LawrenceH

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='1029556' date='Nov 19 2010, 04:27 PM']Is it the correct headstock (ie neck) but with a refinished body? Just looks to me (not that I've seen that many MM Jazz basses) that the headstock decals and MM sig look about right![/quote] No because the neck on a MM jazz is bound! Also I'd put money on those inlays being stickers. They just don't look quite right.

Poor George. This has been quite funny but I can't help feeling sorry for the guy. Bit of a spanner but perhaps he just doesn't really understand how these fora work. It's not like there's an internet driving test (nor should there be). Hope he doesn't feel too bullied and manages to sell his bass somewhere!

[quote name='silddx' post='1028905' date='Nov 19 2010, 09:30 AM']Should have just bought a bound neck really shouldn't I [/quote] Aye! What's the bass?

The only way I can think to achieve this would be if you could scuff the finish on the side a little bit, mask up very carefully and use a hard white lacquer, then clearcoat over it and polish to blend it in. Not sure how well it'd wear on the edge of the fretboard though. Probably work better on an all-maple neck since you'd clearcoat over the fretboard as well, might have problems on rosewood.

And it's back! But for how long? Now it's a 'Fender Jazz 'Marcus Miller' Custom built'. [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120649310703"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...em=120649310703[/url] That's surely just a flagrant a breach as before? It's no Fender custom shop job and it doesn't say 'copy' anywhere. Blatantly misleading.

[quote name='silddx' post='1028342' date='Nov 18 2010, 07:53 PM']Interesting, I find the BBs pretty warm, but I get it depends on your pups and tronics. I love the BBs and won't be swapping for Neons until they do the same coating as the Neons in black.[/quote] The BBs are certainly a bit more middy than the uncoated Hi-Beams (swapped between both on the same bass for direct comparison) but for me the growlier the mids the better - so I was hoping that a coated string based on the Sunbeams (reputedly warmer) would suit me down to a 'T'! I agree though, I don't fancy the neons on my newly-refinished MIM 70s J as it would totally wreck the old-school vibe I've spent bloody ages trying to perfect - oh vanity! Was wondering about the silver stars, hoping they look roughly like normal strings.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='1028407' date='Nov 18 2010, 08:48 PM']Got a look at it before the listing was pulled - definitely very shonky. Not certain, but didn't it say "Marcus Miller [b]style[/b]"? Wonder if it was one of these with a dodgy sticker: [url="http://www.bachmusik.com/en/music-instruments/bass-guitars/model-bach-bjb-s"]http://www.bachmusik.com/en/music-instrume...odel-bach-bjb-s[/url] Jon.[/quote] It did say 'style' but had a signature on the headstock and no indication that it was a homebrew so was clearly someone on the make. Wasn't one of those Bach basses as the inlays look genuinely inlaid on those, and they're bound necks (also do they even do a red one?), but that's a pretty cool find!

[quote name='malcolm.mcintyre' post='1027646' date='Nov 18 2010, 09:40 AM']What's wrong with MarkBass?[/quote] Nothing, they use decent drivers and were among the first manufacturers to use good quality lightweight poplar ply. But not everyone likes their signature sound which is quite modern and up-front - I do, I think they're great! The price is a bit of a sticking point though...

I have to say all my stock single coil basses have buzzed like angry bees if next to anything electrical, and this is often alleviated by my touching the strings - meaning I'm earthed through the guitar. I'm sure this could be improved by careful shielding and earthing but it seems pretty normal based on my experience. Could well have an earth issue, but otherwise maybe he's just got a very well-shielded strat?

[quote name='Macko1968' post='1027573' date='Nov 18 2010, 08:07 AM']Red, no Badass & a 4 bolt neck, wtf? [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/FENDER-JAZZ-Marcus-MillerActive-Bass-/120648935912?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item1c173ca9e8#ht_500wt_1156"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/FENDER-JAZZ-Marcus-M...8#ht_500wt_1156[/url][/quote] That looks like a fake - there's no binding on the neck and the 'inlays' look suspiciously like stickers to me. Don't know how the signature ended up on that but it's not a MM neck!

