Introduction
I took up playing the bass a couple of years ago and bought the cheapest headless bass on ebay at the time to practice on (the Tommy the Cat bass being my main one). The body was somewhat battered, the electrics were shot and the bridge was missing all four saddles.
Minor refurb
First, I fixed it up with a used bridge to make it playable:
After using it as a non-working bass for a while, I decided to give the bass a new lease of life.
Quick teardown
Nothing much to report, I think this may be a new record teardown to me in just under a minute.
Paint stripping
Usual technique. I invested in a disk sander eventually, which both made things quicker and revealed that this bass had a second identity:
Quick slideshow of the progress there:
I used 40 grit sandpaper to take the finish off the neck. This was crazy quick, but I would recommend more like 80 as it did remove more wood than I would have liked.
Cured by working through the grits, just a lesson for the future.
Fixing its past
One of the 20+ year old screws sheared clean off when removing the original bridge, then I helped things by sanding it dead smooth removing the finish…
So out with the drill and I now have a hole to fill before re-fitting the hardware.
Neck, electronics and plans
I’ve been talking to Sims Guitars about putting in a pair of their Super Quad Pickup system in this bass. The plan currently is I’ll be applying the finish and transfers, then they’ll be routing and fitting the system as well as repairing some fretboard damage and adding a new 12th fret inlay similar to this:
Paint
Took a bit of time taping the guitar up ready for primer:
Learning from the last project, I added a few crossing layers to avoid over-spray. Unfortunately the nut end came unstuck on spray, so I’ll need to sand that very lightly once the paint’s down.
I used Plasti-cote red oxide primer (affiliate link) hopefully to boost the red when I spray it on. Primed, but before sanding the guitar looks like this:
