Soloshchenko

Looks a class project there mate. I've just recently heard about the Shuker courses and I'm seriously tempted.

Hi, at the minute I'm stripping down and re finishing a rather nice 70s Columbus Jazz bass (pics in build diaries if you're interested) and am a bit stumped on what to do with the neck. I'm going for a nitro finish on the body and neck. I've removed the body's Poly finish and am just about to start on the neck and while orginally I was going do a custom decal I'm now swaying towards retaining the original. My question is, how would I do this without it looking sh*t? I'm removing the neck poly with sand paper, should I just leave the top face of the headstock with the poly on? Or would it work to sand off all of the poly finish apart from just on and around the decal? If it's too much of a pain in the arse I'llgo down the custom decal route as I have a nice idea but just wondering if retaining the Columbus decal is feasible. Cheers in advance for any tips.

[quote name='fleabag' post='989495' date='Oct 15 2010, 06:01 PM']I think the big old elephant type tuners seem to suit JB's and PB's, so i'm happy to keep them on, even though the finish has aged a lot. Yep, this pickup. It was dead, and in trying to fix it, the end of the windings came off the hot and ground wires, and when you see the width of the copper winding, its time to give in. I sent Andy a dead pup, copper wires trailing. Came back in a couple of days all fixed. The guys a star i tell ya. Unlike yours, I like the neck on mine, as it seems to be very slim, which i prefer. By the way, take a photo of your Col. decal, as there's plenty of guys on Evilbay that will knock a copy out for you. Just make sure you get a Waterslide decal and not Vinyl or similar[/quote] Cheers for the advice mate, I'll do that. Quite like the Columbus decal and might be nice to keep it's history intact if I can.

Yeah my tuners are the smaller ones like on Eds. In fact the more I look at Ed's before he changed the neck and everything the more I think they are really, really similar, possibly the same year? Sure Jon could help there. Flea, that is awesome that you got your PUs rewired. Does Andy provide such a service? I have Wizards in my main squeeze (a MIM jazz) and I love them. In fact the original MIM PUs will be tried out in this project. I love how you've get yours mainly original but tweaked the parts to your tastes. Mine is ultimately going to look really unoriginal in comparison, mainly due to me not liking the thick neck which needs totally sanding down and re shaping. btw is yours fairly chunky as well? I'm even thinking custom decal because I'll lose the Columbus one when I strip the poly finish. Apologies in advance to the Japcrap purists! At the minute I have the bass totally filled and ready for final sanding before starting the nitro process begins. After much thought and a quick flirt at Sherwood Green metallic I've decided to stick to the original idea of Black.

That looks awesome mate. Love the maple neck.

Jeez, when will people realise that adding upgrades to stock instruments doesn't do much for their value? That's probably a lovely bass...for £250.

Would actually love to work on that bass. The headstock finish nearly brought me to tears! What's going on with the neck colour? Is that dark shade just aging???

I did own an SX Pbass for a short time which sounded quite nice but the neck felt a bit like a log! Far, far too chunky for my liking. Well put together basses though. The school I currrently work at have loads of Jim Deacon, didn't realise they were UK SX basses! Sound and feel pretty good and have stood up to 2 years of unruly teenagers playing em!

[quote name='Annoying Twit' post='977509' date='Oct 4 2010, 07:16 PM']Iwama bass. Just looks wrong to me. Maybe it's just the single pickup on a Jazz, or is it the body shape? [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RARE-EARLY-70S-JAPANESE-IWAMA-JAZZ-SHAPE-BASS-GUITAR-/300476662461?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item45f5ce02bd"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RARE-EARLY-70S-JAPAN...=item45f5ce02bd[/url][/quote] I think it's the odd scratchplate.