[quote name='silddx' post='1028024' date='Nov 18 2010, 03:19 PM']Hello mate, [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=109677&hl=DR+NEONS"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=...amp;hl=DR+NEONS[/url] They are great strings, as all DRs are. They are rich in the mids and bright sounding and BRIGHT LOOKING! Even in ordinary daylight they are incredibly lively The coating is said to last 9 times longer than previous DR coatings, eg Black Beauties which are what I usually use.[/quote] Very interesting - do you know if they are available in non-neon?! I have Black Beauties and have been very impressed with them, but was thinking I'd probably prefer a bit more mid-warmth from something like the Sunbeams, but I'd like them to be coated as it seems to make a real difference.

[quote name='Vibrating G String' post='1027383' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:15 PM']I feel when considering something an investment you can't compare it to what you paid for it but but the performance of another investment you could have made instead.[/quote] Definitely. If you really want a bass but think you might sell in future and fancy recouping your cash, then get an old Fender. Otherwise, your gamble will have better odds of a great return investing elsewhere. Having said that, if I could find a 1981 gold on gold jazz at a decent price and could afford it, they've got to be future classics! That one that's always on ebay is lovely but just too expensive. In ten years though, they'll be 'worth' the asking price.

[quote name='Beedster' post='1025571' date='Nov 16 2010, 10:00 AM']+1 It's not quite all original, so I'd say you're looking at £800 max. Fullerton RIs are great basses though. C[/quote] What're the non-original bits?

[quote name='Doctor J' post='1026745' date='Nov 17 2010, 11:35 AM']13 posts on funk P-Bass and no-one has mentioned Paul Jackson? [/quote] Completely agree. P-bass funk legend. But that live George Duke track is funky as - it's pretty much compulsively making me do the dirty funk head bounce on my headphones. Just hope no-one sees!

Personally I prefer jazz basses - but I still think you'd be mad to swap that P!

I'm sure these are all good suggestions. Add secondhand Yamahas to the list. Especially the BB series, or RBX374s - they go for under £150 and are great basses for the cash.

[quote name='funky_numba' post='1025352' date='Nov 15 2010, 11:41 PM']Hi all I'm a newbie to bass.. a few weeks so far. I recently bought a second hand 4-string bass (Wesley), put on new strings (Rotosound Swing 40-100). I'm having a problem with fret buzz... mainly with the E-string. When I slap the E-string it hits on most of the frets. Out of curiousity, I raised / lowered the saddles (yes, all of them.. oops), adjusted them back and forth, but this made no difference. I think that there is now too much action on the E-string and it's still buzzing. I had another thought.... the only way to solve this is to tighten the E-string, however that would make the string out of tune with the other strings. Can you guys please offer any help. I'm just guessing things at the moments. Many thanks!!![/quote] You may need to adjust the truss rod (but do this CAREFULLY following instructions from a decent online source, sure there's some around here) or it might be as much to do with your playing technique! I think when you slap, the E string's meant to hit the frets! Getting a clean slap sound requires a fair bit of practice. Honestly the best thing you could do would be to take it to a guitar shop and ask. There's gotta be somewhere in Glasgow that'll do a decent job cheap, and maybe even talk you through it as well. Factors that affect fret buzz: Low action height at bridge, or sometimes at the nut (rare that this will be too low). String type - some are lower or higher tension for a given pitch. Rotosound Swing are stiff enough that you shouldn't worry about changing string type because of that. Neck relief (truss rod should be adjusted to make neck straight under tension of strings, or with a bit of forward relief - no back-bow) Fret profile - sometimes you get basses where fret height is a bit uneven and this causes problems in particular positions along the neck. Technique - how hard you attack the string, the angle, and the position on the string will make a big difference. My bass is set up so that when I play gently it gives a reasonably clean sound but when I dig in I get buzz to give it more character, but in a controlled way.

