Longwheelbass

Huge gaps

I've had two Mocha or Walnut finish 74 P Basses since I moved over here in 2018. Both were killer, and instant regrets when the bills came a knocking. But the second one came back a few weeks ago after doing a bit of a tour of the countryside from South to North and back again after I covid-sold it... At almost 8 lb 8 oz with a B neck and that lovely tone that drips out of the factory windings, it's cool to get a second chance at keeping it.

Water damage.

It's a 74, but no-one likes to be 86'd...

All original except for the £10 Chinese made pickguard. The link above says 1986 but the ad actually lists it reasonably accurately as a 78 - but the S8 serial numbers could be found on headstocks up to 1981.

The dude is a frickin conman. It's a 74 neck. The body MIGHT be earlier than 74 due to the stamps in the neck pocket which were definitely not in any 1974 neck pocket but more likely 1968/69/70, in fact I have owned a couple of 1968 Telecaster Basses with the 42909 stamp in the neck pocket, and the almost totally faded out red band being very common in the 68-72 P basses, attributable to a specific paint supplier - by 72 Fender had sourced a much more UV resistant red paint which was less susceptible to fading from exposure to sunlight. As a parts bass maybe 2.5k max.

No problem Paul, will do.

No hum, no faint blue glow in output tubes. Thank you Sandy. And yes I should check my total upload count. I'll bet that's it...

Doggoes are family! I can't get any images to upload on this site any more for some reason, no matter how small I shrink my images to I keep getting "too big" notices, but anyways, the tubes are all glowing normal, they're all new and all look good but there's zero signal getting through to the cabs.

Sorry dude I've been out of town for three days - our vet is over an hour's drive from us and one of our dogs has just had a massive surgery, we had to stay closer to the vet and we've just got her home with a 10 inch long scar in her belly. The amp issue has gone on the backburner, but I will have a closer look at it tomorrow. I appreciate your offers of assistance, I'll fire it up tomorrow morning and check the visuals on the tubes. I did fire it up a few days ago after you initially asked and noticed that there is zero signal of any kind getting through to the two 15's. No hum, nothing. But did not look at the tubes. From memory last time it ship itself the tubes were a-glowing.

Thank you Paul. Will run some checks. I should mention I did check the fuse when it quit a few months back, and the fuse is fine.

Well the 73P and the 66J were my two best. The P came in one piece, the J took a couple of years and came in seven pieces from seven different donors. If I don't get back into the workforce soon, the 73P may become the worst purchase!

Thanks Spyder! That's two for Darren.

Hi Paul, yes they are pretty basic, and I'm an electrician by trade, but don't have enough amp knowledge/schematic experience to trust myself, nor do I have a cap discharger and all the other tech tools the amp men have at their disposal, plus the 135's have the extra twist of the ultra-linear output transformer, which isn't much of a difference I guess, especially not to the guys who work on em for a living. What it did initially was simply stop volume-wise. It remained powered up, tubes getting juice, standby still engaged, it just stopped converting bass signal to dB's. So I took it to this guy's place who I'd been recommended to, with a cab and a P Bass, set it up in his lounge and it worked perfectly. He had a fiddle with it, we couldn't get it to fault. So I took it home, continued using it at home for a few days, then it quit again. Back to his place, this time DOA. So left it with him, and it dragged on for two years, him trying to get it to fault, then eventually he just started changing out parts as he couldn't get it to fault. In the end, it sounded amazing with fresh caps and a new set of tubes, but like I mentioned, a few months after he'd finished the job, it quit in exactly the same fashion.

I found from Reggae's link that Steve the Ampman is a 45 min drive from me and he seems to speak my language. I'll give him a bell and see what he's got to say. The last tech replaced a ton of caps and seemed to know what he was doing - I did spend time at his place, but he wasn't exactly well set up and his health wasn't the greatest.

Wow cool man, thank you! Will trawl through that list.

So for brief periods over the last couple of years I have revelled in the luxury of owning two 135 Bassman heads. I only ever run one at a time, one is more than enough with two single 15's - it will shake ship off the shelves if you dial channel and master vol up to 5's. But about 2.5 years ago the silver grill cloth one in the pic above up and quit on me stone dead. I was recommended a tech north of me, I'm in Exeter, and it took him 2 years to actually repair it. I must have driven the 45 minute trip to him around ten times over that timeframe and every time he had a new reason for it not being ready - after calling me and telling me "it will definitely be 100% done on Wednesday/Thursday/Friday..." you get the picture? Finally around 6 months ago he had it finished. I picked it up, took it home, played it for 5 minutes and it quit again. he came out to my place a couple of days later, I fired it up and it ran perfectly, he hung around for an hour and it was absolutely fine. He left, promising to fix it again if it ever shipped itself again. Of course, three months later it came to a dead stop AGAIN and now I want to find someone with their act together who can diagnose it and fix it - I'd even drive to Bristol or Plymouth if there's no-one else close by in/around Exeter. Anyways, it aint going back to that guy...anyone have any recommendations for guys experienced in CBS era Fender tube amps in East Devon/Bristol/Plymouth?

The 'bird is badass, will look even more so with a black guard.

Those guards are the short-lived printed tort guards that started showing up mid to late 74 and ran on through to 75, they didn't get a lot of them but they did go out on quite a few P's over those two years. If you ever get to see one up close you can see the primitive pixellation pattern they used to create them. I don't think they were that appealing so the bulk of sunburst P's in those two years ended up with black guards.

That "65" Jazz decal looks a little Letraset Here's a 66