Mediocre Polymath

Around the time that I made the decision about Marylou's neck, I was putting in an order with StewMac in the US for a different project. So I added a thing called a "steam needle" to my basket. This is essentially just a long, hollow 2-mm-diameter needle attached to the end of a length of rubber hose. The idea is that you attach it to a source of pressurized steam and use it to heat the inside of glue joints. (I believe these days luthiers have mostly swapped over to using foam-cutting hot-wires, but this was still the standard tool back then). I didn't have a source of pressurized steam, but I figured I could find a manky old espressso machine or something. I hit paydirt about three months later, when I was idly looking around a local charity shop. I think the staff were a little baffled when a customer loudly exclaimed "PERFECT!" and skipped to the counter grinning and carrying a crappy carpet steam-cleaner from the 90s. I'd hoped I could get the neck off in one piece, but I realised that it would be very difficult to do that without taking off the fingerboard, so that was the first order of business. There was daylight visible under the upper part of the board, near the nut, so I assumed this wouldn't be too hard. I was wrong. While the upper part was barely attached, the lower part was securely glued in with some very old, very hard and difficult glue. It took many hours of fighting with heating and steaming, and multiple scrapers and pallet knives before I was able to lever the thing off. (This picture also shows my weird yellow carpet steamer). The fight to get the neck off was comparably straightfoward. I drilled a few tiny pilot holes with a hand-drill and pushed the needle in. Into the large voids in the joint, as it turned out. Below is what the heel looked like when it finally came off (with much stretching and squelching). From what I could see, I think it was only really properly stuck to the sides of the pocket, which weren't really attached to the neck block anymore. No idea how Marylou hadn't just folded in half under tension at some point. And here's the shredded interior of the neck pocket. You can see some of the damage from its various falls here. On closer inspection, I thought I could see evidence of at least one prior neck re-attachment before her last one (different colours and textures of glue). There was also a lot of grain tear-out that would need to be repaired. So. That was step one done. I had detached the bits that needed to be detached, and without making them any more broken than they were to begin with. The fingerboard, incidentally, appeared to have originally been dyed/painted black (as can be seen on the back of the extension). This had been scraped off the front some time in the distant past though, revealing an absolutely enormous slab of very nice wood (a very uniform rosewood or perhaps Pau Ferro). I'll continue the tale with the actual fixing soon. Unless it stops raining, and then I'll get back to my other projects.

I can't speak to their reliability, but I played around with a V3 at the Yamaha/Line6/Ampeg flagship store in Soho a year or so back and really liked the sound. The EQ was very effective and the overdrive sounds were nice and valve-y (more like an EHX Bass Soul Food than an ODB-3).

So onto the matter at hand. The problems. As I mentioned in the first post, Marylou probably ended up in the attic of a house in Norwood because she'd had an accident. When I first got her, the action was unplayably high. I didn't really know anything about double basses at the time, so I didn't think too much about why that might be. I just did what I'd do with any instrument whose action was too high, and lowered the bridge. As it turned out, in order to get the action even half-way playable, I had to remove an enormous amount of material both from the feet and from the top part of the bridge (not sure if that has a name). If you look at the picture at the top of this thread (taken before the great works) you can see the comically cut-down bridge. This was fine though, for my limited abilities and even more limited knowlege of double basses. I played Marylou in this state for about four years, having a lot of fun even if my technique was probably pretty awful and my intonation worse. The problems started when my original set of rotosounds started to get a bit frayed and tatty. They were probably fine, but I was also aware that Marylou sounded a bit flat and quiet, and wondered if different strings might help. I bought a set of d'Addario Helicore strings, which have a steel core and are higher tension. This made Marylou a little louder, but also much harder to play. Unfortunately, I also injured the tendons in my left hand around this time, which meant that Marylou was now effectively unplayable – the effort of trying to play her for more than a minute or two caused me quite a lot of pain. I started to look a little more closely a Marylou's neck. I'd noticed before that she'd quite clearly had a fairly violent neck break in the past, and that it had been glued up rather ineptly, but I hadn't realised just how ineptly. Note the luxuriant froth of PVA glue and the decorator's-grade wood filler. This picture shows the angle that the neck had been reglued at. As you can see, it's almost parallel to the body. I realized that if I was going to ever be able to play this bass again, I was going to have to get that neck off.

