MrFingers

Nowp, Jap pots are indeed smaller, and for CTS pots you'll need to widen the holes in the pickguard just a little bit (it's a little over 9.5mm, so I always use a 10mm drill, and the pots fit nicely).

Seems odd, I didn't even know that allparts put numbers on neckplates.

You don't have to be afraid of sanding paper. You can't go lower (coarser) then a grit 200 for sanding. If you wetsand, the particles you sand of won't scratch the wood.

As my avatar would say: NICE! Now slap some chrome covers over the pickups, string it up with flatwounds and add the spring mutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwYoi9G67DU

Pots do change tone, if you're switching values (replacing 250K pots by 500K pots make the sound a whole lot brighter. That's how the rhythm-circuit works on the Fender Jaguar & Jazzmaster guitars (1Meg (jag) or 250K (jazz) <> 50K (rhythm circuit)). If you change the pots with CTS 250K pots, you won't have any differences in terms of sound. CTS is "the standard" for quality pots, and used by Fender since the sixties. The only two things you can do is upgrade your capacitor to a PiO (Paper in Oil, like the Sprague Orange Drop), which gives a "not so muddy closed sound when the tone is rolled off"-sound, and replace the tonepot with a 250K LINEAR pot (which makes that your tone rolloff is very equal. The difference between 90% and 100% is the same as the difference between 0% and 10%). Fender used logarithmic pots for everything, making your tone pot more of an on-off switch.

The banjo tuners were just until 1961, from 1964 (when production restarted after a 2 year hiatus), the tuners were the standard "elephant ear" Kluson 456. Not to surf too much off topic: I had the casady, and it's an amazing bass, but it's also a strange thing. The pickup is a Low-Z (low impedance) pickup, giving you a very clean, natural, dynamic sound. Downside to it is that it requires special electronics (if the pots go scratchy, you'll have a hard time finding the correct replacements. You'll need 2.5K (two and a half) with a long shaft, which I still haven't found. I ordered 2 at Epiphone a year back, and still haven't got them...

Yes, it will be a bass based on the [url="http://www.richtonemusic.co.uk/Data/Product_Images/GIBDSDCCTVSCH15.jpg"]Midtown[/url]. So it will have vibe of the EB2, but with a flat top, wrong dimensions of the body (it looks like cheap Chinese copy), probably the narrower headstock... No, give me the real deal, or if you want a longscale, the Greco SA-B.

The one on the left is indeed a Coronado "Wildwood III" from 1968, next to it a 1962 Framus Star Bass "5/149", and at the right the 1964 Gibson EB-2 (factory conversion to EB-2D)

Since we're postings pictures anyway... [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/0d224c78.jpg[/IMG]

You have to watch out for the tailpiece. There is a flaw in the designflaw, making that the strings pull itself out of the slots, taking the steel anchors with them. It happens once in a while. The CS from Hagström is good, so when that happens, you can get a replacement

grounding is grounding... Fender did the brass strip thing because it was easy (just bend a piece of brass, instead of carefully drill a hole in the body in the good hope you'd come out in the control cavity). But Leo found out that many players got rid of the covers on the bass (they were intended to be kept on the bass) while playing, and then you'd see a cheap, ugly piece of brass plating coming from the bridgepickup (it was a thin piece, and it wasn't placed nicely straight and flat on the body, it was just slammed on there), and even he found that it looked cheap and lazy, so he got rid of that and used an ordinary earth wire, even if that meant that it meant drilling a new hole. For vintage correctness I would go for the brass plate, but if you're not fond of that, just an earth wire will do (or you can do both if you want to).

It doesn't matter to which pot you attach the earthwire, since all of them are connected via the controlplate.

or musikraft, it's a tad cheaper than Warmoth, and true vintage correct, with a LOT more options in terms of profile, frets, radius,...

Copper tape should be doable (if you can solder on that, that's needed for a good connection), but I'd advise to go for the brass. I bought for a '68 project a piece of brass at a shop for modelplanes & -boats, did cost me 2€, and I could do 3 basses with that sheet of brass. I don't know what pickups you are going to use, but if it is the Fender '62RI Pickups, or Seymour Duncan Antiquities, then those pickups already come with such a brass plate for the cavities with them, so I wouldn't mess around with copper tape. Just a slight remark: for the neck... Mighty Mite isn't that top-notch quality (I once had an issue with 2 frets being out of place, thus making the entire neck worthless (since positions 4 & 5 were sharp). If I were you, I'd go for an allparts neck. It's a bit more expensive, but it's well worth the money, and you'll get a better neck in place (with correct trussrod at the heel instead of that ugly thing at the heastock), and a better neck means a better tone!

That is correct, because there isn't a groundwire present. 1960-62 jazz basses had the grounding going via a brass strip that was wedged underneath the bridge, and ran to the cavity of the bridgepickup (where it was soldered to the brass plate underneath the pickup. That plate was connected via wires to 2 other plates, one in the cavity of the neck pickup, and one in the control cavity. From the controlcavity went a wire to the sleeve of the jack (1962) or the back of, the pot (1960/61), thus making the entire grounding complete. (those four screws you see between the bridge and the pickup are those of the "[url="http://www.ggjaguar.com/mutes.jpg"]spring loaded mutes[/url]" (still available at some [url="http://www.thebassplace.com/parts-miscellaneous-c-8_26/fender-jazz-bass-mute-kit-p-54"]sites[/url], but it's discontinued as a fender-part since 5 years...), also present from 1960 to 1962.) This is a picture of the wiring. The 2 small resistors you see are optional. They were present in the real vintage basses, since the output needed to be tamed, because they would blow up the speakers of the amplifier (there weren't really bassamps back then, the best thing you had was a '59 Bassman). Nowadays there are bassamps, so you can use the full potential of your pickups, so you can leave those resistors out. And erm... Mint is the way to go

Is snug enough. I wouldn't mess around with it.

