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So I was given this (80's?) Cort Bass by a friend. When I received it, it only had the body, neck, and tuners on it. Nothing else. He originally told me he wanted me to fix it up for him, but after I told him what it would cost (including parts and friend discount) he just gave it to me.
So I polished this turd, and the lesson I learned from all this was, There are no such things as universal parts. I mean, I already knew this, but man, I had to do so much alteration and adjustments.
But onto the pictures!
The frets just came out. I mean, I've never had frets just pop out like they did. So new jumbo frets went in.
Since this was a piece of crap P-Bass, I decided I wanted a P/J Bass. So I cut out a hole for one.
I want to take a minute and say that the pickups I ordered from TNT Guitars are AWESOME!!!! They are active pickups and are copies of EMG pickups. They are crazy loud! And for the price, I think they are so well made they could bump up the price.
The only thing I would suggest is to make the tone pot 100K ohms. It doesn't really have much range at 25K. Other than that, I'd say don't be afraid to order them.
I also ordered a pickguard from them. I had to do a little creative adjusting, but it ended up working out just fine for me.
The bridge had already been replaced once, so I had to order another one. The old one was pretty rusted up, and missing pieces.
I also had to do a bit of creative screwing. (ha, ha.) No really, the hole didn't line up with the body, so I had to put a giant screw in sideways. It ended up holding. It doesn't look as bad as it does in the pictures. I have the picture taken really close up.
So, after a ton of adjusting and such, here's the final product.
There are a lot of steps I performed that I didn't mention here. I did a ton of work on this. It seemed like every little part fought me on this one. But as I said, there are no such things as universal parts.
It was also a good bass to work on, in that, it was such a piece of crap. I literally couldn't make it any worse. Oh, I did forget to mention I moved the output jack so that I could drill a hole to the bridge pickup? And speaking of crap, did you see the "wood" this thing is made of? It really is plywood. Look at the hole I made for the pickup. You can see the layers of plywood. I think it almost speaks to my level of competence that I was able to make this thing playable. Even with a wonky truss rod.
I told myself not to bother working on it, but I just can't leave a project alone. I'm glad I did, because that same friend said he would help me with a gig playing bass, but didn't have a bass...... or a bass amp. So I was glad to let him borrow the same bass he gave me (as well as a bass amp.) Is that .... Karma? I don't know.
So I polished this turd, and the lesson I learned from all this was, There are no such things as universal parts. I mean, I already knew this, but man, I had to do so much alteration and adjustments.
But onto the pictures!
The frets just came out. I mean, I've never had frets just pop out like they did. So new jumbo frets went in.
Since this was a piece of crap P-Bass, I decided I wanted a P/J Bass. So I cut out a hole for one.
I want to take a minute and say that the pickups I ordered from TNT Guitars are AWESOME!!!! They are active pickups and are copies of EMG pickups. They are crazy loud! And for the price, I think they are so well made they could bump up the price.
The only thing I would suggest is to make the tone pot 100K ohms. It doesn't really have much range at 25K. Other than that, I'd say don't be afraid to order them.
I also ordered a pickguard from them. I had to do a little creative adjusting, but it ended up working out just fine for me.
The bridge had already been replaced once, so I had to order another one. The old one was pretty rusted up, and missing pieces.
I also had to do a bit of creative screwing. (ha, ha.) No really, the hole didn't line up with the body, so I had to put a giant screw in sideways. It ended up holding. It doesn't look as bad as it does in the pictures. I have the picture taken really close up.
So, after a ton of adjusting and such, here's the final product.
There are a lot of steps I performed that I didn't mention here. I did a ton of work on this. It seemed like every little part fought me on this one. But as I said, there are no such things as universal parts.
It was also a good bass to work on, in that, it was such a piece of crap. I literally couldn't make it any worse. Oh, I did forget to mention I moved the output jack so that I could drill a hole to the bridge pickup? And speaking of crap, did you see the "wood" this thing is made of? It really is plywood. Look at the hole I made for the pickup. You can see the layers of plywood. I think it almost speaks to my level of competence that I was able to make this thing playable. Even with a wonky truss rod.
I told myself not to bother working on it, but I just can't leave a project alone. I'm glad I did, because that same friend said he would help me with a gig playing bass, but didn't have a bass...... or a bass amp. So I was glad to let him borrow the same bass he gave me (as well as a bass amp.) Is that .... Karma? I don't know.
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