AntFoster

Thanks again for your replies. Sure you're right iiipopes about there being a [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][color=#282828]bar-type bridge originally. This one must have been on for some time cus the paints faded around it. Feel more confident we can get it working now. Thanks for the advice about the cover ground. It's a long way from it's original condition looking at your photo; must have had an exciting life![/color][/font]

Thanks for your replies. As it's more a way for my son and me to learn about how basses work (or don't!) I've followed the principle of throwing good money after bad by ordering a bridge similar to PlungerModerno's pic except its the complete unit. We'll try to adapt this by fitting the saddles into the current bridge or could replace that and raise the new unit higher. Then we'll move onto the pickups and cry tears of pain if they don't work. I'll try and put a better picture on cus still don't understand why one pickup has two wires and the other has three wires. The one with three wires looks as if it's been opened up at some point cus there's electrical tape on the back of it (not a good sign). If we can get strings on and it makes a noise when plugged in that will be a happy moment even if it's never really playable.

Hi, I'm new to basschat. My 12 year old son plays bass and recently bought a beat up bass off ebay as a project. It's made in Japan and looking at similar basses on google images I think it might be 1960's. There's a faded shape where the maker's badge was (see photo). There's two main things that need fixing. Firstly it has no bridge! Can't figure out what it would have looked like to see if we could adapt a different bridge or otherwise I have a friend who works in metal and could praps make a bridge. I've tried to show in the photo's how high the strings will be when they hit the bridge which seems very high to me. The other thing is the wiring. I've got a diagram of a two pickup set up for a Jazz bass, but the pickups on my son's bass have different amounts of wires coming from them! Does anyone know what's going on? There's an inner wire and an outer wire sheath coming from one pickup and two inner wires plus an outer wire sheath coming from the other. I don't know much about pickups but is this normal?! Any help/ideas much appreciated, Anthony