[quote name='Simmo' post='1025257' date='Nov 15 2010, 10:01 PM']Just my little fender rumble practise amp, i'm not sure if it is the electronics, but it's not just the low output i don't like, i prefer the jazz sound [/quote] Could always p..p..p...pick up a secondhand P pickup! Sell it on if it doesn't do it for you and you won't lose anything if you're careful, and it could really change the sound of your bass - you might find that it's not so much the jazz sound you like, just a 'better' sound! But something like a secondhand SX jazz would be a good option, they seem to go for a pittance. Similarly a secondhand Farida might be a good bet if you can find them, not very well known so don't hold value as much as the Squiers. If you go Squier, I'd take the VMJ over the CV as it has a bit more booty in the tone department IMO. Plus they're generally cheaper

Tapping against the alder body of my MIM jazz with and without the rather thick polyester finish on (see build diary!) I thought I could hear a difference in the top end. Since putting the new finish on took so long compared to stripping it, I can't really say whether it has changed again. And I don't know if that difference translated to the amplified output. I remain firmly on the fence.

[quote name='steve-soar' post='1025075' date='Nov 15 2010, 07:42 PM']I worked in a custom builders shop for a few years and that refin is on par with what we use to do. Except that you really should use an extractor fan and 3M masks are useless. Brilliant stuff.[/quote] Heh you wouldn't say that if you saw the outside of the mask! Although yes, I realise it doesn't help with the fumes it was just to stop my lungs turning blue. Forgot to mention that as soon as the spraying was over I opened the windows full and left the kitchen extractor fan on full whack while I wandered off, which seemed to be pretty effective at dissipating the paint smell. Still far from ideal. I don't know what the solvent is in the Halfords stuff :/ Thanks for the compliment. Up close it's not quite there, certainly compared to the ridiculously glass smooth finish you get with the polyester finishes. However, compared to old nitro finishes which often seem to be a bit less perfect, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be as near as. And actually most of the imperfections will be totally invisible to anyone over 45 who isn't using reading glasses! All in all I'm happy with it, though for my next project (a knackered 80s Jap jazz which badly needs body filling) I think I'll be having a go with my dad and using nitro through a spray gun. It'll be interesting (read: infuriating) to see how well we need to prep the body for that one to get a lastingly smooth finish.

So that's where I'm currently at, I've yet to put the clearcoat back on the headstock, so fingers crossed that goes ok - but here are a couple of pics of the bass assembled to give an idea of the final appearance. Pickups aren't yet wired in, but they're Vintage 75s as seen in the US75RI, since I pinched the excellent MIM Vintage Alnicos it came with for my Japanese jazz. Once I've sprayed the headstock I'll have to wait at least a couple of weeks before buffing and putting the tuning pegs on to make sure it's hard enough and they don't bite into the lacquer. I'm also a bit concerned about the lacquer cracking around the tuning peg holes thanks to their tight fit and the fact that paint has got in, so I might sand out the holes a bit first. Same for adding the screw holes back for the pickguard, but I need a new drill first since the last one belonged to the previous house! Am a bit wary of doing that myself as I can see myself messing up at the final hurdle. Anyhow, I hope this tedious thread proves useful for anyone beginning along this road like me, and can take a place alongside the far better build diaries where people are actually making basses from scratch and all that (the mind boggles). Daphne blue 'late 60s/early 70s' inspired Jazz: [attachment=64032:DSCF1392.JPG] [attachment=64033:DSCF1396.JPG] [attachment=64034:DSCF1397.JPG] Oh, and if I knew how to rotate images either within basschat or on the annoying mac I'm using then I would! Meantime, just tilt your heads

