It's All About the Mods! (Show/Tell Your Modded Basses)

[Baloney Balderdash]

So this is the thread to post pictures of your modded basses and tell a bit about them.

 

 

I tend to mod all my instruments, if nothing else then at least visually, to personalize them.

 

I'll start with my current main instrument of choice, my just 28.6" scale 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass, produced in January 2019 at the Cort factory in Indonesia, according the serial number, which I guess I really use more as a 5 string Bass VI type instrument than a traditional bass, though tuned in G standard tuning, and all fourth tuning, that is as in 3 half steps above the upper 5 strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning.

 

It features a Poplar body, a Maple neck and a Jatoba fretboard, 16.5mm string spacing, and 2 J pickups, perfectly leveled frets from stock, and an incredible amount of sustain.

 

Now to the mods I've done to it:

 

First thing I did was wire the 2 stock J pickups in series, as it just didn't sound right, like really hollow and ridiculously burby, it helped, but it still sounded odd, until I discovered that there was something wrong with the neck J pickup, which had an extremely weak magnetic field over the lower half of the strings (I suspect a broken bar magnet, as these are ceramic pickups, and might need to look into fixing it at some point), so I ended up disconnecting the neck J pickup and wiring the stock bridge J pickup directly to the output jack socket, and it actually sounds pretty damn amazing now.

 

Surprisingly little noise too, basically non to speak of, despite not having done any additional shielding, and despite running a single single coil pickup, which I credit to the fact that Ibanez used properly shielded wiring for the electronics and pickups, with the ground wire running as a braided shield all along the individually insulated hot wire.

 

Rest of the mods are purely visually: A silver lotus flower with a OM sign in the middle of it decal, a paint splatter figure, made with a mixture of a white marble effect and grey acrylic paint, applied with a tooth stick, on the upper horn, and a strip of red insulating tape (also known as electrical tape) applied to the top of each of the two J pickups, also removed one of the redundant pots, covering the hole with black insulating tape, and replaced the stock dome style chrome pot knobs on the shafts of the two remaining pots with transparent/black PRS lampshade knobs, and finally I covered the brand/model name on the headstock with black insulating tape as well.

 

I also swapped the neck pocket screws out for slightly longer ones with Torx head slots, to ensure being able to screw them in tight without slipping or risk of stripping the slots.

 

 

Here it is, "Mr. Growley - The Noodlemancer", as I named it :

 

 

I don't have any pictures of it from when it was stock, but here's one I found on Google of s similar speced stock 5 string Ibanez GSRM25 Mikro Bass :

 

I do plan making a few more mods to this instrument:

 

Most certainly will soon replace the stock side mounted barrel type jack output socket, for a regular jack socket, which I will mount in one of the redundant pot holes, the one currently is covered by black tape.

 

I also ponder on maybe at some point replacing the bridge for 5 single black mono rail bridge pieces milled from solid brass.

 

As well as I might eventual replace the bridge J pickup, which is currently the only one I use, for a Gemini Pickups Mountain Lightning J pickup: https://www.geminipickups.co.uk/bass/jazz-bass/mountain-lightning

 

Edited June 28 by Baloney Balderdash

[Grooverjr]

I've finally got round to taking a couple of pics of what was, one upon a time, my first bass.

 

It started life as a standard 1982 (I think) black MIJ Squier Jazz. I got it in 1988 when my dad bought it for me. I was 14 and in my first band doing your standard blues and rock covers but I loved JJB so while it wasn't a P at least it was black. 

 

 

Mod 1: Paint

 

Graduated from that to a thrash band in 1990 (I think). Their old bassist was very good, fingerstyle and I was not so good and mostly pick so there were uncomfortable Burton / Newsted comparisons in the air. What to do but style it out? I had a friend who was pretty artistic and she said she'd custom piant my bass. I had no money but I did have a few pots of paint from the old days painting my Dungeons and Dragons figurines so I gave them to her, along with the bass and a couple of stencils that came free with a PWEI 12 inch and some of my favourite comics. She came up with the genius idea of pouring the paint on then using a matchstick to scrape it off and leave the black showing through. Unfortunately, she also took forever and I had to take it back for a gig before it was all done so there is an unfinished Freak Brothers by the neck pocket - poor old Franklin never got his hat. It also got some dings and scrapes along the way but I still love the effect today and it reminds me of being a teenager. I'd say it's likely to divide opinion and most people will probably hate it but I'll bet there's nothing else like it anywhere. It also goes well with the floor in the pics!

 

Mod 2: Pickups

 

I didn't play from about 1994 to 2020. Too busy moving around all over the place. Come the pandemic, my son was bored and I remembered that my old bass was still in my Grandma´s loft. I dug it out and amazingly, given it hadn't been in a bag or box, it was still in pretty good nick. Local luthier gave it the once over, new strings and my son's going to become the bassist I never was. Except he put it away after about a week, so I picked it up and started noodling and re-caught the bug. I got hold of a little amp and soon realised the old pickups were a bit weedy so got some Quarter Pounders and now it was making a proper noise, especially the neck. It also reduced the buzz somewhat.

