Bassassin

I think the neck shim's a consequence of the swapped bridge - the original would have sat in a shallow route which appears to have been filled & the replacement just plonked on top. Action's pretty brutal although the saddles are bottomed out by the looks. These were rare basses so finding the proper bridge would be close to impossible - and even if you did, you'd need to re-route it. It's also been de-fretted (which won't help the action) although that looks like a decent job. Pity - first 5-string I ever saw in the flesh & played was one of these.

Ah - becoming restless following a weekend with no updates, are we? Patience my pretties, patience...

This is the Marathon 6 that Eastwood Guitars have recently released a knockoff of: https://eastwoodguitars.co.uk/collections/hooky-series/products/hooky-bass-6-pro If they can charge £1300 for what's a mass-produced Chinese or Indonesian copy, I wouldn't want to try and guess what an original 70s Marathon 6 would go for.

La Guillotine has claimed her bloody prize.

It's disturbing how many Americans spell it 'Rickenbocker'. Which is, inexplicably, how they say it. I've seen Ebay ads for both 'Squizz' and 'Squirt' Precisions, so I think I've pretty much got to give a pass for a bit of harmless transposing!

I really like that scratchplate design - nice nod to the original 1950s 4000 in some of the contours, and a huge improvement on the ugly afterthought Rickenbacker have been slapping on their basses since the 60s. The pink Retro's actually due an overhaul after the scratchplate I made started delaminating & the top pearloid layer started peeling off! Slightly redesigned pickguard, also new pickups & bridge might happen too if I can find anything suitable. It'll be keeping its head, though!

Slight progress update - I have a design for the re-shaped vestigial head that I think looks pretty damn sexy - it's now down to my (non-existent!) wood-hacking skills to see if I can replicate it in reality. Think I'll keep it under wraps until it's done... Messing around with the tuners, I found that they're a lot smoother with two nylon washers fitted, downside is that the size of washers used on the units doesn't seem to be available in nylon, although they are in steel, copper & aluminium. Back to the grease then, unless I can successfully trim larger washers (which I already have) to size without them looking a complete mess. Wouldn't be surprised if that's pretty much exactly what it is - Steinberger neck, hardware & electronics transplanted onto a Rick-shaped body.

Sold for £360 BIN, re-listed as Washburn - which in fairness is pretty good for a Washy Status these days. Bit rough & ready but if it's structurally sound should tidy up OK.

Would be fine for £70. Really don't know who bids on things like this.

This will definitely have conventional string spacing & neck proportions - I'm pretty sure only the 70s Fakers had correct Rick string spacing. The Hipshot bridge has adjustable spacing, although they do cost a fortune these days. I think I'd be inclined to go for a decent conventional bridge, Schaller 3D or something. Apropos of nothing, if I was doing this one I'd take the opportunity of binning the scratchplate (which I think is a horrid design that spoils the look of the bass) and put an original 50s 4000 style one on. In gold, obvs. 😎

Haven't listened to the demo yet but looking at the design and construction of the instrument, this is a fascinating design concept. It's a genuinely spectacular leap of imagination to look at a basic BBOT bridge and go - let's make the entire bass like that! Slightly more seriously - I don't find it attractive to look at but if this was £160 (as a BBOT bass realistically should be) rather than £1600-odd, I'd be all over it!

So anyway - I made a thing: I think that constitutes a proof of concept - everything's nailed on, everything looks straight, everything seems to work. A couple of niggles - the tuners are very, very stiff - albeit I have not yet smothered them with grease as I don't want to risk oily splats on the unfinished wood. The other is something I didn't forsee - the ball ends on this set of strings (the old ones that were on this before I dismantled it) slip out of the tuners unless the ends are laid horizontal. Not too important - I've had bridges that did this before (the Gotoh on an Ibanez SR800 I had didn't like small balls!) and it's easy enough to place them flat. The ends on these strings are fairly small & rounded so it likely won't be a problem with other strings, but if push comes to shove I can slip washers over them like I did on my old Ibby! Very pleased with this so far, I have some ideas for reshaping the headstump, & I'm starting to think this could be quite special when it's done.

It is - Laurus use individual clamps behind the headstock for the string ends. I thought about doing something like that with my block clamp on the back & the strings going through ferrules like the Laurus, but I don't think there would be the physical space for it.

