Too orangey for crows, it's just for me and my dawg

[Teesee]

Not a build but a heavy mod so I hope I'm posting in the right forum, apologies if not and a call to the mods to move it to it's correct home if necessary. I'm new so apologies.

So, I'd been a bit curious about fanned fret basses for some time now but there is no way I could afford a Dingwall or such and most fanned frets were commanding prices of £600+ even at secondhand values. Then I read about the Red Sub Coliseum which were being knocked out by G4M for around £270. When I went on the G4M they'd dropped Red Sub but carried an almost identical bass called the 972 https://g4m.com/product/g4m-972-fanned-fret-5-string-blue-burl-burst/ Which I thought I'd take a punt on. TBH when it arrived I loved it,

OK the hardware and electronics were a bit flakey but the neck was sublime and a lovely player. However, I do really think that it's more of a 'metal' or 'prog' guitar than a good all rounder due to the pickups positioning. I rather like dub and reggae and was wondering how it would sound with a third pickup added close to the neck.

I did some research but concluded that trying to wire a third pickup and find a switch which would allow me to adjust all 3 pickups individually or permutations of the three was well above my level of experience. Plan 'B' was called for which was moving the 'neck' pickup closer to the neck.

I build a little pickup mule to find the sweetspot that worked for me;

Having spent ages trying to decide I finally stumbled across this configuration which had the pickup at a different angle to the angle it was originally set at;

Visually, I was not over enamoured with all the bumpy and pointy bits on the body so I decided to 'phone a friend' namely one of my old band mates from 40 years ago who was building guitars in his retirement. Armed with a set of French Curves we went to work...

We subtly rounded the upper horn, and took the pointy bit off the lower horn then took quite a bit of material from the bottom end of the body. Now you will notice that this picture shows an undercoat. The original blue burl is actually a very thin real wood veneer, unfortunately because we were going to relocate the pickup then there was no way of either getting some veneer or even applying it to the original pickup position, so the plan was to respray.

With the old pickup cavity blocked with a bit of wood and the new cavity cut out it was time  to prep for the respray. Now in case you're confused the photo above was taken before he finished rounding off the bottom of the body he'd  forgot about that, so he actually cut those bits off when he'd prepped the undercoat.

Colour. What are we going to have? Well I wanted something a bit different to all of the natural or black guitars I already have. So was thinking back to my youth when in the early 70's everything was orange, Space Hoppers, Chopper bikes, Habitat wall paper and also a groundbreaking film 'A Clockwork Orange' was doing the rounds. Picked out RAL2011  and since it matched my little Orange Crush Bass 50 thought 'that'll do' and was at one stage going to call the bass 'The Clockwork Orange' even printed out the decals along with Alex Delarge's stylised eye.

Nitro painting;

Shielding

Headstock - dropped the lettering and just went with the eye

flakey machine heads replaced with Wawicks and a Glockenklang 3 eq pre added;

Final assembly

Neck pickup sounds lovely dialled fully on and the Glockenklang just adds a lot more richness so really happy now with the guitar which didn't start life as a bad instrument to be fair, but it's where I want it now,  has no resale value at all but I love it.

Cheers.

[Hellzero]

Great modification! Congratulations! But beware of the Apostrophe Police 🚓 🚨 

[itu]

4 hours ago, Teesee said:

...so really happy now with the guitar which didn't start life as a bad instrument to be fair, but it's where I want it now, has no resale value at all but I love it.

...and who cares about the resale value when you love it, and fits you like a glove? Very nice project, super execution.

[Newfoundfreedom]

Cracking job that. Very impressed. I've looked at those Red Sub bases several times and been tempted myself and put off by the "metal" look of them. Yours is a big improvement. 

 

The only other thing that puts me off buying one is that I've seen loads of them for sale with cracked headstocks so it seems to be a weak point. Watch out for that. 

[Andyjr1515]

Great job and great result.

[Teesee]

32 minutes ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

Cracking job that. Very impressed. I've looked at those Red Sub bases several times and been tempted myself and put off by the "metal" look of them. Yours is a big improvement. 

 

The only other thing that puts me off buying one is that I've seen loads of them for sale with cracked headstocks so it seems to be a weak point. Watch out for that. 

Thanks for the heads up I wasn't aware of the headstock issue TBF. I believe the 972 is made in a different factory than the Red Subs so hopefully they're ironed out the headstock issues, just given mine a careful inspection and doesn't appear to be anything I can see yet.

Hopefully, it's been sorted but only time will tell. Cheers

[ezbass]

Aesthetically, that’s a huge improvement IMO and if the sound is now more to your liking, then that’s a win all round. Ouststanding 👏👏👏.

[Richard R]

Very nice! 😎