Straight onto the colour spraying, this was where I had my first encounter with the pigment separation problems if you spray too thick and try to sand back. No matter, it just adds an extra day or two. Once I'd got a flat colour layer sanded back (4 or 5 coats I think, took me a while to get this right around the edges without sanding into the primer - next time I'll underspray the primer so the colour goes on as an overhang onto the curves) I had a go at adding a decal, from the excellent simon at decartdecals - his are great with proper metallics, not rubbish yellow like an ebay seller I tried. I wanted to go for a late 60s/early 70s logo because I think the retro text looks funkier and it suits the old-school colour scheme better even if, as I said, I'm not sure they ever made basses with this exact combination. Adding the decal, I found rather tricky. I got there in the end, more by luck than judgement, and with a few imperfections where the pigment flaked off in places but we'll go back to that later. Decal on, and a couple of light clear coats. Oh no! Orange peel as usual, but dust in the clear coat. Sand back. Cut into the decal. Try and rectify with gold paint. Fail. Epic swearing. Sand off, try again with the spare decal I bought (they aren't cheap these things!). Total fail, Simon's method of wetting the decal and getting a corner in place before sliding the backing off just didn't work for me. These things crinkle up and fold over like no-one's business, and the jazz logo is so large that it's unwieldy and easy to tear with only a modest amount of force (such as that exerted by trying to slide the card backing off). This time sanding off I managed to slightly cut into a layer where the pigments hadn't gone on even and, worse, around the tuning peg holes which had got a bit wet when adding the decal, the surface started to swell up! A useful tip, plug all holes when wet sanding and make sure you wipe them dry as soon as you're finished or this can happen. So there was nothing for it, I had to wait for the swelling to stabilise, sand level, go back a step and respray the colour layer. This time I also sprayed a couple of clearcoats before trying to add the decal to give me some mesaure of protection if I messed up again, and roughed these up after a few days. A couple of discount decals came through the post courtesy of Simon who I think took pity on my hamfistedness, but these were put away for the house move until a couple of days ago. Finally I plucked up the courage to try again and this time I found that using very large, soft-bristled paintbrushes helped handling the decal and it was much more easily worked when the lukewarm water-plus-tiny-drop-washing-up-liquid is really rather warm indeed, certainly at least body temperature. I took the decal off the backing underwater, layered it upside-down on a paintbrush and turned this out onto the already wet headstock (this time the tuning peg holes were taped over!). I then used very small, fine sable brushes to smooth out the logo, if it ever tucked in under itself I'd take it off with the brush and my fingers and start again. To start with it won't go completely flat but after a while as you work the water out from underneath, soaking up with a cloth at the edge as you go, it lies smooth and this time there were no imperfections. Phew! Pictures here are all from the first time round. [attachment=64028:DSCF1359.JPG][attachment=64029:DSCF1364.JPG][attachment=64030:DSCF1371.JPG][attach ment=64031:DSCF1376.JPG]

Next up - matching headstocks are in my correct opinion the nuts! I wanted one, so concurrently with the body spraying I had a go at this. First of all I sanded down the polyurethane finish on the front using a 400. I didn't bother trying to strip it off since it was thick, hard and actually made a really good smooth surface for paint application (much better than the body). Plus, this sanding didn't take away the original logo so it's underneath if for any reason anyone felt like going back to the original (serial number is on the back of the headstock anyhow). The hardest bit to start with was masking off the headstock well enough. I used bog-standard tape to begin with but later discovered that you can get special posh stretchy stuff for going round curves and things, which was much better. Nonetheless, thanks to the hard polyurethane finish and some very careful sanding back with a block, I got a good enough clean line on the primer layer just with the normal stuff. Up close it looks pretty clean, better I think than on one of the guitar garage blogs where he shows a close-up of a Lake Placid Blue headstock he has done. You can see in the following photos where there are some serious imperfections before sanding, these were pretty much rectified laterr as can be seen in the final pic (what looks like a white streak towards the left is just a trick of the light). You'll also see where I did go through into the wood a bit round the edges when sanding, this was a bit of a pain to get clean again when painting so if anyone else is having a go, when it comes to the headstock less is more - you don't really need to sand away more than just enough to rough it up. [attachment=64022:DSCF1139.JPG] [attachment=64023:DSCF1141.JPG] [attachment=64024:DSCF1143.JPG] [attachment=64025:DSCF1352.JPG] [attachment=64026:DSCF1355.JPG] [attachment=64027:DSCF1357.JPG]