 

Mod 3: Neck and Hi Mass bridge.

 

Tried a few other basses, started learning how to play properly and realised that, for me, a J neck is just too cramped at the money end. I also really love the look of a roasted maple neck. A roasted maple P neck came up on BC so I bought that and a hi mass bridge and some new tuners while i was at it. A couple of the old tuners had bent being whacked against things like van doors, ceilings, amps, the rhythm guitarist's head etc.  When I took the old neck off I found a little sliver of wood taped into the pocket which must have been the factory shim. When I got the P neck in, it took a lot of playing around to get the action right. I even took it to a local luthier in Mexico who made it worse (it came back convex) and charged me for the privilege. Eventually I realised that lower tension was the way to go and dug out an unused set of rotosound tapewounds that I ended up not using on another bass. The nut was already cut for some very beefy strings so they sat perfectly and I was able, with a bit of shim cutting and lots of truss rod jiggery pokery (heel adjust truss rods - just no!) to get the action decent at about 2mm at the 12th fret. 

 

And now, it's the perfect old jazz and reggae bass. It makes a lovely noise and plays very nicely. The action being a bit higher than I would normally have helps with some upright slappy noises (technical term) and neck pickup with a bit of distortion gets a nice Flabba vibe. It's not light but it stays at home so no real issue with that. It's literally just the body, wiring and pots / cover (took the nobs off when the paint was done) that are original. Obviously not up to the levels of most of the mods in this thread but it's changed with me and I love it just as it is.

[jazzyvee]

This is an Atlas Galaxy Shark bass.  A hand made bolt on neck 35" scale bass from Vietnam. 

I changed the electronics to two sets of ACG filter based electronics packages, i think were called EQ01. So it has individual low and high pass controls for each pickup plus a master volume and pan pot. I don't gig with this bass but use it for some rehearsals and the odd jam session. It's a really good sounding bass with a vast tonal pallate from the heaviest wolly dub reggae to sharp glassy slap tones.   The switch is not used in the current configuration.

just realised these are the before pictures but they can stay till i find the new pictures.

Edited September 27 by jazzyvee

[neepheid]

A few months back, I bought a Gear4Music LA Select bass, mostly because I wanted to see how bad a £150 bass is these days, but also it had some interesting specs for a P bass:

 

Bound body

Roasted maple neck

21 frets instead of 20

Block markers.  Mmm, blocks.

 

So it arrived and honestly it wasn't utterly awful - on the whole it was pretty well screwed together.  It fell down in three main areas - some ratty fret ends, comically bad tuners, iffy pickup.

 

 

So I got to work with the remedial work - ground back the ratty, pokey fret ends.  Fitted a set of Grover Minis that had been languishing in a spares box for years, waiting for this exact situation!

 

 

Straight swap with the old ones, so a piece of cake.  So, to the pickup.  Now there's a tsunami of split P pickups out there.  Conventional wisdom would have dictated that I stick a Tonerider or Warman in here and be done with it - great pickups at a price commensurate with its surroundings.  But not me!  I wanted to try something different/odd/unusual.  After some research, I decided to give the Lace Aluma P a go.  Because I'm quite, quite mad.

 

Insert really boring story about how the pickup in this cheapy is not standard size, neither is the depth of the pickup route, lots of p!ssing about with different length screws (because the Lace Aluma P has low profile mounting lugs) and having to paint inside the route with matt black paint to hide/disguise the fact that it's bigger than the pickup.

 

 

While I was mucking about, I added a Sire style 3 string retainer to replace the standard round style 2 string one.

 

 

Anyway, I'm done now.  I have a very giggable bass that sounds great for around £300.

 

[Baxlin]

A few years ago I bought a real cheapie Westfield on eBay, (I sold it for a reasonable profit - I bought it that cheaply!).  I”d wanted to try a fretless, so I defretted it, fitting the fret grooves with wood filler, and painted the fretboard satin black after a good sanding.  I enjoyed messing around at home with it, but hadn’t the courage to play it anywhere else…

Edited October 3 by Baxlin

[Basvarken]

 

Here's my modified Epiphone Jack Casady Signature bass.
I was not impressed by the Electar pickup that Jack Casady developed in cooperation with Epiphone. He claimed it was much better than the original lo-z humbucker that Gibson used in the (original) Les Paul Signature Bass.
I replaced it with a genuine Gibson stacked lo-z humbucker from a Les Paul bass. Inspired by the first edition of the Gibson Les Paul Signature bass with cream oval shaped pickup.

In my opinion it is a huge improvement. The Gibson pickup has a more authoritative sound and better dynamic response.

 

 

Edited October 7 by Basvarken

[Baloney Balderdash]

My 4 string Ibanez GSRM20 neck (with GSRM20B tuners) + GSRM20B body Mikro Bass, that I named "Dud Bottomfeeder".

