The Guitar Weasel

So experiments in how easy this finish is to remove. I had 500ml of 99% acetone as a tester amount ... and just over 250ml stripped this C bout. It was fairly unpleasant ... I used Mirlon grey 'Scotchbrite' style pads to agitate the finish as I soaked it in thinners ... and it came off in lumps like toxic toffee. Be aware if you do this acetone is HUGELY inflammable so don't smoke ... work with gloves, a mask, ideally overalls, and most important OUTSIDE. I did this test on a hugely hot day - so the bloody lacquer was solidifying as the acetone evaporated in seconds! I stuck to the bass like a huge fly trap several times! Stage one got me down to what I would imagine is a tinted sanding sealer. Like 'Fullerplast' on Fenders Stage two ... another light wash with acetone and a light sanding once dry and the wood has arrived! Stage 3 .... 5ltrs of acetone on order!

Now to proper neck shaping with the first of my vintage tools a Stanley 10" spokeshave. Bought for £14.00 on eBay ... you will have to pay an awful lot for a modern tool as well made. Nota a Footprint (made in Sheffield) scraper in use too. Old, well made tools, if they are looked after, are a resource we can pass on to the next generation. In a throwaway world they feel wonderful in the hand and do a superb job. The neck is getting there ... and is WAY lighter! The brilliant news is that acetone rips off the old finish on the body beautifully ... so game on! Next the bridge gets the attention of my Stanley No 4 smoothing plane. This one is my pride and joy and gets sharpened and stropped till I literally can shave the hairs on my arm with it. It leaves a surface that barely needs sanding.

Yep those exterior patches are pretty horrible - I'm actually guessing that's a skint owner repair somewhere back in the distant past rather than a professional fix. They certainly look very old. I see a fair number of guitars and basses through my workshop that started off high end - and then as they got more battered - gradually moved down to less and less well heeled musicians. There's an old saying 'don't buy a luxury car from someone who hasn't been able to afford the maintenance' and this is sort of true of musical instruments too - especially the more complex and difficult to repair ones. Because of the possibly necessary cheaping-out on the repairs in its past this poor old bass is going to need a lot spent on it. It would be a shame however to see it some sort of sterile ornament in a corner.

Just ordered some acetone to start stripping the finish - The look I really want to go for I think is like the black Gewa Rockabilly ... so a violin-burst in satin black. Something that will hide some of the old girl's battle damage but still allow her to look old and funky. My thoughts are to use a NGR (non grain raising - alcohol based) black stain on the stripped wood ... bursting out to near pitch black at the edges and allowing the centre of each panel to 'pop' slightly. My intention is probably then to use Tru-Oil top coat with multipole wipe on layers to build up a satin sheen - finishing off with a flatting grey Merlon abrasive pads and a wax polish.

So I went fast and dirty to see if 'Frankie' (for Frankenstein due to the bolts in the neck) as I've christened this bass would go 'bang' when strung up. I put in the new, shorter neck bolts and their captive nuts and tightened everything down - secured the machine head plates with cable ties ... as the peg box needs a bit of fettling before they will sit flat. Rough slotted the nut ... but just left the top of the bridge flat ... stood up the soundpost, put on the tailpiece - and then rootled about in my box of spare bass strings for something not too taxing for a patient recovering from major surgery. I had a set of green Weedwhackers that I bought as an experiment for my Stentor bass ... er ... they were not very good: super quiet and with no note definition on the E string ... but hey, they were only £30 and being low tension wouldn't over tax a bass coming to terms with being a bass again! I taped on the side access panel as a temporary fix (I've already made an inner lining ring so the hatch doesn't fall inwards) - and got on with stringing up! I didn't bother to cut proper bridge slots - this would just be a fast proof of concept, I didn't even shape the bridge feet - just whack it all on and crank her up. Plenty of time to get fancy with finish and setup later ... but only if the poor old girl doesn't implode! And she didn't! She went straight up to pitch and stayed there ... well as much as Weedwhackers do! First impressions - no rattles - no buzzes - and MY GOD SHE'S LOUD I mean even with crap strings she's 50% louder than my Stentor with good ones! It's mad ... she's a shallower and narrower bass but something in her construction just kicks out volume in spades. The tone ... in so much as you can tell with Weedwhackers is rounded and punchy ... quite jazzy for pizzicato but with a big woody slap for rockabilly (probably courtesy of that huge slab of Ebony. Not as 'metallic' as my Chinese made Stentor in the slap. All of this with an unshaped bridge and a nut that still needs refined - but the old girl has spoken for the first time since the late seventies - and it's a very pleasant voice. I'm going to do a 'Mussolini job' as the repair guy in the music shop I worked in in my teens used to call it: string it up for the weekend and see if anything falls apart. And next week the neck will come off for proper shaping ... and I will start to look at finishes. 😁