I've been meaning to write this up for ages. @The Guitar Weasel's recent thread has finally given me the nudge I needed to start collecting pictures and writing notes. Conveniently, this nudge has come on a weekend when my wife is out of town visiting friends, which was also the circumstance under which I did this project back in 2018. First. A little background on my bass, cast your mind back to the early 2010s – I genuinely don't remember exactly when, I think perhaps 2012? Definitely either 2011 or 2012. The weekend after my birthday, which is a few weeks before Christmas, my mum popped round to have a cup of tea and drop off a present for me. Over tea, I was presented with a bunch of small wrapped boxes that held – in no particular order – a roll of 120-grit sandpaper, a metal scraper and a bunch of scouring pads. The whole time I'm unwrapping these, my mum was just grinning at me. I stammered some appreciative noises and probably did a poor job of hiding my complete bafflement. She wiggled her eyebrows and said, "for instruments, you know. Fixing stuff". I nodded and smiled as if this explained everything. A few weeks later, and it's Christmas day – my wife and I, along with my siblings, are sitting around at the family home, exchanging gifts and listening to music. My parents then jump up, say something about getting my present, and scamper out of the room. We all hear an odd hollow thumping noise, and the giggling to-me-to-you's of two people manoeuvring something very large down a flight of stairs. I turn to my brother and say, "has, er... mum seemed odd to you lately?", but before he can answer they push open the door to reveal a full size double bass. It turns out that one of my mum's colleagues (primary school teachers all) had been clearing out her late father's house earlier in the year, and had found a double bass in the attic. The old man had been a school music teacher, but never played bass and his daughter didn't remember ever seeing one around. Her best guess was that it was a damaged instrument he'd brought home to fix (probably some time in the 1980s), as he apparently did that sometimes. The following day, this teacher mentioned her predicament in the staffroom, and said it was a shame it would have to go in the skip. Thinking of her bass-player son, my mum volunteered to go round after work and shove the bass into her Skoda Fabia. So why the sandpaper, scourers and scraper? Well, in the 15–25 years it had spent in an uninsulated attic, the gig bag it had originally been stored in – lined with some sort of neoprene-like material, I think – had completely broken down, and the whole instrument was coated in a crust of crumbly, sticky, rubber-like chunks. Annoyingly I didn't take any before pictures, but believe me when I say it was gnarly. I got it cleaned up (it mostly just needed a scrub), replaced the frayed mismatched strings with a set of rotosound RS4000s and set about learning to play it. My wife christened the bass "Marylou", because she (as in my wife) is from the deep south and felt something person-sized needed a person-like name. Marylou has no maker's marks or labels, just the sticker pictured above. The typeface of the school board that presumably originally owned it (below) says early-to-mid 1960s to me. The low-profile BC'er and double bass player who visited me last year to take my old bass cab off my hands reckoned she was probably a Boosey student model from the 1950s or 1960s.

Amazing work. Looks, I'm sure, significantly better than it did when it was new.

Here it is. I posted a build diary on here last year, I think.

I started playing bass when I was 15. I got my first fretless when I was about 20, I think – pulled an 80s Yamaha from a literal heap of battered old instruments in a pawnbroker in Plymouth. I've always had a fretless and a fretted bass since then. I played fretless almost exclusively for a few years in my early/mid 20s, then set it aside for quite a long time because I couldn't get on with the instrument I had (a Warwick Corvette), but wasn't able to admit to myself that the new fretless I'd paid so much money for wasn't my thing. I made my own fretless bass about four years ago and have been playing that probably 60-70 percent of the time since. As an answer to a potential follow-up question – I prefer a lined fingerboard.

Nice work, and a very cool bass. Out of curiosity, what did you use to strip the finish? I've had mixed results with chemical strippers, including one that came highly recommended, but then just sat totally inert on the polyurethane finish like I'd poured it onto glass. I have a project on the horizon that will probably involve a fair bit of finish stripping. Bonus picture of my own washing-line-based spray booth solution from a few years ago. The old bedsheet is there to stop myself spraying paint into next door's garden.

Those sorts of last-minute failures are the most frustrating things. I once spent probably a dozen hours repairing a neck-smashed 1980s Ibanez guitar only for the last proprietary-design Floyd Rose saddle to shear in half when I was stringing it up. Had to wait like six weeks for a new-old-stock set of replacements from Japan, the finished but unplayable guitar mocking me the whole time.

Here's the video I mentioned. It's a very rare case of Ted Woodford throwing in the towel and declaring and instrument to be unsalvageable.

The Canadian luthier Ted Woodford (him off YouTube) recently did a video on an attempt to rescue one of their new-era guitars. I'll see if I can find it. It's very long and technical though. The gist was that these instruments are all built with an oddly shaped steel extrusion instead of a truss rod. It has these sorts of ribs that extend into the wood of the neck. It's glued into the neck as the laminates are being put together and is completely impossible to remove or service. That on its own wouldn't be a huge problem (it's not like replacing a truss rod is a common maintenance job) but there seemed to be something fishy about it. Ted is very polite (Canadian) and understandably wary about getting sued, so he didn't come out and say anything directly, but I got the distinct impression he believed the design was fundamentally flawed, or just a steel reinforcement bar with an adjuster on the end that didn't really do anything.

That does seem like a daft amount of money to be charging, given how little of an impact the originals seem to have made on the music world. For all their reputed quality as instruments, I don't think I've ever seen one of the old US-made Cirruses (cirri?) in the hands of a player on TV or a big stage. Perhaps the odd session player here and there. I think they were mostly popular with gospel and CCM-type performers in the US – I vaguely recall someone telling me that Peavey always used to have generous financing and deals for churches.