Sanding back that colour layer was a real pain as I said. Eventually switching to better quality paper was the answer to prevent sand-through, and also (obvious tip to anyone but me) the harder the paint the better (so be patient and leave it an extra couple of days), and DON"T press at all hard especially when you're freehand-sanding around the edges where you can't use a proper block. The paper will do the work for you, pressing hard just gouges into it. Once I'd taken off the gross imperfections with 400, I think I jumped from 600 to 1200 in the end since this was the best quality paper I had, it worked ok though obviously it took longer than progressing through the grades. And I felt it was worth going up to 1200 rather than keeping it coarser. I've seen recommendations online that just use 400 but I suspect they're talking about nitro and my feeling is you need to take things finer with acrylic. So next were the clear coats. This was a right pain, the stuff seems to pull in dust like a black hole sucks in light, and it takes a loooong time to harden. As per the usual instructions, I tried spraying a couple of mist layers then added a couple more thicker ones but often, the mist layers would trap dust and I'd have to wait at least a day to be able to sand it out. In the end I started spraying quite thick just so I had a decent layer of clear down before any particles were able to settle on the surface, this meant it took a VERY long time for the paint to harden. Next cock-up: I did stupidly manage to cut back right down to the wood(!) when sanding out an imperfection around the back of the neck join. This was a major pain in the bum and taught me that you must never go onto autopilot when sanding! Fixing this was tricky, I had to sand back immediately around the fault, mask the whole rest of the bass off with tape and white paper and very carefully spray colour (didn't even try priming it as it would have been a disaster) trying to minimise the amount that got onto where the tape joined. The problem then was blending, partly due to pigment separation it's damn hard getting the colour to blend perfectly, especially when you're sanding a mixture of colour and clear coats. Took me a couple of goes at least IIRC, though much therapy has mostly blanked out the ghastlier details. In the end it wasn't perfect, but it was round the back and I hoped that more clear coat would in any case help sort things out once the thing was buffed to a shine (actually it did - woo!). At this point I was far too full of rage to take pictures, and due to various work commitments after sanding it down to 1200 I left it for the best part of a month to harden off. However that turned out to be a good thing because even though I left it longer than the two weeks recommended, it still wasn't really hard enough to buff to a high shine without issues. First I tried the Halfords rubbing compound which although coarse had worked well on an epoxy/polyurethane spray repair to my natural-finish Jap 75. It didn't do such a good job here, although things were improved somewhat when I attached one of those buffing cloths to my drill. T cut next! Better, but. But. I flipping well managed to gouge a couple of damn chunks thanks to the (*&^ thing catching and dragging round, didn't I? AND I overdid it around the neck pocket and took it back into the primer layer on the very edge. Yet another lesson in patience. I put the bass away again for another few weeks while we moved house (!) When I next took it out, it was moderately shiny but still with lots of scratches, not to mention a load of orange peel around the back and on the horns. As an experiment I tried 1500 wet paper followed by rubbing compound/T cut. This helped with the scratches, and I realised that ideally for an acrylic finish you should take it right down through the grades to 2000 if you want a properly good, glassy finish. But don't do what I did and go onto automatic pilot (again!) around the edge, going into the colour layer with a hint of flipping yellow filler coming through underneath (?!?). It's on the bottom, it's only evident if you look really close, and I've decided in the interests of sanity that it just doesn't matter enough to go back. So I also noticed that it seemed to come up to more of a shine this time - evidently the clear coat was still not fully hard when I did the initial cutting a month before. Probably due to spraying all those thick layers. Switching to a proper lint-free cloth also helped with the scratches (lesson - don't be lazy and use a yellow duster for the later bits) and in the end I was getting good results applying T cut with one pretty-much saturated cloth and giving it a good but GENTLE going over, before eventually switching to an 'off' cloth which took off the last bits of T cut and brought out the shine. One final thing, even though it had by now been left for ages, I got best results when there was a day or two between any more sanding and applying the T cut. One bass body, 'Daphne' blue: [attachment=64017:DSCF1388.JPG]