Yep that back is quite gorgeous fiddle back maple ... stunning ... Take it to see an expert and let us all know the result 😁

The Cobras ... though we have no new video up yet ... but if you want to book us ...

Lol we use Accu quite a bit ... they are a really good solution for difficult to find things - like tiny M1.6 Allen headed cap machine screws ... we use these to replace drilled out rivets in some old Hofner pickups when we rewind them ... as we invariably have to! Handy on some old DeArmond stuff too.

So I had to engage in a glue fight to get the fingerboard glued on ... hide glue everywhere including my bench, the floor, my hand towel, countless rags to clean up squeeze out ... er and my eyebrows! So from this ... to this ... A couple of hours on the bass before work today - went in for 7.00 as I wanted peace and quiet to do the glue up ... with no phone ringing! After 'gluemageddon' and a couple of hours of clamping ... Neck bolts snugged up to a pair of temporary nuts ... and technically the bass could be strung up and tested tomorrow ... but I've a few more things to do yet. The nuts are temporary as I found the stainless steel neck bolts I had bought are about 10mm too long to tighten fully ... gurrr ... more on order from Accu. I glued in the nut and started doing sone assessment of how much needs to be trimmed off the bridge feet to match them to the belly curve. not much as it goes. Looking forward to hearing its first notes in perhaps 30+ years soon. Then it'll be looking to a re finish.

To my understanding the sound post should be gentle push fit ... enough to keep it in place while string tension goes on certainly - then it is clamped by the belly pushing in under that string tension. This bugger ... and it should be the right one as it was inside the bass ... was not even a push fit ... unless you jammed scrap wood under one end. Someone in the bass's past could have put a wrong sound post in - lord knows. But the post should be firm enough to be able to take all the strings off and it not fall over so long as you keep the bass on its back and don't bounce it around. I will be cutting a new one.

Well it's solid wood - and to my eyes is rather pretty. From my limited knowledge it looks like it needs taking apart to cleat all those cracks properly - The crack at the neck heel needs investigated and I certainly wouldn't risk stringing it up with that nasty top crack. I really don't know the value 'as is' here, but I would imagine it would be considered 'beyond economic repair'. Someone would almost certainly buy it in that condition as a project. It could be turned into a nice bass but doing that won't be cheap. As you'll see from my own repair saga here - even fixing a relatively modern laminated bass is a complex and very VERY time consuming thing. I would put it in front of a real expert, I'm not one of those - but my impression is that if you are a bass player or intend to be then it well could be worth your while spending possibly into four figures to get it sorted properly ... it's actually a hauntingly pretty bass, even with it's obvious disfigurements and in it's time looks to have been something rather special.

So the evil day of cutting the 'access' hatch came. I'd racked my brains to find a mechanised way to do it ... but there was simply no way. This was going to be protracted and painful. I made up a saw doohickey using a chopped off coping saw blade ... with a screw holding it into a little handle and waded in. I used a school compass to mark out a circle, a tiny drill to slot a starting hole and found to my surprise that the C panel was only about 1/8th of an inch thick. This meant that I could only cut on the back stroke ... ie the wrong way ... and it took a very very very very very very long time ... and absolutely crippled my wrist! Mr Blobby had clearly been about with the glue inside! And done And a new sound post will need to be made ... the original wasn't even a gentle push fit ... it took a bit of 1/4 inch scrap wood to get it to wedge into place. Something has shrunk methinks! Well it comes to us all with age I suppose. I shall make up a reenforcing flange to glue around the access hatch (probably three or four laminations of thin ply) and due to the really thin nature of the C panel I will have to make some bracing ribs for the hatch cover - as well as a decorative knob (ooer Missus) to be screwed onto it to facilitate easy removal against the pull of the ring of neodymium magnets I intend to set into the flange and hatch cover to keep it in place and stop rattles.

