So far I have started work on the body. I had priced alder Jazz bodies around $99, so when I got the chance to buy a fretless jazz bass for $100 I thought, why not, sell a few parts to pay for my requirements. So I bought it, added a few bucks to entice the guy to drop it off to a friend, and received it a couple of weeks ago.
Good news is that it had some decent quality parts for me to use and/or re-sell (Seymour Duncan JBs, Wilkinson bridge, MOP pickguard). Bad news is that it had a thick polyurethane sunburst finish with a horrendous home-made relic job on it.
I was dreading the stripping process. Then I turned my heat gun onto the finish, with a crackle I discovered it was going to be a lot easier than I thought:
As Sebadoh put it, bubble and scrape. I found a moderate degree of heating turned the finish into a kind of brittle chewy plastic, which would scrape straight off the wood with little damage. Ironically the areas where the finish had been "reliced" were the toughest to get off.
After maybe 2 hours work I was done, and toothpicked the screw holes (pickguard holes were single toothpick, bridge ones took three toothpicks as a bundle which I hammered in).
Midway through, I thought, "What's the WORST this could turn out if the neck and body were way out of proportion?" So I grabbed my ugly old Strat copy neck (the cheapest guitar in the world at the time, I think) and bolted it up. Even that looked OK, so the SX neck is bound to be better.
Some interesting things to note:
- the neck screws seem offset toward the treble horn (maybe standard for a JB?)
- pickup routs ... well, let's just say I don't think a CNC machine was used
- pretty clearly alder (awesome) but the wood strips don't seem to be straight along the body
- looks pretty good from here.
One nasty surprise - some kind of glass or epoxy filler in the neck pocket:
My guess is, I will be dowelling and re-drilling anyway, so with luck this won't affect it.
I look forward to further updates, all advice gratefully received.
