plans when i removed each seperate part i took count of the old rusty screws, kept them, taped them up and segregated every part into a seperate small box labeled with contents and number of screws/parts etc. This ranged from the bridge, string holder and headstock string tree down to the fake truss rod access badge off the head! All quite anal i agree but is really helping me stay focussed on small jobs and not loose anything important! HOWEVER the one thing i did feel sure about was the machine heads. As one was gone, one bent and the other two had debatable usability i decided to replace with the first and last item that wasnt like for like. As the ones used on my ibanez jetking had proved so robust and i knew that everything i could do to get this to stay in tune would help i ordered 4 new ones to use on my jedson. Although not a straight swap they were still in keeping with the 'pawn shop' look of these old jap imports and ultimately i want it to be usable.

[attachment=69252:P1020595.jpg] This was the bass before purchase- pics are what i bought it on and a (thankfully accurate and honest) description from seller on basschat. However as the old saying goes 'you get what you pay for'! The following were the main areas of concern/initial concentration (body wise) 1. Headstock missing tuner (one also bent) [attachment=69257:P1020596.jpg] 2.damage to underneath corner [attachment=69258:P1020598.jpg] 3.damage to side corner near strap pin [attachment=69259:P1020600.jpg] However he overall plan is as follows 1.strip, fill holes/dinks and repaint in classic 'butterscotch' cream. 2.replace knobs for metal tele style 3.replace all machine heads 4.replace chrome bridge 'cover' for larger version and fit matching string/pickup cover 5.replace jack socket 6.replace 1 (maybe 2 pickups) as one of the small poles was missing from bridge pickupbut any new item would be hidden by pick up cover to maintain period 'flavour' 7.strip and revarnish neck and headstock 8.re-string and set playable action and intonation. Easy. But then nothing really ever goes to plan and so if all else fails i have a good bit of firewood or a nice blunt instrument for hitting myself with for wasting money. Although this project is not being done for re-sale and can therefore allow me with some freedom in what i purchase i have set a limit of £60 to get it up to giggable condition!

Hello, This is my first rebuild/project and i have no previous experience of anything similar and have no friends who have attempted to restore an old instrument which can be used as a reference point. I am therefore been guided pretty much from one book, the internet and of course this sites friendly members! The aim of this rebuild is for me to get a better idea of the instrument i actually play and a better understanding of how to upkeep the 'real' bass i have been gigging and recording with (Ibanez Jetking). The hope is to be able to get it back to a condition where it at least offers me a back up should i have a problem with the jetking i cant quickly get sorted. Even though i have heard nothing other than how horrendous the Jedson telecaster bass is, and even though i know they are approx 35 years old, dont hold their tuning particualrly well AND are pretty much seen as the worst of some of the jap imports i have been totally swayed by the fact its such a rip off of the telecaster shape (my fav of the guitars at the moment). I love all the over the top chrome pickups and strange bridge. the fact that its small scale also means that although my little girl is only 11 months - when she does finally get big enough to want to learn to play - i have something small enough to give her and even more (cheesy i know) it will be something i built with her in mind. I started lookign for a jedson about christmas and though looked at a few (which im sure you can imagine were in varying states of decay) i settled on one sold through this site by a very good member. Everything was exactly as described, and the seller was very honest and fair so not unhappy! Photos to follow!

Hi, Im doing my first resto/project bass with several aims. Its not a big deluxe thing, just a Jedson Tele style bass, but does represent my first attempt and therefore much of my knowledge is being gathered through reading relevant literature and experience (ie repaint) is coming from other areas of my life (vespa, classic mini ownership) I was wondering if anyone is interested in me going through the process as i go, even though pretty much heralded as pieces of jap tripe that dont stay in tune? It would certainly help me out as when i encounter probs it gives some context and im sure there will be lots of input from people stopping me from making usual mistakes. If so where do i stick it?!! Mod