1977 Fender Precision Bass

A genuine road worn ~ this workhorse could certainly tell some stories of gigs gone by!  Over it's years of service, it has been beaten up, rewired, re-bridged, re-painted, etc, etc ~ and now it needs blood transfusion!  This was dropped off for a fret re-crowning and some electronics issues as well as a set-up.

   
At some point someone had hand-filed the frets quite flat.  Fortunately there is enough meat left on them that they can be crowned and dressed without having to do a re-fret quite yet.

The ridges created by the flat filed crown and a few years of playing made this bass play quite awkwardly. Some careful filing took the ridges off these frets, and after a dressing and polish they were back to feeling like normal.






Fitted with aftermarket chrome Schaller bridge and tuners certainly weren't complimented by the gold knobs!  These will be replaced with chrome knobs once the electronics are sorted out.

The worn away areas on this body reveal no less than four colours!

No idea what may have inspired someone to hack away at the control cavity.  Then again, this was the CBS era of Fender in full swing and it was, after all, the 70's!

As you can probably tell, it didn't take long to realize why this bass was having issues with the electronics.  As these were not the original parts and the cost to clean them up and save them would be more than replacement, this assembly was overhauled!

This bass now plays like a breath of fresh air!  It has many more years left in it and sounds great.  Now where did I put that Sly & The Family Stone LP?

Morley JD10 preamp

Here's a nifty, long discontinued pedal/preamp that works very well as an overdrive and/or amp simulator as well as a preamp for practices or jams.  Besides, anything with Jerry Donahue's signature must sound good, right?  This certainly does!

After many years of use, this unit needed some internal cleaning.  Although very ruggedly constructed, just four small screws needed to be removed to access the pots and switches for servicing.  A smart design, and a relief not to have to dismantle the entire assembly as you must with most other pedals.

Some contact cleaner and working the pots back & forth did the trick.  As usual, the input and output pots were particularly sticky and needed a little extra persuasion!

The switch was quite gummed-up too.  Didn't take long to have this back in business again and working like new!

Japanese Tele electronics overhaul

You may remember this Tele from January ~ I finally convinced the owner to let me change the electronics under the control plate!  The original set was perfectly functional, but hearing the guitar a few live shows convinced me that there was more that the pickups had to offer.

These original components are made of rather thin metal.  The selector lever was prone to bending and with the contacts of the switch itself contained in a plastic casing, it has a tendency to become scratchy after regular use.

The volume and tone controls also required regular cleaning and often loosened off.  They thought enough to install a treble bleed capacitor on the volume pot, but to do that job properly also requires a resistor.  I also wanted to change the capacitor between the volume and tone to one that would smooth out the higher frequencies.

The new assembly ~ complete with treble bleed, and orange drop .22uf capacitor and a no-load tone pot which essentially bypasses the tone control and capacitor when on 10, making the pickups sound like they're wired straight to the jack!

A rather inexpensive upgrade for these guitars that pays dividends in tone!  Also a much more economical solution than replacing the pickups, which were made to original specs for this reissue series of Tele.  The original, chrome coated plastic control knobs were also replaced with a heavier nickel plated brass set, so the overall feel as well as the sound of these new components is of much better quality.

1997 Gibson Blueshawk

My apologies for the photo quality ~ had to use my phone for this one!
Here is a seldom seen gem from the Gibson catalogue.  These were part of the Nighthawk series of the late '90's that for some reason were discontinued, likely because they just weren't "Les Paul" enough for folks at the time.  Regardless, they are top quality instruments that sound incredible and can be had for a very reasonable price.  Apparently they are reissuing the design under the Epiphone brand.

This particular one is all stock and plays like a dream!  It's equipped with the Gibson Veritone 6-way switch that can be bypassed by pulling up on the push-pull tone knob.  The owner wanted that option reversed, so the Veritone is off when the tone knob is down.  It's also due for a set-up.

A push-pull tone knob (the component on the left of the pictured control cavity) is nothing more than a simple toggle switch attached to a potentiometer using a common shaft.  The requested mod required moving the brown wire coming off the Veritone switch (bottom component) from the bottom connectors of the push-pull toggle to the top connectors.  It took longer to warm-up the soldering iron!