Probably a bit beyond my skills - and more importantly the tools & equipment I have to hand! A big part of doing this mod is to scratch a headless/full-size body bass itch. I've actually got 3x 80s era Steinberger style headlesses (they don't take up much room!) but don't have a full-sized one. Since I'm not realistically going to pick up a Status S2000 from the car boot, or even a Hohner Jack for the £150-odd they used to go for, it's Bastille Day for this one... A bit of a progress update - fitted the string clamp thingy yesterday, & trimmed the truss cover to fit under it. I then became preoccupied with ideas for re-shaping the headstump into something that would look pleasing and maybe in-keeping with the look of the bass. Imagine if the otherwise-stunning Laurus Quasar had a headstock (or whatever that is) that followed the lines of the instrument, that looked like a continuation of the design, rather than an incongrous, wonky lump of plank stuck on the end? It can be done. I'm certain of it.

They're similar to the ones I have, but not identical. The individual units look significantly smaller and more like these guitar-sized ones, which are all over Ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225011987719 Not identical but pretty close, the diminutive size means that you have to intonate these by moving the entire unit. Mine have conventional saddles mounted inside the units. Here's the Ebay ad I got mine from: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203735338271

Gotcha. Unfortunately too late now as I've drilled, & created rebates for the underside saddle screws I mentioned. Filling holes & re-drilling wouldn't be much hassle but the rebates are another matter! Although having compensated for the original incorrect positioning, it should all intonate correctly as long as I don't go crazy with extreme gauges - which I don't intend to do. Btw I'm a little embarrassed to admit I didn't know that, considering how long I've been mutilating basses & guitars - thanks for the info & I'll know better next time I swap a bridge! They're somewhat bigger - internal diameter would need to be 13mm, external no more than 16 to avoid potentially fouling the body, so they're very specific. I did spend an hour or so searching for compatible bearings but with no luck. No need to do any reshaping on mine as the tuners overhang by a few cm. I presume that despite the Rickish shape, the proportions & relation between body & neck on mine are quite different to those two. Comparing the Wesley to one of my MIJ Fakers (which is probably pretty close to the original), the Wesley body's somewhat scaled down and the fretboard heel set back a little. It's also 34" rather than the correct 33.25, which 2 out of 3 of my MIJ Fakers are. Anyway, today I will be mostly working out optimum positioning for the string clamp thingy, and might even screw some bits on & string it up. If the thread becomes ominously quiet, take that as a sign that I've bu99ered it all up in a monumentally catastrophic way, and bunged the lot in a skip...

I'll try not to disappoint anyone by getting bored & wandering off again. That might be a challenge... Anyway, some drilling has happened, also some gluing a bit of scrap wood inside the battery compartment, as the front screwholes for the D & G tuners just happen to be right over the route! Fortunately there's enough space under the battery box to add an extra 5mm for the screws. Speaking of screws - I have every expectation the ones provided will be made of cheese, so has anyone got a source for decent raised countersunk Phillips types? Stainless might be nice... @SpondonBassed - if I understand you correctly, that's exactly where I am with the positioning of my new units - 17" from the 12th fret is exactly in the middle of the saddle range. The original bridge was a little too far back (although the G intonation was pretty much right) and the new ones are 5mm forward to compensate. @PaulThePlug - sorry to disappoint - but it's going! As it is, I already have 3x 70s MIJ Fakers and a glittery pink Retrovibe, all of which have proper Rick-shaped headstocks, so something a bit different appeals more than what would (IMO, obviously) be a bit of turd-polishing exercise. What you're suggesting would, I think, end up looking like the weird headstock used on the Shine RK2000 Faker - back when Faker makers thought a 'non-infringing' headstock would make them immune from John Hall's C&D letters: I'd assume Wesley thought the same... As it happens, I've come across a couple of other headless Fakers over the years, both of which are custom one-offs rather than modded basses like mine: Both of these are bolt-on & feature carbon graphite necks - and IMO great examples of Rick-inspired basses that aren't really copies.

Saw the title & assumed - 'black metal ABBA covers'. But no - obviously that'd be Abbatoir.