I guess they do. Anyway, mintgreen is the way to go for early sixties instruments (was used until 1964)! It's not the guard that's expensive, but the material. While your whitish guard is probably "just" ordinairy ABS, the mintgreen '62RI guard is made from the correct celluloid material. I always say: "when you start with something, don't halfass your way through it, but do it thoroughly!" and like they say in dutch: "Goedkoop is duurkoop" (translated it comes down to: "when something is priced low, so it looks like a bargain, you can be sure there will be some issues with it down the way, and you'll probably end up buying the more expensive, but correct/higher quality thing you were going to buy first")

Very early 1960 Jazzes came with an ash body, so it's "correct enough" . I think this is going to be totally rad! If you need info about the most silly vintage correctness, feel free to contact me

Looks rad! Now add thick flatwounds and a piece of foam underneath the bridge cover, and since your so picky on details: get rid of the '62 pickup and get an Seymour Duncan Antiquity I. That one is vintage correct, the Fender '62 isn't (the polepieces are the wrong shape and material) and lose the earthwires between the pots & jack, and use a proper ceramic capacitor. Since it's a '62, the earthwire going to the bridge shouldn't be soldered to the casing of the tonepot, but it should be soldered to the sleeve of the jack. [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/7c89e05d.jpg[/IMG] (but with the earthwire to the jack instead of the tonepot)

Look no further! [url="http://www.fender.com/products/vintage-modified-jaguar"]http://www.fender.co...modified-jaguar[/url] (and they also have a jazzmaster in that series). AMAZING guitars for the value, and perfect for postrock/ambient! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G59sHpVA2f8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uoPFDe53iM

This was a 1962/63 Burns "Jazz Split Sound" guitar, and then punk came, and turned a nice guitar into this... Bashed, bruised and utterly beaten. The nut was missing, so it was filled with a piece of bamboo... I carved a new nut, so now the strings stay in place. (the finish on the back of the neck (thick polyester) was flaking off, leaving all kinds of jagged edges and flakes. But the body seemed in fairly good shape, with just one ding at the lower bout. I thought I could preserve the original finish by using an X-acto knife, and an immense amount of patience. So I started cutting away the whitish-blue graffiti on the body. First day was over, and the front & back were done... Day 2: started doing the sides (those are curved, so it's hard to slice away the white goo there, I had to work careful and calm, but it came out fairly nice. Then I buffed the finish back to a gloss, taking with it the last remnants of white that bled into the original black finish... The finish on the neck & headstock was FUBAR, so that had to go. It was TOUGH! The finish was 1.5mm thick, with a basecoat that resembled effervescent glue (brittle, but VERY tough), so I scraped that away with a small plane. The wood underneath it was raw and unfinished. It was sanded with something as coarse as a grit 80 sandpaper, and the toolingmarks were still there. So I sanded it flush, and gave it some coats of black lacquer. Then handbuffed it, and assembled the guitar back together... Now I have to look for a pickguard, as this one is kinda damaged (it's held together from the inside with tape). I contacted Burns, and they can make me one with the correct markings, in the correct material, with all the engravings, but that will set me back 175£, and I don't know if that's worth it... The guitar in the punk-condition did cost 25€...

Normally both necks are perfectly interchangeable, so I don't see any problems by replacing the P-neck by a J-neck (I know a lot of people who did that...), it will change the sound of the bass, because the neck is thinner (less wood = less "phat")... The only thing that's different is the shape of the heel... the '50 has a square back (like a telecaster guitar), the '60J has a round back (like a strat), it will fit, but you'll have 2 gaps at the end of the neckpocket. Just cosmetically, but... They're there. And the fretboard ofcourse: rosewood <-> maple

Do you have a picture of it?

[quote name='deanovw' timestamp='1344492494' post='1765284'] Is it this the bass you have been offered? [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/180935-what-year-is-this-jazz-bass/page__p__1722009__hl__63%20jazz__fromsearch__1#entry1722009"]http://basschat.co.u..._1#entry1722009[/url] If so, I have seen it. [/quote] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Y987Uf1wY Why? Neck: wrong veneer, wrong spacing of the dots (front and sides), wrong headstockshape, wrong tuners (and no print from the bigger, original kluson 538 reverse, so the tuners are original to the neck), no dowel holes in headstock and heel -> NOT FENDER Body: no holes for the thumbrest, japanese Alpha pots (instead of Stackpole with ceramic cap), wrong bridge, wrong shielding plate in the cavity,... And this is by just looking at them while eating my breakfast, if I look closer, then I'll find more, but this is convincing enough. It's not a fender, it's a Tokai from the eighties! http://www.guitarmart.co.uk/advert/G14364