This bass had a hard life, so here’s hoping it’s going on to better things. Since I’m waiting a few more days for the pickups to arrive to finish the walnut Jazz bass build, I figured I would start the next project bass in the queue. This poor thing has been through A LOT before it met me, including a previous owner who took a saw to some of the edges. 🙁

Big shout out to my dad, who made some replacement bridge saddles and a missing tuner in his machine shop. Thanks so much…that was a huge help in saving this bass from the fireplace and keeping expenses down! Truth be told, he made enough replacement parts that I took all the original tuners and saddles off and used the parts he made. Looks more…steampunk.

I sanded numerous layers of 100 % craptastic paint glop off this poor thing. The verdict is in; the original factory color was white, with a nice mahogany wood piece underneath all that glop. I applied a mix of copper and bronze paint to this bass in streaks, blending them where the colors would meet. The bronze made the copper tone down in brightness, and the bass looked “relic-ed”. I applied a few coats of those two colors. I then sanded the whole thing down with 2000 grit sandpaper to dull the gloss of the paint. In some patches, the copper paint shows through under a patch of bronze, and vice versa.