Finally got my beater bass back into playing shape!!! It’s my first bass ever. I got this guy about 14 years ago and I still love the ‘lil bastard.

I cannibalized it about a month ago in order to source some parts for my last P Bass project but about 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to fix him up. The main problem was that I’d lost a couple set screws for the saddle. Without these set screws I couldn’t get the string height right and the bass would be pretty much unplayable. The challenge is that these are some random ass screws. Home Depot didn’t have any… neither did Orchard Supply. Finally, I swung by Gelb Music on Saturday and Ed rummaged through a bunch of drawers ’till he found a screw that fit the bill.

So the bass i nowhere near stock. He’s got quite a few modifications:

• Warmoth J Bass neck with Tele style headstock
• Badass 2 bridge
• Lindy Fralin pickups
• Sadowsky style knobs
• Schaller tuners
• my name’s painted on it

The only thing stock on the bass is the body. This Epiphone PJ has come quite a way over the years. He’s quite the player; feels great and sounds great!

I’m still not done though. I think I’m gonna make this guy an active bass again. He needs a preamp… it sounds good but I gotta admit I’m a preamp addict now. They add some bite and give you a tremendous amount of versatility. I haven’t decided what preamp I’m going with (maybe an Aguilar OBP-1 or OBP-3) but I have decided to install an on/on/on mini toggle for pickup switching (neck, both bridge) instead of using a pan knob.

I’ll report on the whole preamp thing later once I figure out what I’m gonna do. ‘Till then here’s some pics for ya:

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The project P Bass I talked about a few entries ago is finally finished… but, things didn’t quite go according to plan.

First off here’s what (s)he looked like upon completion:

Not bad huh? The kinda-sorta-sparkley, black finish on the body went really well with the perloid pickguard and the rosewood neck. It looked rad The bass was also wearing a set of Split P pickups by DiMarzio. The Split P’s are actually twin humbuckers; quite a bit different than your standard in-series P bass pickup. They sound great! I’m a fan.

But, Houston… we have a problem. The body, even though it had a pretty finish, was pure crap. No 2 ways about it… it was garbage.

I got the body on eBay for $65 and it was advertised as an original Fender body. I always thought the price was way too low for a decent slab but figured it was worth the gamble. When I first unpacked the body the main thing I noticed was that it was light as hell. Knocking on it made me think I was at the supermarket shopping for watermelon. It sounded hollow. Due to this crappy body the bass just felt cheap. I gave it a little while hoping I’d get over it but that never happened. This thing was crap and there was no way around it.

For what its worth, here’s some pics of me putting thing thing together:

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So, a couple weeks went by and it was time to find a replacement body. This time I stuck to a more reasonable price range and grabbed a white, Fender P Bass body. This body arrived on Friday; it had some weight to it (felt normal) and sounded solid when I knocked on it. The neck pocket revealed some raw wood and this thing’s definitely alder.

I had an hour to kill this Saturday and put the bad boy together. It felt and sounded way better than in its previous incarnation. After a tad bit of thinking I decided I wanted to go for a more traditional sound with this guy so I ripped some Lindy Fralin P Pickups off my PJ and replaced the DiMarzios. I’m pretty happy with this choice. This guy is gonna stay passive so the Fralins suit it better. The PJ’s got a URetro pre in it so the more modern DiMarzios will be happier in there. Its a win-win.

Looks good huh? I’m pretty happy with the final outcome. I’m totally a fan of more modern basses like the Music Mans but its nice to have a meat and potatoes bass in the stable. This P is currently my only bass without a preamp… we’ll see how long that lasts

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All the parts for my project P Bass are in The body finally arrived today to join the rest of the components.

Now one a couple things:

1. When I purchased the body on eBay I didn’t notice that there were no pre-drilled holes for the pickguard or the bridge. The pickguard I’m not worries about… that should be easy but, the bridge, now that worries me a tad. I can easily drill some holes but the thing is, without a jig, it’s going to be pretty critical/tough to get the holes drilled in the exact right spot. It would be a disaster if the bridge was off horizontally or vertically; in a bad scenario either the strings wouldn’t line up right or the intonation would be off forever.
2. Now, I’m really stoked at the descriptions and sound clips of the DiMarzio P127 pickups but I really wish it had a standard look with the pole pieces visible (it has blade magnets, so this isn’t possible).
   