I've had this sitting around for years, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. It's not really a Rick copy beyond the body shape but that meant that the retailer, a fairly short lived UK online brand called Wesley, rapidly got a C&D letter from Old John Hall & panic-flogged all their stock of these for £99. And I bought one. It's called a Wesley Europa, and used to look a bit like this: It's a nicely-made through-neck bass with a 3-band active preamp, 2-way truss rod, flamed top & wooden body binding. It's also got one of the most inappropriate afterthought headstocks I've ever seen on a Rick-style thing - and I've seen a few. It's a nice-playing & decent-sounding bass, meaning I did gig this quite a lot when I first got it, which quickly highlighted a significant problem - the finish that's been used everywhere other than the nice, shiny top. It's basically had a thin coat of matt black applied onto bare wood over the entire body & neck - and this just comes off, on your hands, on your clothes, anything you lean it against - everywhere, any excuse! I don't have any pics of mine at the time but this is one that turned up on Ebay quite recently - mine looked just like this after a few weeks of use! So I temporarily retired it with a view to refinishing it and maybe making that headstock a bit more palatable. Dismantling it & removing what was left of the black 'finish' revealed a rather pretty neck-through construction underneath: It also left me with a dilemma regarding the headstock - I've re-shaped a few before with pleasing results but there's so little space to improve this, the best I could come up with design-wise was pretty much an Ibby Soundgear lookalike, which hardly seemed worth the effort. Hacking the bloody thing off was a more appealing idea but way more complex than I'd originally planned. So as is my wont, I got bored & wandered off, and years passed, as they do. Converting this to headless stayed in the back of my mind & probably about 10 years on, I started seeing affordable & potentially useable headless hardware in the form of cheapo Chinese individual bridge/tuner units. I'd previously thought about that 'Overlord Of Music' Hohner clone system, but that would involve routing (I don't have a router) and relocating or abandoning the battery compartment, which is directly behind the bridge. Anyway, I recently came across some nice looking individual units branded 'Guyker', hit the buy button, and this is what turned up in the post a few days later, direct from Weifang, China, for the princely sum of about £45 delivered. They look halfway decent & seem to be pretty well-made, I think the machined components are brass under the paint, not sure about the cast saddles etc. The lack of thrust bearings is a bit of a disappointment but with a sufficiency of lubricant they should hopefully be functional. Setup is likely to be a bit of a fiddle with the saddles needing to be positioned by hand then locked in place with small & inaccessible allen screws, but likely to be a do it once then forget it task. The head-end string retainer won't win any prizes for stylish design, but it's very solid & the two clamps per string certainly mean business. The plan is - obviously, I hope - to lop off the ugly bit (which I accept might be subjective) and re-shape what's left to be functional and not look like a complete bodge/mistake. I've previously been nonplussed by, and critical of 'headless' basses that retain a sort of vestigial flap where the head should be (Laurus springs to mind) but paradoxically, that is exactly what I intend doing with this! There's an element of necessity - the string clamp requires a bit of 'head' to be mounted on, and I also need to leave space for truss rod access. While it's tempting to make this as minimal as possible, the proportions of this bass mean that the tuners will overhang the end of the body by a good 2-3 cm so it's going to have to live on a wall hanger or neck-supporting stand, rather than be bunged in the corner. So my necessary flappy end bit will keep enough of the 'flare' of the old headstock to do that. Assuming I can cut straight. So now we come the the nailing stuff together & hacking bits off part - I haven't done anything like this in some considerable time and it's a bit daunting! First things first - position the tuner units accurately. I marked saddle travel positions from the original bridge on the body - the new units have a little more range and will be a few mm closer to the bridge pickup, as G string intonation was at the limit of its movement on the old bridge. Measuring from the 12th fret after marking the new saddle positions, the mid-point between them turns out to be bang-on 17". Which is reassuring! Having measured everything (hopefully!) accurately, I made a template for screw hole positions for the individual units, giving 20mm string spacing, same as the original. Using the same template I made a plate to sit under the tuners to conceal the old bridge mounting holes and the earth wire which will link the units. It's less than 1mm thick and should not adversely affect string height. A minor irritation with the tuners is the presence of a screw which sits proud of the base of each unit. It limits the travel of the ball-end retainer to stop the unit falling apart - but also stops it sitting flush on the top of the bass, which is irksome. So in order to make them screw down properly, I'll have to create a row of rebates for the heads to sit in. Lacking suitable tools it'll be down to my ancient Dremel knock-off, a steady(ish) hand and a sense of relief that the resulting mess will be covered by hardware. OK, time to work some wood - out with the blowtorch and nailgun, and onward!

To be fair, nothing's screwed together there - it's just the parts laid on the body.

Not a DA, but I just posted this in a different thread. It's so heavy it generates its own gravity & weather systems.

Need to dig this one out & stick it on the wall, maybe with some colour changing LEDs behind it. It'll never be played in anger - it's utterly back-breaking and the neck's a piece of trash the shape of the fat end of a baseball bat. It'll look great hanging up though. Assuming it doesn't pull the wall down.

Misplaced decimal point, Shirley? Although £7.50's pushing it a bit.

The bridge is the same one on many headless Washburns, for some reason (pointless overengineering?) there are 2 intonation screws per saddle. A Force 42: