Jazz - P/J resurection

[Simon.]

Holla folks,

Not strictly a build, more of an on-going upgrade programme!

A bit of background, first: Many moons ago, when living in student digs, a flatmate of mine had a MIJ Jazz bass kicking around that he wasn't using much as was generally starting to get a bit trashed. As he was rooked for cash, I offered to buy it off him, to use as a back-up. However, despise my best efforts to improve the set-up, it was never a great bass to play. Nice tone, but physically not great. Eventually it moved down the pecking order, but at least was well looked after.

Roll on a few years and I decided to get the neck de-fretted, and instantly the bass was a really player! It became a joy to play and became my main bass for about 3 years. Times & bands changed and I went back to fretted, getting a MIJ 75 RI, which was my go-to bass for the next 6 years.

Eventually I decided to do something constructive with the old jazz. New pick-ups from Wizard and a new All-parts fretted neck made it a good playable bass again, and I started using it more and more. However, I was sadly now bitten with the up-grade bug!

After much thought, I took the bass down to Chris McIntyre in Edinburgh with a list of things to do:

Task 1 - Route out a cavity to fit a P-bass pick-up, but in such a way that it's not going to prevent the neck jazz p/u being re-installed in the future. Basically the idea was to get a P/J bass, but have the option of changing it back to standard Jazz with a quick swap over of pick-up and scratch plate.

Task 2 - Two new scratch plates - one to take a J pick-up, one for the P. Both to be tortoiseshell.

Task 3 - If possible, re-profile the neck. The All-parts neck I got is nice, but feels a bit like baseball bat, in terms of radius. I'm hoping to get something much closer to the thinner, U-shape profile my 75 RI had.

Task 4 - New Hipshot bridge. Possibility of making it through-body stringing as well, as the bridge we looked at allows both.

Strap-locks, a thumb rest & bridge ashtray to be added (got to have some bling! ) as well as any upgrades to the electronics Chris sees necessary, although staying passive. I did fancy a re-spray, but my budget wouldn't go that far, and I think the tort pick guards against the Olympic white body will look a pretty smart improvement over the white plastic plate that was there originally.

Hopefully after all this, I'll end up with something that will be a very solid, working bass and will give me a range of tonal options to fit most scenarios.

The only issue I think there might be is that I've possibly made a slight faux-pas in going for a Wizard Thumper P pick-up, when the jazz pick-ups in at the moment are Wizard 64's. Didn't realise until too late just how significant the impedance difference, which might mean it's a bit imbalanced when set up as a P/J config. We'll see.

Bass was dropped of which Chris last Friday, so hopefully it won't be too long until she is ready!

Pics to follow!