Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Next Pair of Quarks
Another set of (near) twins. We'll call them Top and Bottom. It must be the powerful streak of symmetry within my soul that makes me want to see that my basses never want for close company. I know that human twins share that close bond.
These two are MIJ Jazz fretlesses, dated to the mid 90's according to the serial numbers and were acquired within a year of each other. The white-finished one was an eBay score from someone in Ontario. The black one has a much longer history...
I had been playing a year or two, when I I realized that I wanted to play a fretless again. (I had the loan of a natural-finish fretless Fender 'P' back in the 80's for several months.) I started looking in the want ads, and found the black one. When I called, the owner had been unable to sell it and so dropped it off at the local pawn shop. I rushed over and discovered I was also too late at that place as well. I managed to drag the name of the buyer out of the salesman, and called him, introduced myself and told him to please call if he was ever going to sell it. I did call a couple of times later but he wasn't interested in getting rid of it.
About a year later I called only to, once again(!) discover he had sold it. I got the newest owner's name, called, introduced myself and let him know that (yet one more time) I was interested. Fortunately, the wait was a lot shorter and he did call me first. It was in surprisingly good shape for a twenty-something, except that one of the machine tuners had been (badly) replaced. No matter there, as I intended to replace the originals with Fender/Schaller types with the bigger back-plate.
Once again (how predictable!!) I managed to score two sets off eBay - one set was made and stamped Schaller, the other a no-name set, but for all intents and purposes were identical in shape and size. I took both fretless necks to a friend and *very carefully* used his drill press to make larger (and slightly offset) holes to accommodate the new tuners. For a first-time job I was surprisingly lucky and the only "miss" was that a small portion of the backing plates of the 'G' string tuner sticks out from the headstock.
The other modifications were mostly cosmetic. The white one's standard pick-guard was replaced with a "mother-of-pearl" one and the pickup's were replaced with my favorites: DiMarzio's. It adds a nice bit of growl to the fretless mwah. The black one also has a mother of pearl-of-pearl pick-guard (this one black) as well as a black control plate. (If only the fretboard of the white one was maple; I'd have exact particle/anti-particle duality.)
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[Update]
The "black one" is now strung as a BEAD, and sports a tortoise-shell pickguard. After recently building a fretted BEAD, I thought, I wonder what a fretless one would sound like?? I bought a .130 'B' string and just moved the others down. The only modification was a gentle widening of the slots in the nut to accommodate the bigger strings. With those pickup, it sounds fabulous!! I don't think I've taken it out to play yet, but that may be this summer.
These two are MIJ Jazz fretlesses, dated to the mid 90's according to the serial numbers and were acquired within a year of each other. The white-finished one was an eBay score from someone in Ontario. The black one has a much longer history...
I had been playing a year or two, when I I realized that I wanted to play a fretless again. (I had the loan of a natural-finish fretless Fender 'P' back in the 80's for several months.) I started looking in the want ads, and found the black one. When I called, the owner had been unable to sell it and so dropped it off at the local pawn shop. I rushed over and discovered I was also too late at that place as well. I managed to drag the name of the buyer out of the salesman, and called him, introduced myself and told him to please call if he was ever going to sell it. I did call a couple of times later but he wasn't interested in getting rid of it.
About a year later I called only to, once again(!) discover he had sold it. I got the newest owner's name, called, introduced myself and let him know that (yet one more time) I was interested. Fortunately, the wait was a lot shorter and he did call me first. It was in surprisingly good shape for a twenty-something, except that one of the machine tuners had been (badly) replaced. No matter there, as I intended to replace the originals with Fender/Schaller types with the bigger back-plate.
Once again (how predictable!!) I managed to score two sets off eBay - one set was made and stamped Schaller, the other a no-name set, but for all intents and purposes were identical in shape and size. I took both fretless necks to a friend and *very carefully* used his drill press to make larger (and slightly offset) holes to accommodate the new tuners. For a first-time job I was surprisingly lucky and the only "miss" was that a small portion of the backing plates of the 'G' string tuner sticks out from the headstock.
The other modifications were mostly cosmetic. The white one's standard pick-guard was replaced with a "mother-of-pearl" one and the pickup's were replaced with my favorites: DiMarzio's. It adds a nice bit of growl to the fretless mwah. The black one also has a mother of pearl-of-pearl pick-guard (this one black) as well as a black control plate. (If only the fretboard of the white one was maple; I'd have exact particle/anti-particle duality.)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
[Update]
The "black one" is now strung as a BEAD, and sports a tortoise-shell pickguard. After recently building a fretted BEAD, I thought, I wonder what a fretless one would sound like?? I bought a .130 'B' string and just moved the others down. The only modification was a gentle widening of the slots in the nut to accommodate the bigger strings. With those pickup, it sounds fabulous!! I don't think I've taken it out to play yet, but that may be this summer.
