Converting a Fender P-Bass to lefty

[AndyBass]

Hi, this may seem a stupid idea, but I recently made the transition from playing right handed basses upside down to playing truly left handed (ie with the strings in the right order!). This now leaves me with 3 basses that are basically the wrong way up. I'm selling two of them I care less about, but really want to change my Fender P-Bass to left handed. I'm assuming the things that would need changing are just the nut and the bridge (its a Badass II).

Bearing in mind I have no skills in taking guitars apart and making changes, do people think that this might be a task that I could get a luthier to sort for me? Any obvious problems I'm not considering (bearing in mind tone knobs and cable inputs have been in awkward places for the 15 years I've played that way, so I don't consider that a problem!). Can you get left handed Badass bridges?

Anyway, any advice on considerations or luthiers are much appreciated!

[neepheid]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a left handed bridge. Just string it up "upside down" and readjust your intonation accordingly (reverse the position of the saddles as they are now. If your badass has grooves cut then you should physically remove them and swap em round too so the grooves match up with the intended string (swap E with G and A with D). Hopefully everything will line up ok.

[brensabre79]

just swap the nut and you can undo the bridge saddles on your badass, although I think the offset of the screws is different, unlike the Fender ones which are all the same and reversible so you might have to re-groove or replace the saddles or get a new bridge if thats not possible.

Obviously a complete setup will be required too.

Everything else will be as you're used to so no need to worry

[Big_Stu]

I did the same job a long time ago with a neighbours Precision (it later transpired it was an attempt by the neighbour to get into the "good books" of a female bassist, the true owner of the bass, but that's another story. I kinda got suspicious when he brought other basses in later weeks for small jobs that needed doing).

It wasn't a badass bridge, so the switching around of the saddles was easy. I'd read not that long before then that to leftie-ise a Fender guitar was easy as the nut is square-cut & so reversible.
Instruction was to get a small piece of soft wood, hold it against the nut as a cushion & tap it as gently as possible from all sides with a small hammer to break the glue, then it should just slide out to be reglued the other way around. If you're unlucky there may be bits of glue residue which will need to be filed off or out of the groove, but it's all part of the fun.
It's this part that's the time consuming bit you'd be paying a tech to do.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Big_Stu

[brensabre79]

I tried that technique for tapping out a nut once, I managed to split the nut in two and remove the end of the fingerboard with it! I think someone had superglued the fecker in at some point though, as I have heard this technique widely used, just beware!

[Big_Stu]

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1348756745' post='1817799']
I tried that technique for tapping out a nut once, I managed to split the nut in two and remove the end of the fingerboard with it! I think someone had superglued the fecker in at some point though, as I have heard this technique widely used, just beware!
[/quote]

Bugger! The old disclaimer, "there's no accounting for the unaccountable!"

[bigash]

[i]Why not sell all three, and buy a leftie P bass.[/i]
[i]If you do the job yourself you could balls it up,[/i]
[i]If someone does it for you it will cost[/i]

[Spike Vincent]

In my experience you won't have to change the bridge.Don't forget to move the strap button to the other horn though..

[rogerstodge]

[quote name='bigash' timestamp='1351378496' post='1850737']
[i]Why not sell all three, and buy a leftie P bass.[/i]
[i]If you do the job yourself you could balls it up,[/i]
[i]If someone does it for you it will cost[/i]
[/quote]yup thats the best idea methinks