As others have said, I think for a fretted bass the difference between fingerboard woods is mostly a cosmetic thing. My home-made fretless has a Pau Ferro board, I ended up lacquering it because I prefer the feel of a lacquered fingerboard on a fretless, but it was fine before. It's a very hard, very dense wood. Not to the same extent as Ebony, but I was able to sand it so smooth I could see my face in it.

If anyone's jonesing for a brick of bi-amped big iron a la mid-90's flea, I stumbled across this beast while insomniac browsing the other night. It's at Crack Converters in Milton Keynes. Looks to be in decent nick.

Why would someone selling a black bass take all the pictures with it sitting on a black gig bag? I'm intrigued, but I've looked through the whole listing and I'm still not entirely sure what the bass looks like.

Interesting that this thread has popped up on the front page today. I have had the last two days off, and in an absence of anything better to do (and a desire to get outside and touch grass after a long and stressful book project) I've been walking off in random directions across London, stopping when I reach a guitar shop. Today, I ended up in the shop not far from my parents house – it was the place I always went for strings and stuff when I was a teenager. I remembered it as a sort of dusty, neglected Tutenkahmun's tomb of beginner-to-mid-priced-instruments, a sad place with drop ceilings and heaps of cardboard boxes full of plastic recorders piled against the walls. So, it turns out it hasn't changed a bit. Amidst all the utterly unremarkable instruments, there was a Spector Legend – one of the four strings with the twin soapbars. It was covered in dust, but much to my suprise it played absolutely beautifully. I spent a while noodling away on it, but the guy in the shop couldn't tell me anything about it or how the electronics worked (it was in the stock of the store when he bought the place as a going concern in 2019). It seemed like it had active bass and treble controls, but they had no centre detent and behaved really oddly. So yeah. Not sure why I'm writing this other than to A) mention that I played a Spector for the first time and really liked it and B) to ask what's up with the electronics on the old Legend models (the Korean ones, from the early 2010s, I'd guess).

That's a beautifully weird looking thing. I love how it looks so completely of-its-time with that big engraved panel, like a Winchester repeater or a florid advert for some dubious patent medicine.

This bass looks very similar to my own, which also had an at-home neck reset. I'll post my own build/rebuild diary here at some point.

This is very much my relationship with Beck's music as well. What will usually happen is that I'll discover some album of his that I'd never much listened to before, become obsessed with some track or other, and then go off binging the rest of his stuff. My favourite album of his is Midnite Vultures. It's silly and over top, but I'd also argue his most consistent bit of work. There was an interesting interview I saw a while back with the guy who produced "Loser". He was talking about how they recorded it in either the very early 1990s or late 1980s, but agreed that no label or radio station would be interested. They passed it to a few contacts just to be sure and got told emphatically no, so they shelved it. Then one day the producer heard "Smells like teen spirit" on the radio and immediately phoned Beck to say they should try shopping "Loser" around – this time getting loads of airplay and a record deal.

There is a happy ending to this tale. The manky 45-year-old Ibanez responded very well to the surgery. It now has a new hand-carved rosewood bridge and saddle, new nut and nice new jumbo frets. It's comfortable to play and has a lovely sound. It still whiffs a little, but that will probably fade with time. The tuners are the right colour now as well. (The bridge is on straight by the way. There's a funny optical illusion created by the two dark lines in the grain, which don't quite run parallel to the centreline.)

Interesting thing, the regular Digbeth says "Designed and engineered in the UK by Laney" on the back ("engineered by" being a fun turn of phrase that I think Uli Behringer thought up as a way to vaguely imply that something is not made in China). The Nathan East model, however, says "Designed and made by Laney in the UK" (italics for emphasis). Possibly accounts for the difference in price. Edit: just noticed it says made in the UK right there in the description. In my defence, I just got home from the pub.

With the tuners it all just scrubbed off, and I think I've gotten the gunk off the finish. I'm going to have to level and oil the fingerboard so that will probably be fine when I'm done. The only issue really is the inside of the guitar, where I think the stink has seeped into the pores of the unfinished wood. I'll think of a better plan at some point, possibly doing what you've suggested, but for now I've tossed a fabric bag full of lavender in there and taped a bit of cardboard over the soundhole.

This is perhaps a little off topic, but I had to share this somewhere. I'm currently working on an 1980 Ibanez acoustic for someone – replacing a lifted and damaged bridge, refretting the neck and generally giving it some TLC. It's a nice guitar, and in remarkable condition given its age and how much it has been played (frets 1–7 have string grooves that go almost down to the tang). The downside is that it came from the house of my friend's late brother, and both he and his wife were heavy smokers. It smells. Today I was looking at the tuners, which I knew I'd have to take off anyway. They're a sort of faded, brass/gold finish with a funny adjustable tension system (Ibanez called it "Velvetune"). A few were a little sticky to the touch, so I decided to get some vinegar and clean them up. ... Turns out they're not gold or brass, they're nickel covered with a thick coating of nicotine residue. Here's a before and after picture. Bleurgh