Velarian

Another Bowie one, with the Pat Metheny Group from soundtrack for The Falcon and the Snowman. This is not America.

This ^^^^ add a black pick guard and bring out that inner JJ Burnell 😉

I had some of those too, I was just about to say they looked like my cowboy pants when I was a kid 😁. Would have been mid-Sixties for me.

That looks like a good bass to start from and a bargain at £60. I’ll be watching with interest. Good luck with the build.

The top pick guard it is then. 👍 My decision to go with tort was two-fold. First, the vintage look and second @Stub Mandrel suggested in the basses on the settee thread that I should have some tort in my line-up. So there you go 😄

Thanks, I’ve just reviewed your thread. I like the idea of using string to get the bridge alignment with the edges of the neck and the pickups.

I’ll probably measure many many times I reckon.

First question to ask you guys: which pick guard should I go with?

Ha! “a fraction of the cost” indeed 😂 what started out as budget project has definitely grown legs. I’m in for a fair bit more than I’d intended. There’s some nice basses in the marketplace which I could have bought and still had change but never mind, the journey will be interesting and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot in the process. I’ve started reading up on bridge placement and measuring scale length etc., so I’ve already improved my knowledge a bit.

I’m sure that the true luthiers amongst you with time-served and well-honed skills will yawn at an imposter pretending to ‘build’ a bass by throwing a few ready made parts together, so apologies in advance to you fine craftsmen. Like many before me, I started off learning some basic set-up stuff and then swapped a few bits out here and there. As a result I ended up with some machine heads a bridge, some pickups, a pick guard and a couple of other bits and thought, all I need is a neck and body and I could put another bass together. I decided to go for a vintage P-Bass look and started to look for a cheap body and neck. I found a used P-style body on eBay which looked OK from the pictures, but when it arrived it was immediately obvious why it was cheap! It was so light I could swear it was made of balsa wood, the pick up routing and the holes for the bridge didn’t line up particularly well with the neck pocket. Never mind I thought, with a bit of filling and fettling I could probably make it work. Getting a cheap neck was less easy and, given that it’s such a key piece of the jigsaw, I thought it was probably worth spending a little more on that. I eventually got a used Fender licensed Might Mite neck which looks pretty good. However the neck wasn’t going to play nicely with the neck pocket on the body and yet more fettling with the body would be needed. As the body was going to be the weak link in this build I decided to abandon it and ended up buying a new Northwest Guitars P-bass body which arrived today. It’s like chalk and cheese and the new body is way better, a real quality piece. The neck fits in the pocket like a hand in a glove. One challenge is that it doesn’t have holes drilled for the bridge so I’ll have to figure out the best way to do that. I’m sure I’ll have many questions when I start to piece things together but for now, here’s all the bits: -

Awesome! I take it you weren’t tempted to do a “Cooking for the (Thai) King” version then? 😉

After around 3 decades of being in the care of a good friend of mine, I recently got my original ‘77 precision back and it’s just come back from the luthier reunited with its original neck, a new nut and nicely set up. It was originally a maple fretboard which was replaced with fretless ebony board by the Kincade Brothers In the early eighties.

Was prompted by tonight’s Classic Albums program on Sky Arts to revisit Steely Dan’s Aja. What a great album that is.

Got a second wiring loom with knobs from John, this time for my P-Bass project. Not fitted yet but the workmanship is first class and with CTS pots and a 1uf capacitor it promises to help deliver that vintage tone I’m after. Excellent service as always.

I’d love to hear Mark Egan’s bass part from San Lorenzo, the first track on the first Pat Metheny group album. I learned what I thought was a reasonable stab at the opening riff and thought I’d try to play along with the track to develop it further. The bass Gods we’re having none of that - don’t get ahead of yourself there sonny mi lad! The biggest problem is that the lowest note is an Eb. Is that a good enough excuse to buy a five string? 😂

I’ve seen this quite a few times when doing searches using the additional search options.

+ 1

It’s hard to beat that black/black/maple look IMHO.

I have a chrome version of the Gotoh bridge on one of my basses and it’s a perfectly good quality piece of kit, as are the machine heads I have on another bass. In both cases better than the Fender equivalents they replace.

I agree with this

And now they’re back! It’s like the Hokey Cokey 😂

I’ve just noticed that the marketplace section now has thumbnails in the topic listing. I really like that. 🙂 Edit: now they’ve disappeared ☹️

I’ve just noticed that the marketplace section now has thumbnails in the topic listing. I really like that. 🙂

BTW the MIA bass edges my MIM bass for feel.