Well not all strings render a bass super loud - my 'bumped' Rotosound 4000s are really quite polite (bumped meaning the bottom E has been replaced by an A string tuned down, My A string has been replaced by a D etc across ... with my G replaced by a C intended for 5 string use). I don't really need a loud bass acoustically as 500w of backline gives plenty of oomph when gigging - and you can easily talk over me playing pizzicato jazz noodlings in our lounge ... not slap however ... that's a bit more antisocial. 😉 Plus if I'd known how much the female of the species goes for double basses and indeed double bass players - I think I might have started my career on the doghouse!!!! Imelda May's 'Jonny Got a Boom Boom' isn't too far from the truth - my Missus christened my big blond bass 'Bessie Boom Boom' by the way.

A strange effect I found too is that double basses are extremely wife friendly - in other words as a guitarist of many many years - and being careful how much kit I brought into the house - I was a bit concerned how the huge bulk of a double bass might be viewed around the house - well most specifically in the corner of the lounge. When it arrived my wife said it looked like a beautiful piece of furniture ... and of course it would look great in the corner of the room (on a Hercules bass stand). Result!

Thank you ... 🙂 Double basses are huge fun ... there are very few musical instruments that are as much of an experience for the senses as 'doghouse'. You have so much body contact with your bass that you 'feel' what you are playing in a way you simply don't with bass guitar. With a band - you can rest on your bass between numbers ... or give it a hug ... or if you are of my persuasion a twirl it at opportune moments - or play it at a jaunty 45 degree angle. For Pizz learning good right hand technique will help prevent pain (plucking things like your average Fender Jazz bass will cause blisters and very little usable volume for example). And if it's any more encouragement - my rehearsal and gig transport is an tiny and ancient Rover 25 - my bass travels happily in its soft case - upside down in the passenger seat with its seatbelt on - my amp rig in the boot - and space for one passenger (or one and a midget ☺️) in the back seat.

Actually I think that's why it's easier to come to double bass if you're not an electric bass player first. They are radically different instruments.

Well I've been putting off drilling the tuning machine holes .... it's basically a horrible job ... I used a 14mm twist drill bit in a variable speed power drill ... going as slow as I could, and eyeballing the correct 90 degree angle of drilling. Easy to go wrong, so slow but sure was the way. Well after a grimly intense 20 minutes I had the holes drilled and the tuners trial fitted ... only to discover a problem ... the rollers were WAY too long for the width of the pegbox. Not only would the holes for the steel rollers have had to go all the way through both sides of the box, but even then the tips would have fouled the brass plate on the other side! This is galling as the neck and tuners were supplied as a unit and clearly supposed to be fitted together. See image below ... the plate furthest away was stood off about 1/4 of an inch with the 'bearing hole' drilled as deep as I dare. I did however still have the set of tuners I replaced on my Stentor bass stashed away ... which, while individual on the Stentor as opposed to set and 'all on a plate' with this set ... the rollers were also 14mm diameter and fitted a pegbox the same width as the one on this Chinese neck. As luck would have it the tuners were identical except for the Stentor ones rollers being brass and actually fitting properly. RESULT!!! So I swapped the rollers over between sets and everything fitted perfectly! I could of course have used my bench grinder to shorten the steel rollers ... but who wants to work that hard? I think keeping the brass theme is nice too. I trial fitted the nut as well and was toying with the idea of gluing it in place as an 'end stop' to make the positioning the fingerboard for gluing a bit easier and faster. Still not decided on that one. The end of the fingerboard has been cut slightly out of the 90 degrees so I'll have to address that first - whichever order I fit nut and fingerboard and nut. busy busy busy 😁

I was going to say ... similar. Unless you are renting a high quality bass for orchestral work - I'd be inclined to buy a 'beater' bass to see if you like it. My Stentor was £600 second hand and I could get that for it again tomorrow if I wanted to sell it. There are usually a fair number of £600 to £800 basses on the dreaded FleaBay - and occasionally you see a bargain around the £400 mark. Provided these are sound you won't lose money on them - rental is just pouring money away for something that isn't yours in my book.

