Longwheelbass

Thank you Rich Tone. A 77. With the addition from the never-to-be-sold parts drawer of a pickup from a 66 P Bass and a set of old oval tuners, this one's ready for the next round of bar fights. Pleasantly light from this era of boat anchors too at only 9.25 lbs.

So the bass is on its way to a member on Basschat. Here’s the story - I bought it off a guy in LA - the body neck and bridge were clearly all related. The bridge does not have fibre saddles, they have just sweat-rusted to a burnished brown. I tried a cleaner 1968 bridge on the bass for a while and the cleaner saddles actually made a difference to the tone of the bass! I thought the dirty rusty bridge sounded better, so it went back on. Unfortunately, the seller forgot to mention the crack in the headstock that emanated from the E borehole out to the edge where the cigarette burn usually goes, if you get what I mean. I repaired that crack and placed the neck on another 68 T Bass I own, and fitted the undamaged neck from that Bass to the woodgrain body. The two necks were a month apart in production. The buyer has now got a pretty awesome bass, with a massive sounding 1971 untouched pickup and a really lovely neck - a neck I am going to miss terribly, but the repaired neck is fine. It’s been Titebonded and permanently clamped with a light gauge countersunk 30mm brass screw and the crack in the timber that was just visible in the headstock face has had diluted Titebond massaged into it then wiped away before it cured on the lacquer. The paddle tuners were very common on the 68’s but by 1969, stocks must have been running low, and some accountant would have been downsizing the hardware range and at the stroke of a pen deleted the paddle tuner option from their next bulk order. So they just came with the standard elephant ear style from 1969 on. I’ve had three 68 T Basses and all came with paddles. I’ve had several 68 P Basses with the paddle tuners too. And of course the paddle tuners were originally just meant for the late 65/66 Jazz Basses, but knowing Fender’s hectic approach to assembly in the first few years of the CBS takeover, there would have been days where paddle tuners were the closest to the guy/girl adding the neck hardware - or the clover leaf tuner shelf was empty - so it got pretty random which model ended up with them. If any of you are interested I added sound files from recent recordings of the bass. It really does sound divine. I never thought I would say this, but I prefer the single coil over the split coil of the P Basses these days. And I don’t understand why so many players dumped the original pickup for various other iterations - the “Split P Single Coil” option that Fralin and others do just turn your nice old Tele Bass into a common- sounding P Bass. And so many say the single coil generates intolerable 60 cycle hum...which is perplexing - I’ve never had a hum problem with these, the most basic and pure sounding of the bass pickup world.

Compared to the radical designs on this thread, my humble Jazzmaster VI Bass build feels rather archaic...but does sound rather tasty with its 1959 Jazzmaster pickups and series/parallel wiring.

Yeah it has the Crass logo but it was from San Fran...still unsure as to who owned it. Grabbed it because it was just too cool...