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13 years ago a friend of mine gave me this bass. A 1960's Lyle 5120, also made as Epiphone, Aria, and a bunch of other brands. From the Matsumoku factory of course.The girl I was dating at the time had a problem with the guy and made me get rid of it, so I gave it to my bassist. He never did anything with it and it sat. I got him to send it to me armed with a amazon gift card and a stewmac subscription I set to ordering parts.
This was the most frustrating project. I have worked on. Something went wrong at every step of the way. Parts were really hard to find. The neck plate has a non standard bolt pattern but luckily someone was selling one on ebay for 20 bucks. Bought a knock off hofner tailpiece and bridge off Amazon as well as 500k pots, orange drop caps,tusq nut, a jack, and toggle switch. All I needed was tuners... I ran into the first major issue, no aftermarket tuners would fit in the less than 1/2" hole so I went with some gotoh tuners that fit in a 9/16" hole and decided to drill.
Got most of the parts in and started drilling the holes out for the tuners. The bit caught the side of the hole and twisted the clamped down neck and split the headstock from the top left corner to the hole then across and down the joint of the adjacent piece of the neck. I threw the drill across the garage and was super depressed for the rest of the night.Then next day I picked up some titebond iii and glued and clamped the neck. Then it sat for a week without me looking at it.
Yesterday the final part came in so I immediately got to work. New wiring harness was the most daunting and time consuming thing. Put all the components on a cardboard template and stated soldering. Had my iron cranked to make sure I didn't overheat the pots trying to ground things and everything was going good until I got to the switch. The bottom of the switch was plastic and I forgot to turn the iron down. And it heat the contact to the point the plastic around it melted and the spring beneath shot the contact across the room. So I used the old corroded one, which still works. Then I got to do the fun part of guiding all the components to their homes. The pot holes were too small... drilled again. Got the stuff halfway in before I realized I wired the pickups backward from their respective knobs, so I just said screw it and its going in wrong and future me can deal with it. Threw on the tailpiece (which looking at it now needs to move to the right). Then got a solid 4 hours of sleep before work.
Got off work today and put on the tuners, bridge, and flatwounds and plugged it in. Still needs a proper setup, the nut slots need filed and intonation set and I need to adjust the truss rod pretty badly.
It sounds really great. The pickups are pretty low output for humbuckers 7.79k and 8.8k, but are super responsive. I usually hammer my strings with my fingers on my other bass but this one needs a soft touch and has a surprising number of useful sounds. It sounds huge into an amp and I get some good upright and beatles tones. But I can do funk on it as well as long as I keep my right hand under control. Sounds awesome with a pick and Palm muting. Overall I'm super happy with it and covers the sounds I never would have gotten with my solid body.
Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
This was the most frustrating project. I have worked on. Something went wrong at every step of the way. Parts were really hard to find. The neck plate has a non standard bolt pattern but luckily someone was selling one on ebay for 20 bucks. Bought a knock off hofner tailpiece and bridge off Amazon as well as 500k pots, orange drop caps,tusq nut, a jack, and toggle switch. All I needed was tuners... I ran into the first major issue, no aftermarket tuners would fit in the less than 1/2" hole so I went with some gotoh tuners that fit in a 9/16" hole and decided to drill.
Got most of the parts in and started drilling the holes out for the tuners. The bit caught the side of the hole and twisted the clamped down neck and split the headstock from the top left corner to the hole then across and down the joint of the adjacent piece of the neck. I threw the drill across the garage and was super depressed for the rest of the night.Then next day I picked up some titebond iii and glued and clamped the neck. Then it sat for a week without me looking at it.
Yesterday the final part came in so I immediately got to work. New wiring harness was the most daunting and time consuming thing. Put all the components on a cardboard template and stated soldering. Had my iron cranked to make sure I didn't overheat the pots trying to ground things and everything was going good until I got to the switch. The bottom of the switch was plastic and I forgot to turn the iron down. And it heat the contact to the point the plastic around it melted and the spring beneath shot the contact across the room. So I used the old corroded one, which still works. Then I got to do the fun part of guiding all the components to their homes. The pot holes were too small... drilled again. Got the stuff halfway in before I realized I wired the pickups backward from their respective knobs, so I just said screw it and its going in wrong and future me can deal with it. Threw on the tailpiece (which looking at it now needs to move to the right). Then got a solid 4 hours of sleep before work.
Got off work today and put on the tuners, bridge, and flatwounds and plugged it in. Still needs a proper setup, the nut slots need filed and intonation set and I need to adjust the truss rod pretty badly.
It sounds really great. The pickups are pretty low output for humbuckers 7.79k and 8.8k, but are super responsive. I usually hammer my strings with my fingers on my other bass but this one needs a soft touch and has a surprising number of useful sounds. It sounds huge into an amp and I get some good upright and beatles tones. But I can do funk on it as well as long as I keep my right hand under control. Sounds awesome with a pick and Palm muting. Overall I'm super happy with it and covers the sounds I never would have gotten with my solid body.
Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
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