Through last summer I was giving 'getting a gigging band again' a real serious go. 've been a guitarist for 50 plus years, but the pressure of my (music industry) business had pretty much forced me out of playing live. When I finally popped my head out of my shell and decided I fancied climbing back on the horse ... I discovered that nobody much seems to want a guitarist - however experienced - in his sixties. No matter that apparently I can pass ten years younger - it appeared the boat had sailed on being able to form or get into a worthwhile band ... and I wasn't counting dead end blues jammers etc. I'd already made the move away from rock and metal that I'd played for so much of my gigging life - opting to blay rock and roll and rockabilly on my Gretsch - but still I couldn't seem to get anything off the ground. Then in a fit of absolute madness ... I simply went and bought a double bass. Well to be fair I had a couple of beers and put a bid in on one on eBay - and shocked myself rigid by winning it (a blonde Stentor 1950 for 600 quid on super good nick). When we finally collected it the enormity of what I'd done sunk in ... it was fecking enormous, and fitted with steel orchestral strings - or finger destroyers as I prefer to call them. But it was beautiful and I was smitten. In the picture you see my first attempt to find better strings for the rockabilly I wanted to play ... green Weedwhackers. The G, sounded quiet but great, the D sounded quiet but great, the A sounded a bit muddy but largely good ... and the E ... oh dear. I could play a scale up the E string and hardly tell any of the notes apart until I got up as far as A. Awful ... just an amorphous 'bloop'. Anyway I could take some of my 'guitarist plays bass' patterns and scales and make them sound halfway okay (to my untutored ear at the time). So I advertised for a rockabilly band who needed a doghouse player. In the meantime I bought a Shadow Rockabilly Pro preamp and made a switch to Rotosound 4000 strings ... and instantly 'hello E' I'd missed you! My next shock was getting an audition with a well established rockabilly band who were without a 'slapper of the wardrobe of doom'. They gave me a half dozen numbers to learn in advance - and to my shock I was in! Then came learning around 40 numbers (standards and originals ... and actually being able to both slap properly and consistently ... and be able to improvise. On the way I 'bumped' my Rotosounds for an even more supple feel and actually started to feel like a bass player rather than an imposter. So fast forward eight months ... I'm now the bass player in a very tight rockabilly outfit ... I strive to be better, but I can cope with pretty much all that's thrown at me - including the odd bass solo. I own two double basses (one that I'm rebuilding in another thread here) and a halfway reasonable amp rig. This isn't through being some hyper gifted musician - it's through me being stubborn and never giving up even when I'm well in over my head. I hope others who maybe don't feel like anyone wants a muso over 60 might take a bit of heart from this ... it's pushed me on so hard that now I've also started an 'originals' punk band as a guitarist and songwriter (and oldest member) as well as being the 'bottom end for the rockabilly outfit. When you get older ... just work smarter.

Thank you - I had a bit of spare workshop time - so I did a bit in the day today ... makes it zip along when you can knock a couple of intensive hours off the total ☺️

So ... shot the face of the neck level and smooth with my trusty Stanley No 4 plane. It's still thick as a tree-trunk but I will sort that after I've glued on the fingerboard. First time it's moved as a unit with the neck bolts in ... no nuts yet (oooer Missus) ... but the fit and neck socket were tight and tidy enough for me to lift the bass. Checking all is well with the bridge height ... and should be no issues. So in preparation for drilling the tuning box peg holes I disassembled the tuners and mounted them as a template. The holes are 14mm so I've had to order a bit specially ... bah! Couldn't resist a quick shot of her looking a bit more like a bass again - yep the cap heads of the neck bolts will be let in ... luckily with the same 14mm drill as needed for the tuner holes - happy day!

My regular daily work is in either building new pickups to customer's sometimes strange requirements - or restoring valuable PAF pickups etc from the 50s ... this stuff is like big Lego! Seriously though ... it's meant to encourage not 'put off' - I think any reasonably competent DIYer with some hand tools and who is willing to learn (there are lots of bits and bobs of knowledge available online) can do as well or better than I have here. Patience and an eye for the end goal are the most important things. I was born a bit stubborn ... that helps too ... man went to the moon when I was a kid, I refuse to believe I can't fix a musical instrument that's essentially made of tree!