Anyways - this should be fun. I’m sure if I’m careful enough I’ll get the bridge holes drilled just right. I can use a couple of my other basses as an aide in measuring etc. The pickup thing should be fine as well. I have some grey paint I bought that I’m gonna use to paint the black magnet blades. This should get it looking pretty sweet.

Once I get started on the project I’ll make sure to take pics and post ‘em. It won’t be as interesting as the Project Telecaster since there’s no routing or special wiring involved but it should still be a nice, fun, and cheap weekend affair.

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I built my own Telecaster! Woot!

Lemme tell ya the backstory first…

A few months ago I modified a Mexican Tele I’ve had since 1996. The latest mod was to route the body and install a Dimarzio Steve Morse signature humbucker in the bridge. It went so well I figured “Hey, I should build a guitar from scratch!”. So I found a Telecaster body on eBay and the ball started rolling.

I didn’t actually buy wood and cut it up etc… I bought all the parts and put together a customized Tele.

Let’s do a quick roll call and see what parts I had to buy:

• Fender 60’s reissue body
• Neck from USA Custom Guitars
• TV Jones Magantron pickups
• Gotoh humbucker bridge
• Earvana nut
• 3 ply black/white/black pickguard
• Schaller Mini Locking tuners
• Knobs made of water buffalo horns
• Misc parts: screws, wire, control plate, 3 way switch, foam etc

So it all started off as a box full of parts. Here’s the major parts laid out as if they’re put together:

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First order of business was to route out the body. The neck needed to be routed out to fit a P90 profile and the bridge position’s route needed to be enlarged to take a Filtertron sized pickup.

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So, there was a bunch of routing to do but its pretty fun and its actually pretty easy with the Dremel. Its a bit tough to get it super straight but the pickguard and bridge cover the area so you don’t have to be too exact. My dad wanted in on the fun and did the neck route. He did a pretty damn good at keeping it pretty even and straight.

With the pickup holes all ready to go it was time to start up on the neck. The first thing I did here was install the Earvana Nut. Its got a compensated design which is supposed to make the intonation way better - especially for chords.

The nut comes in 2 pieces: a base that glues into the neck and the top which screw onto that. The base comes bigger than it needs to be so it needed a ton of filing and sanding to get it to sit flush in the nut slot…

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It was a pretty tedious process mostly b/c a guitar’s fretboard’s got a radius to it. So, while sanding the base down to size you’ve got to make sure to maintain a curve so that the top sites 100% flush with the fretboard when it’s glued into place.

I thought the nut installation would be the hardest part of the project since it was such a game of millimeters. But, it wasn’t too bad. It took a while but its not too difficult as long as you take your time. As it turns out installing the tuners was the biggest bitch of all.

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Without a proper work bench and clamps, getting all the tuners to sit totally parallel was a nightmare. The Scaheller tuners have this little divot instead of a set screw. So marking and drilling holes for that got super annoying. I got them all mostly straight though. Even I barely notice the offset ones. Eh, its all good.

With the body routed and the neck all ready to go it was finally time to bolt the 2 together.

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The neck is a bird’s eye maple neck with a bird’s eye maple fingerboard. I bought it from USA Custom Guitars. I highly recommend these guys (even over Warmoth). The neck is meant to be a duplicate of a MusicMan Axis’ neck. It’s got a 10″ radius, is 1^5/8 inches at the nut and has an asymmetrical contour to it. I spent many days playing all my guitars and deciding which profile to select for the neck. In the end I found myself playing fastest and most comfortably on my Axis Sport so I decided to copy its neck. The neck profile I picked vastly differenciates this guitar from a run of the mill Tele.

I was scared of this process too. It’s one of those “if you fuck this up your screwed” kind of things. The neck does not come with mounting holes drilled in it. Reason being they don’t know what body you’re using so it’s up to you to measure and get it right… if you get it wrong the neck will sit crooked and your guitar’s pretty much worthless. Luckily, I kicked ass on this part and the neck fits like a glove… even better than some Fenders I’ve seen on the shelves at stores. Woot!

