BrunoBass

For a very long time I’ve been thinking about putting together a low cost ‘parts’ Precision bass guitar for fun, and finally after much research I’ve made a start and bought the bits I need to get started. I have a couple of questions which I’m hoping someone can help me with. Please bear in mind that this is the first time I’ve done anything like this and I don’t really know what I’m doing. Firstly, pots. 500k or 250k (I’ve seen both types offered)? What’s preferable? Assuming my build is successful I’ll be using this bass in my rock covers band, so I’m looking for an aggressive, rocky sound. Presumably different types of pots have different outputs, tone etc? Secondly, the maple neck I’ve bought (which is an absolute beauty, unbelievable for less than £30) arrived with a beautiful satin finish, I assume poly rather than nitro. My original intention was to do a vintage amber tint before applying a decal and clear coat. However, I like the satin finish so much I might keep it, apply a decal and then satin clear coat to the front of the headstock only, to seal the decal. My Jazz Deluxe has a very similar satin finish on the neck. I’m fairly au fait with applying and polishing a gloss clear coat, but how about a satin clear coat - any ideas how to do this? Is polishing necessary or would that just turn it to gloss? I’ll add photos of my progress as I continue through the project. Thanks.

There will be many! It’s my first assembly, so I’m looking forward to learning a lot and hopefully ending up with an adequately serviceable instrument.

Excellent, thank you. Body and neck should be with me early next week, can’t wait to get cracking on the project.

Great job, it looks fantastic. No issues with the paulownia body? I’ve just acquired a paulownia Precision style body for a self build but I have heard a few negatives about it’s strength and integrity, not least on this very forum. Did you need to use grain filler? Thanks in advance for any guidance you can share.

The band I was in back then dreamed of using a Fairlight, dream that inevitably went unfulfilled. We did however circa 1986 pool our resources to buy a Yamaha QX1 sequencer and a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 rack sampler (I still remember the exciting day we went down to Rod Argent’s shop by pick it up!) which did the same job as the Fairlight for a fraction of the cost and was arguably more reliable too. I much preferred music tech when it was lots of black boxes and miles of MIDI leads...

Yes. I change my batteries regularly but it’s reassuring to know that if a battery fails mid gig it won’t result in no signal, which happened to me once with my Stingray.

My Deluxe Jazz has the factory fitted switch and yes, there is a noticeable drop in volume when selecting passive.

I’m in the same boat myself, and I’m coming to the conclusion that in my bid to keep costs low I’m going to do it myself. There are heaps of tutorials on You Tube (some good, some not so good...) but look up Brad Angrove. His channel is very informative. It mightn’t be as off-putting as you think it is.

Very cool. Pitbull do an RD bass kit, I’m tempted to buy one as the basis of a self build Jolana homage 😊

I bought a J&D Jazz from DV247 for £105 as a back up, and something to mess around on, learn about truss rod adjustment. It’s brilliant. I regularly gig it in the more rowdy venues we play and whilst I still intend to upgrade pickups etc I haven’t ‘had’ to, it’s a perfectly solid, functional, growly sounding Jazz bass.

I’ve just spotted this on Gear4Music https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Greg-Bennett-Royale-RLB-4-Bass-Guitar-Black/1BIZ I’m sorely tempted, it looks great. Out of stock until June though...

I never liked Queen, having lived through their heyday I always overlooked them. It’s only in my more mature years that I’ve realised what a great band and what incredible musicians they really were. A bunch of my mates went to see them at Wembley in 1986. I had the chance to go too but turned it down to go and see The Jesus and Mary Chain or someone... I wish I’d seen them.

One of these has just come up on Reverb; I’ve never seen one before but I think it’s immensely cool. I won’t be buying it but it does give me an idea for a self-build, with better hardware.

I haven’t watched the Brits in years - it’s got nothing to do with music and everything to do with numbers. I saw the Lamborghini incident on the news though. There are probably bigger things in the world to worry about, but at the risk of sounding like my dad, how many impressionable fans now think it’s cool to take a baseball bat to a car...

Did you ever get round to doing this, was it successful? I’m thinking about doing something similar to one of my Js.

I never drink before or during a gig, mainly because I’m driving. A bottle of water is about as rock n roll as it gets for me.

I love mine, I’m very impressed with it. I got it late last year and it’s replaced my EBMM Stingray as my main gigging bass. If only if it were a little lighter...

Reef’s ‘Naked’, appropriate title for such a sparse bassline. It works perfectly for the song, but I hated playing this when my band had it in the set, bored me silly,

I’ve just bagged myself one of these too. It’s beautiful, build quality is very good and it sounds amazing, everything I want a Jazz bass to be. I love having a master volume / blend configuration which for my requirements is perfect. Like the OP said the action was too high off the shelf but after a bit of tweaking I’d made it go from playing adequately to playing amazingly. I had to buy a 3/16th Allen key, all of mine are metric too. I’ve gigged it and am really pleased with it, a keeper I think.

[quote name='Les' timestamp='1505032172' post='3368897'] We operate an "honesty is the best policy" policy and hand it back. [/quote] That's the right thing to do. Karma will catch up with you otherwise. It's never happened to us, although we did get paid for a charity gig recently which we weren't expecting. We just handed it back to the charity.

If only Music Man did a Jazz size Stingray neck...

He may not have played on the records but O'Toole was no tool (see what I did there?). There's You Tube footage of him with FGTH on 'The Tube' doing a fine job on a Musicman Cutlass.

Do those of you who use public transport ever feel uneasy about carrying your gear around, from a safety / security perspective?

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1504553295' post='3365667'] In the US you can purchase a dependable used car for around 10k and insurance with a clean driving record would be about $50.00 a month. Question, is the notion of being able to hop into your own car at anytime and going anywhere you want not apoealing in the UK? How do guys take women out on dates without a car. Is this another cultural thing. You guys are aware in the States women judge men by the cars they drive. Blue [/quote] I only have one friend who doesn't / can't drive, adults in the UK that don't drive are definitely a minority. That said Blue, roads in the UK are chronically overcrowded and many are in some disrepair. From my experience, driving in the US is far more enjoyable, especially out of the cities.

I'm gas'ing for one of these... Good price too, for an entry into short scale semis: http://youtu.be/02VQttGYobI