I agree there is a slightly snobbish attitude towards covers bands on some of these posts that I don't agree with. I play in an originals band currently but that's only because I've got lucky in finding a genuinely talented vocalist who has the ability, sound and material to get somewhere. If I hadn't been lucky like that (and given a lot of the f***ing appalling vocalists we share gigs with it looks like I;ve been VERY lucky) then I would definitely have got on the covers thing by now. My first band was a three piece covers band which I f***ing loved playing in. The gigs we had were always really awesome and we made a decent second income, it also made me improve a lot as a musician then. In originals bands you can be as f***ing brilliant as you like, you are still gonna have gigs (out of town especially) where you are playing to 4 people. And that's soul destroying at times. Don't get me wrong, I love playing originals, I love playing really good originals and it's exciting because the new incarnation of my band is still in it's early stages but I'm not going to look down at covers musicians who are getting paid a lot more than me and have a lot more of a (better looking and less sulky) audience.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='973302' date='Sep 30 2010, 10:41 PM']That's a real shame - your bass looked like an excellent original example. If it had sold on here it would be a lot less likely to have gone to some twonk who wants to butcher it. Oh well. J.[/quote] Must admit, although it's up to him what he does with it I did think the same when I saw em. As for it being an original example, you're spot on, I took it to Tito from Fulwood (recommended luthier on here) for a set up and his initial reaction was "it's barely been played".

Ibanez Musician project. Wouldn't mind having a go at that myself. [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Ibanez-Musician-Bass-guitar-project-spares-/280568802077?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item4153342b1d"]ibanez[/url]

Given he's the guy who bought my CMI a few weeks ago I'm assumming these are the parts of that (Went a bit CSI there on you all). Not really sure why he;d sell them to be honest but I can vouch for the fact that when I sold em they worked and that bass did have a lovely tone, no doubt about it. The neck pickup in particular was awesome.

Re listed Columbus. [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Columbus-24inch-long-neck-bass-guitar-late-70s-/140458193324?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item20b3f5f1ac"]Columbus[/url] I actually offered the lad £120 for it when it didn't sell last time (before I got another one) and he said he thought it was worth £150. Can't help but think he;d get that if he offered delivery. Looks nice though with a maple f/board, ain't seen one of those before.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' post='968219' date='Sep 26 2010, 11:03 AM']bit of Glow in the dark paint, bit of sandpaper... Great that you got it for £70 though. Mine was £150, in much better nick than it is now though lolz.[/quote] Yeah, I was made up with the price to be honest. It might have helped that 2 other Columbus basses went that day. Okay so I've sanded the remains of the finish off and wood filled her. Minor moan, Ronseal woodfiller is crap out of a tube. They've made the end so small it won;t come out and this is clearly orange rather than the "natural" it said on the tin! Good job I'm going for a solid colour.

[quote name='EdwardHimself' post='968007' date='Sep 25 2010, 10:03 PM']You're doing a hell of a lot better job than i did to my columbus bass!: [/quote] Wow!!! How the hell did you do that finish??!

[quote name='ahpook' post='967926' date='Sep 25 2010, 07:58 PM']it's cleaned up nicely - good work that man.[/quote] Cheers mate, was actually surprised how easy it was taking the front and back off with the heat gun. The sides were tricky but I thought I would take advantage of the nice weather up north today. Next step sanding, filling then final sanding before applying the new finish.

Just got this nice little 1970s Columbus Jazz bass for a cool £70 on ebay. Really chuffed because been looking for a cheap project for a bit. The bass came fully working but full of gunk on the neck. I'm looking to refinish the bass in black (w/black pickguard), re shape the chunky neck (apparently this is fairly easy, I'd really welcome any advice as never done it before) and change the pickups to some Fender Mexican Jazz pickups I have lying around. Also gonna test the theory that leaving metal in coke shines it up on most of the hardware (does this actually work?). Anyway, just finished taking off the original finish. Took me 4 hours with a heat gun and scraper. Not as tricky as Ithought it would be. Don't think I'm going for a natural finish on this particular piece of ply!

[quote name='Bassassin' post='962876' date='Sep 21 2010, 12:47 AM']With luck the Mex pups should drop right in - I recently stuck a set of DiMarzio Model Js in my CSL Jazz, which had the same round-end pups. The holes seemed slightly oversize & they fitted no problem. If you do a refin I'd recommend a solid colour - otherwise you'll have all those lovely lamination lines around the edges and on the contours - that's why they're solid black on the original burst! J.[/quote] Haha, yeah no worries mate, I'm thinking all black. Will post pics to see what the body looks like without a finish, should be an all out horror show!