 

It features an Okoume body, and a Maple neck with a Rosewood fretboard, the stock pickups has been pulled out and replaced for a EMG Geezer Butler P/J pickup set, both pickups respectively wired directly to each their own dedicated the jack output socket, and it is strung with Elixir Nanoweb coated nickel-plated roundwound hex steel core guitar strings, gauge .068 - .052 - .038 - .028, tuned in tenor bass, A#1 standard, tuning, that is as one half step above the 4 upper strings of a 6 string bass in regular B standard tuning, making it sit exactly right between regular 4 string bass, E1 standard tuning, and regular 6 string guitar E2 standard tuning.

 

Further more has been added a Jack Skellington skull sticker on the body, above the bridge, and respectively black, red and green electrical tape (alao known as insulation tape) cut to size over the pickups and the knob, the latter which is a transparent/black PRS Lampshade knob.

 

Edited October 7 by Baloney Balderdash

[Passinwind]

Here's my Marco Bass MV4 fretless, which is now on its third DIY preamp:

 

 

This time around I did a "filter" preamp for the bridge pickup, and a more standard Bass/Mids job for the neck pickup. Then the pickups are mixed to mono actively, for the moment at least. Easy enough to do a Ric style stereo breakout though, as the four conductor cabling has a spare available.

 

I set it up so the neck volume control mutes everything, but turning down the bridge pickup fully still lets the neck one come through at a slightly diminished level. The volume pots are detented with more or less unity gain at the noon positions. That allows makeup gain when big cuts are used, leveling out big tone control  boosts, and up to a whopping +24dB of gain at bass full up, pretty much still dead clean. There's "Q switch" for the filter resonance, currently with two gain options but probably with a third one added whenever buying the right switch is convenient. I play with a slide quite a bit and solo on many many songs, this new format makes grabbing a brighter more cutting sound trivially easy and although this bass has always sounded quite nice this is by far my favorite iteration.

 

 

[Jono Bolton]

On 07/10/2024 at 12:10, Basvarken said:

 

Here's my modified Epiphone Jack Casady Signature bass.
I was not impressed by the Electar pickup that Jack Casady developed in cooperation with Epiphone. He claimed it was much better than the original lo-z humbucker that Gibson used in the (original) Les Paul Signature Bass.
I replaced it with a genuine Gibson stacked lo-z humbucker from a Les Paul bass. Inspired by the first edition of the Gibson Les Paul Signature bass with cream oval shaped pickup.

In my opinion it is a huge improvement. The Gibson pickup has a more authoritative sound and better dynamic response.

 

 

Is that the same pickup used in the Triumph Bass? I'd never seen it in another Bass until now.

[Basvarken]

On 09/11/2024 at 16:02, Jono Bolton said:

Is that the same pickup used in the Triumph Bass? I'd never seen it in another Bass until now.

Yes, from a Gibson Les Paul Bass (aka Triumph)

[Basvarken]

I used one of those in my modified Pearl Export Bass too.
This Pearl originally was identical to the Epiphone Genesis Bass. With chrome cased humbuckers.

But I replaced the original pickups with a Gibson lo-z stacked humbucker from a Les Paul Bass in the middle position.

And a Gibson lo-z stacked humbucker for a Les Paul Recording Guitar in the bridge position. As you can see the guitar pickup is a bit smaller than the bass pickup.

 

Edited November 12 by Basvarken

[Basvarken]

And here's another.

A short scale semi-acoustic bass from the Czech brand BaCH.

Originally it had just one mudbucker at the neck. Just like an EB-2

 

I put two Gibson lo-z stacked humbuckers from a Les Paul Bass in it.

Did not install a three position selector switch for the three coil taps on each pickup. But decided to only wire the full windings of each pickup.

The toggle is to chose neck, both or bridge pickup.

 

Edited November 12 by Basvarken

[neepheid]

Where are you finding all these Lo-Z pickups?  Do you have a scrappie's yard of Les Paul bass husks somewhere?

[Basvarken]

There was a time when I checked Ebay every day. Each time when I saw one of these pop up, I put a bid on it. And I won several auctions.
But that was over 10 - 15 years ago. Haven't bought one in ages.

 

Tried to build my own at a certain point, but that project never came to fruition...

https://www.facebook.com/basvarken/videos/483578832934300

 

Edited November 12 by Basvarken

[BassAgent]

This is my 2013 Sterling Ray34CA, of which only the body, bridge and preamp are still original. The pickup is a Nordstrand MM4.2, the nek was custom built for me by a Dutch luthier and I've replaced the not very pretty tortoise pickguard with a black one. I'm planning on replacing the preamp too.

 

And then there's my 2001 Fender Standard Jazz fretless, with a Gotoh 201 bridge, De Gier prototype pickups and a black pickguard:

 

I've also replaced the pickups in 3 of my other basses, but that isn't very visible so for me doesn't count as an actual modification. Just an improvement.

Edited November 13 by BassAgent

[gafbass02]

My 1990 MiJ jazz - of which the only original part is now the body and three of the tuners. Many of you know this bass well. It’s had countless variations but this is it today. It’s quite wonky and really battered from decades of gigs and the finish is disintegrating in chunks and splits, but it’s a part of me and I love it. It used to be sonic blue but has turned more green over the years.