MrFingers

They do exist, it's called a "sparkle" finish, and once in a while one pops up. Made on custom order, or for big fairs like NAMM. http://www.shortscale.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40866

Musikraft does it as well.

I have one (a 4001 from '73) and yes: they are too expensive for what they are (especially when you know that [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEuqgZzKxC4"]virtually all woodwork nowadays is done by a CNC mill[/url]. They just have to align dowels, glue it together and slap some hardware on it). On the other hand, the same applies for Fender & Gibson in terms of pricing. I also owned a nice copy from the seventies (if I recall correctly it was a Aria). It was neckthrough, toasterpickup,... Only it had a maple fretboard. Did some AB testing, and it sounded exactly the same as "the real thing from the USA" in EVERY aspect. The playability was even better (but that's personal ofcourse). Rickenbacker is so picky about copies because in the USA, you have to ACTIVELY protect the copyrights you own. Fender lacked to do so, that's the reason why there are so many other builders who have Fender-models in their catalog. Rickenbacker also chooses to keep the demand high by refusing to beef up production. And they'll get away with that. It's a businessmodel that is questionable, but totally legit.

Risky business. The declared value is the insured value if you go via insured shipping (you can insure your package via an external insurance, but that will cost a LOT). And customs aren't that retarded anymore than a couple of years ago. If they find a package with a very low value for what's inside of it, they will track down on "teh interwebz" what the content is actually worth, and will calculate customs and VAT on that value. Or they'll ask (ask as in: "if you don't give it to us, we will destroy your package") you to send them the original receipt/bill/... of your purchase, so they can charge the correct amount of VAT And you'll probably get a nice fine (here in Belgium the fine is 100% of the original value).

Make it yourself, can be done for maybe 30£. You need 2 250K logaritmic pots (volume) , 2 500K lineair pots (tone), 3 capacitors (2x 0.047µF, 1x 0.0047µF), a switchkraft 3way switch (angled) a stereo- and a mono jack. Oh, and some wires.

Oh, and please don't shove those feathers TOO deep into my arse I was just helping out a bit . Btw, if you want to go fully vintage correct: add nail-holes and paint the entire neckpocket black

Neither have I, that's what made it so strange, but yet everything was correct (it was a slab body, without a paintstick mark in the neckpocket, dating it before 1963, with the correct nailholes). Maybe a custom one-off, like Fender sometimes did for an artist. I'm still searching the dark corners of "teh interwebz" for it, but to no avail . P.S. You've got a PM about the booklet

There were some (how many? a few?) slab P-basses made in 1962. Slab body (honey blonde), tortoise pickguard, slab rosewood neck. I saw a picture of one a while ago on an auction site, but I forgot to download the picture, and the link has gone dead

[IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/b8a34374.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/e03258bd.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/57f80fce.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/52fcbbec.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/72f142b3.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/465bf071.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/0d224c78.jpg[/IMG] '68, '62, '64 More pics of the Coro and EB-2D [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/c81f04b3.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/4ded9053.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/aa26171a.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/e7b3fe08.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/76664101.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/34d2787c.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/c5809bf6.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/031edbe7.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd324/williamsanders127/f742ba61.jpg[/IMG]

I like the white guard better, but that's just me maybe. Here is an example of a [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDF7nMpQg1s"]vintage P with tort[/url], and although I still don't like it, it doesn't look TOO shabby. It all depends on the lighting I guess. And flatwounds on a jazz -> heaven!

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,...