Here’s the first look of the guitar actually looking like a guitar

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Now it was time to start thinking about the electronics. Before the pickups went in I made sure to shield the cavities with copper tape.

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Finally it was time to get the pickups in there. The pickups I chose are TV Jones Magantrons. I really didn’t want to put together a standard issue Tele. That would be pointless IMO so picking the pickups was a big deal. I went with TV Jones pickups b/c they’re awesome for rockabilly type music which is the tone I was shooting for. I settled on the Magnatrons after hearing all the sound clips on their site. They’ve got a great single coil tone but with a little something different. They’re capable of the producing some nice sizzle and don’t sound generic at all.

OK - back to the build process… The priority now was to get the pickups mounted in there all nice ‘n perfect. The fit was a bit tight so I had to do some quick Dremel work to add a few more millimeters of play. The routes were right on… but when trying to move the pickups up ‘n down they needed a bit more work.

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You’ll see the use of a mouse pad in the set above. Telecaster pickups mount to the pickguard and bridge but these TV Jones pickups don’t; they mount to the body. Now, to be able to have the height adjustable I needed some squishy type material that expanded when pressure was released so, I figured a mouse pad would work… and it did.

Now it was time for dad to do his magic. My dad is an electronics genius. No, it doesn’t take a genius to install pickups but having my pops handling that task, as opposed to me, is a good idea. I had some ridiculous ideas on how I wanted the electronics to work so dad took inventory of the parts I had and sketched about about a dozen wiring/functional options for me. I picked one and a few minutes later she was all wired up and ready to sing.

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This guitar is not wired anything like a normal Tele. Its got, what I think is, an awesome twist. The main ingredient in the twist is a 3 way mini toggle switch found between the tone and volume pots. So, we’ve got our 3 way pickup selector switch, the volume, the 3 way mini toggle and the tone control. What the mini toggle does is:

• down: tone pot filtered thru .102 capacitor
• middle: completely bypass the tone pot
• up: tone pot filtered thru .039 capacitor

This thing sounds great!!! I’m not saying this just ’cause I built it. It’s super versetile and awesome. The tone flexibility kicks a ton of ass. I couldn’t be happier with it. It can do rockabilly, country, rock, metal… its rad! My one “thing” is I may change the mini toggle to an off/on/on so that all the way down is the tone bypass as opposed to the middle position. But, its working out real well so I’m still undecided on that.

Once the wiring was done this pile of parts finally became worthy of being called a guitar.

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The last thing I wanted to do now was to take it apart again… but I did - but nothing major. I wasn’t horribly happy with the mouse pad hack so i went to the hardware store and picked up some foam material in a couple different thicknesses. This made a huge difference in the bridge position but not much under the P90. Either way - it was nice to undo the hack.

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Having a newly built guitar I wanted to make sure the fucker played well too. I spent some time doing a setup and just wasn’t happy. I’d never set up a guitar that had never had strings on that and it proved super challenging to me. I decided a pro setup was in order and took the ‘lil guy to Terry Hiatt, my “guitar guy”. Terry loved the guitar and turned around the setup in about 24 hours. He setup it up perfect as always but didn’t play it at all… he wanted me to get the first whack at it. So when I picked it up I gave it a whirl then terry snatched it away and whaled in it. Awesome! We were both very impressed with how it all turned out.

Here she is right after coming home from a nice setup:

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At this point the guitar was all put together, wired up all awesome and had a pro setup; all that was left was to clean her up and treat the neck.

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The cleanup was basic. Ernie Ball Wonder Wipes kick ass and I highly recommend them. A quick application of the the fretboard conditioner got the maple looking all nice and the instrument polish got her all nice and shiny. Now, treating the neck a bit more work. The neck is unfinished to get a nice, silky, smooth feel. To get this awesome feel you need 2 things: 0000 steal wool, gunstock oil and gunstock wax. Sand it with the steal wool, apply some oil, let it dry, more steal wool, then wax… that is the recipe for a nice, awesome feeling, unfinished neck.

And there you have it… my custom, self built project Telecaster.