NBD - 1981 Yamaha SB500S

[neepheid]

I picked this up cheap because it's in a bit of a state and I felt sorry for it.  It's not a particularly common bass around these parts, so I figured I could get it back to being hale and hearty again.

 

 

It's pretty dirty - the tuners are green in places and I had to wash my hands after stringing this bad boy back up - boak!  But that's just dirt.  The main issue with this bass is the neck pickup.  The coil windings have been... interrupted shall we say.  Thankfully most of the coil is intact, the break is pretty close to the beginning/end of the coil so I'm going to try to unwind it slightly back to good wire then solder it back up and see if that works, failing that I guess I'll need to get it rewound.

 

A wee project for the weeks ahead.  Its mostly cleaning and polishing, the pickup to attempt to repair, and maybe some finish repair on a couple of nasty chips in the neck finish.  Dunno if it's worth a build diary, so I'll probably just document my progress here.

 

FWIW, the remaining pickup sounded pretty decent in my wee Laney 30W combo in the office here.  For all the dings/dents/scuffs/scrapes/lacquer cracks, the bones appear to be solid and it feels quite nice to play.  I think with a bit of work this will end up being a fine counterpoint to my BB1200.

[neepheid]

Also props to @andruca for the write up on their SB500S which helped push me over the edge and snag this one - cheers!  Nice playing in the demos you put up, btw.

 

https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/502833-nbd-pretty-nice-1981-yamaha-superbass-exemplar