[quote name='Bassassin' post='962821' date='Sep 20 2010, 10:52 PM']Apart from being Japanese & a Fender copy, there's no connection, I'm afraid. The main similarity in the pic you posted is the big chrome truss rod cover - these were very common on early Japanese Fender copies, probably simply down to the way factories were tooled up to make necks, and the available parts. Most factories sourced hardware from one or two parts manufacturers, hence there's a lot of crossover. Anyway later Ibanez, and other basses built in the Fujigen Gakki factory have small white plastic truss rod covers, and eventually as the instruments got more accurate, they disappeared altogether, as did the Fender-type nuts. If you could put this Ibby & your Columbus side-by side there are a lot of differences - the Ibanez has a 3-piece neck, body construction is butcher-block as opposed to ply, the Columbus has round-end pickups while the Ibanez has more accurate square-ended ones and so on. If you're interested, go through the early catalogues on [url="http://www.ibanez.ru/info/index.php?catalog"]this site[/url] and you'll get some idea of how Fujigen designs changed over the years. You got a pretty good deal on that Columbus - I had one of these a few years back & actually managed to sell it for £170 - odd! These weren't built byFujigen, it's not clear who did build them, but many Columbus instruments are identical to Maya-branded guitars. Maya was owned by a company called Rokkomann, and it's believed they owned their own production facility, so that's a possibility. Columbus is a UK rebrand, thought to have been imported by FCN, who also owned the Kimbara & Satellite brands. The Jazz copy is the Columbus N77 - here's one depicted in a 1974 catalogue: [url="http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/26.jpg"]http://personal.inet.fi/surf/lorse/bellcatalogue/26.jpg[/url] The pic here looks like a factory catalogue shot - it's unbranded and there are some detail differences from yours if you look closely. I think it's probably an early version. Jon.[/quote] Wow, cheers for the info mate. As always, staggered by your knowledge on the subject and thanks for the links, amazing that the bass has put on just a healthy £20 vintage premium in 30 odd years! Really chuffed with the deal, like you say, seemed cheap. The bass arrives on Wednesday so I'll post some pics, possibly on here. I don't think a £70 Columbus Jazz merits "Gear Porn" status. More like "Reader's wives". This is possibly become the project bass I've been thinking of. Got some Mex Jazz PUs knocking about (maybe require some woodwork?) And want to do a nitro finish as I've never done one and I'm not a fan of the burst. We'll see how she looks when she arrives.

[quote name='Bassassin' post='961166' date='Sep 19 2010, 01:37 PM']Not the same, but closely related. The relationship between Cimar & Ibanez isn't entirely clear, but the Cimar "original" (well, ish) designs were made by Fujigen, like Ibanez, and marketed alongside Ibanez by brand owner Hoshino - sometimes as "Cimar by Ibanez". There was actually some complete crossover - the early Blazer design (with the big single pickup & skinny headstock) was also sold branded as a Cimar Stinger. So this isn't exactly the same as a Blazer but you can expect the same quality components & build. It's later than the guy claims - the serial looks like 1981 to me - which puts it in the same timeframe as the Blazers. J.[/quote] Interesting. Do you know if there was any cross over between Ibanez and Columbus? Reason I ask is because I've recently bought a Columbus bass with a remarkably similar headstock design to this: [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260663833613&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT"]Here's the columbus I've bought, check out the headstock pic[/url] Cheers for you reply in advance mate, as I've said before, you should really write a book! Also, any dating hints/advice or extra info on my new purchase would be welcome.

Lovely bass there.

Cool bass there mate for peanuts as well. Looking forward to seeing it cleaned up.

[quote name='Marky L' post='948711' date='Sep 7 2010, 07:53 PM']Just noticed this on ebay.COM Only a few hours left. It's horribly tatty but from my research the price is OK is, could be a little less maybe. [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280556250789&ssPageName=ADME:B:WNA:GB:1123"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...E:B:WNA:GB:1123[/url] Thing is, in the pics provided, the last one of the headstock.. it's not the bass concerned, that has to be a guitar headstock doesn't it?[/quote] Sure is a guitar headstock. Very weird. Still, I think that is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.