So this is where we are now - The neck joint is fully trimmed and VERY tight fitted - it's gone back to the correct depth leaving exactly 27.6mm of overstand as per the original. The underside of the fingerboard end to belly is also exactly like the original - this is testament to my grandfather and father's advice measure a job twice - have a cup of tea - then measure twice again - then have another cup of tea to think about if you are actually doing what you need to be doing: the four measure/two tea method (or coffee if that's yer bag). So the possible order of the the list of jobs still to do: 1. Scrape a small amount from the bass side of the neck heel face to correct the slight wonkiness of the original neck pocket that had the fingerboard way off centreline. 2. Bore the pilot holes in the neck heel out to 8mm and cut the wider area to sink in the cap head stainless bolts and washers. 3. Shoot the face of the neck with a sharp hand plane to prepare it for the fingerboard. There is a verrrrrrrrry slight back-bow ... but I will try to leave a bit of that in to pre stress the neck back a tad to resist string tension. 4. Glue the fingerboard to the neck - hot hide glue, properly warming the neck and fingerboard to extend the 'open time' - and I'll co-opt an assistant for that job as it has to be done fast and right! 5. I'm pretty set on an access hatch in the treble side cutaway - so that will be next probably. 6. Making the neck inner clamp plate - yep I'm going to try that method: a plate bored and tapped M8 and secured to the inside of the neck block 7. Fitting tuning machines to peg box and some much needed final neck shaping ... the replacement neck is like a tree trunk! Then technically speaking the neck can be bolted on, the end pin, wire and tailpiece installed, the bridge shaped and fitted, the nut fitted - the sound post re installed ... And if I want to I can whack a set of strings on there to see what I have! Yep I'm going to refinish her ... but I think it's worth putting the old girl back under tension for the first time in I believe over 40 years to make sure she doesn't go BANG before I spend a lot more time making her look beautiful!

So while I'm waiting for the neck bolts to arrive I might as well do a bit of tidying up. The bottom front edge of the bass had taken some nasty damage to the laminations - but all easily fixable. I sawed down some birch ply down to one lamination and let it in with hide glue and then scraped with a cabinet scraper. I'm not worried about small gaps and visibly repaired cracks - I'll mix some fine powder birch sawdust with glue and fill the cracks. Okay the finish is buggered in this area ... I could touch it in - but I'm leaning towards a full refinish. The end pin hole had been reamed out massively and was also at the wrong taper for the new endpin - it nearly fell into the bass! So I made and glued in a liner from thin mahogany stock And I'm using the incredibly slow method of bedding the endpin into the hole by double stick taping sandpaper around the pin ... it works well and is way cheaper than an end pin reamer - still got some to go! I've ordered an ebony saddle to replace this ... er ... 'wood' one 🙂

Neck fit is getting closer - this is all hand tools shaping so it can't be rushed. Looking a bit rasp-rough at the moment ... but lots more wood to come off still. One issue that has been highlighted is how bodged the previous neck re-glue was and how 'out' the original neck pocket was built. I wondered why the neck appeared to have been glued in without being fully seated in the pocket - in other words glued to the sides but not even touching in a lot of the bottom of the pocket. Well that would appear to have been a bodged attempt to face the neck properly down the centre line of the body. with the new neck properly seated and its mating face at exactly 90 degrees in all directions the neck and the fingerboard (strapped on with tape for the test) point way too far over to the bass side f hole. The whole neck pocket must be out of true with the centre line. The solution is to plane and use a cabinet scraper to deliberately take the back of the heel down on one side - thus pointing the neck/fingerboard once more along the centre line. For those into tools - the lion's share of the wood stock removal on this project has been done with the 'rip' side of a 250mm Japanese Ryoba hand saw. I really can't speak highly enough about how good these saws are. Maple is hard - and a bitch to hand saw - but not with one of these. The Ryoba cuts like a sharp breadknife through a fresh sourdough loaf ... so satisfying.