Howdy!
I'm new to this forum so I thought I'd share my collection as an icebreaker. From left to right we have:
#1. Late 60's Eko hollow body bass. (Okay, so it's not a real lefty but I've got it strung left and I have plans to get it professionally flipped.)
#2. 1979 Kramer DMZ 4000. Aluminum neck, upgraded Hipshot brass bridge, Hipshot D-Tuner and EMG PX pickups. Cuts like a knife and sustains for 17 hours.
#3. 2005-ish MIM Jazz Bass. Upgraded Badass II bridge, perloid pickguard and Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder Basslines pickups. Great "leave it at the rehearsal space" bass.
#4. 2003 Ernie Ball Musicman Stingray 5. Translucent orange, abalone pickguard, rosewood fretboard. I tend to prefer 4 strings these days but this is my go to for some orchestra gigs I do or anything that requires reading music. (So I can be lazy and not change hand positions as often when reading.)
#5. 1976 Ibanez Jazz Bass copy. I've had this a long time. I actually just sold it on eBay. I'm gonna miss it but it makes room for the next toy.
#6. 2010 Frankinstien Thunderbird. This is my fave base right now. I've wanted a T-Bird since I was a kid but Gibson made almost exactly zero of them as lefties ever. Epiphone and Tokai ones are few and far between and - if you can find them - they tend to be overpriced for what you get. I had a local luthier build this one for me to my spec's.
Alder body
Maple set neck with rosewood board and real bone nut. (Made out of an actual Gibson LP bass neck with a re-grafted headstock and ebony overlay. It even had the "made in Kalamazoo" stamp on the heel.)
Bartolini T4CBC "Old" T-Bird pickups w/passive vol/vol/tone electronics
Hipshot Super Tone "for Gibson bass" bridge, brass
Hipshot Ultralight tuners with D-Tuner
Painted "Pelham Blue".
The original build was not - how should I say this - quite right. I wasn't happy with the original luthier's paint job and he really messed up the pickup placement. Way too far towards the neck. And, I wasn't happy with the shape of the LP neck. All in all, pretty upsetting. But then, someone tipped me off to this amazing guitar tech/refinishing guy here in Toronto name Bryan Curry. I took the bass to him and he transformed it.
He completely stripped the original finish, filled in the bad pickup routes and rerouted in the correct placement, shaved some of the excess thickness off of the body and reshaped the neck to a faster profile somewhere between a jazz and original T-Bird. Then he repainted it properly in a gloss nitro Pelham blue and did an AMAZING job. Finally, he relic'd the bass to a perfect 40 year old state - again AMAZING. It went from kinda ugly, hard to play and unfocused sounding to a beautiful player that has that fat bottom and punch that a T-Bird should have. I get more comments and compliments on this bass now than you can imagine.
The cautionary tale here is that no matter how many great things you read on a luthiers website, it pays to do some more homework and find some actual owners to talk to. If I'd done this in the first place I would have gone with someone else for the build. Lesson learned. It cost me about 50% more to have it rebuilt properly but it was well worth it in the end.
Y'all have a great day!
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