Jazz Bass V

[blablas]

This one arrived at my doorstep last weekend.

F(ake)ender Jazz Bass V lefty, Fender or Squier don't make them so a Chinese fake will have to do.

And the Same bass a couple of days later after having done some work on it.

Aligned the tuners and neck pickup, done a proper shielding and grounding job and made a new pickguard.

[blablas]

The alignment of the tuners looked like this, straight out of the box.

A horror show.
 
Now they look like this.

I needed to file away a small corner from the G string tuner to align it, for the rest it was a straight forward job, just fill the old holes with a toothpick and some glue, level them and drill some new holes with the tuners in the new position.
Luckily all the old holes stay hidden under the mounting plate of the tuners.

[blablas]

I could not resist the temptation, bought another one.

 

The tuners are mounted a lot better than on the previous one, however nowhere near to blablas' standards, I will correct this at a later time.
 

(all the screws were there, but I'm not putting them all back when I'm going to put on a new pickguard)

The pickguard is joke, I'll make a new one.
Other modifications I'm going to do is replacing the electronics with a stacked pot set, I'm also going to do a proper shielding and grounding session, all the parts I need are ordered, once these are in I'll start modifying and correcting.

[wolfkeller]

I like the first one, looks sweet, where did you get it?

[blablas]

AliExpress.

[wolfkeller]

Thats what I figured, no hastles from them? How long was shipping?

[blablas]

Long, from order to delivery: for the white one almost 2 months and for the sunburst one 5 weeks, the were from different sellers.
They offer things at a very low price level but don't do overnight shipping.

[blablas]

First task is done.

Alligned the tuners.
A short description how I did this: Removed the tuners, filled the old screw holes (with a toothpick and some superglue), leveled the toothpicks, marked the holes at the position where I wanted the tuners to be, drilled new screw holes and mounted the tuners again.

[blablas]

As it came out of the box 2 months ago.
 
And after all the modifications. It took a while because some parts I needed were not in stock at the shop where ordered them.

The hidden modifications are proper grounding and shielding.

[Linnin]

You do excellent work, blabla! Nice looking axes

[blablas]

And the final modification is in place, a tort pickguard.

The gold colored one was not bad but this is what I had in mind when I started working on it.

[AzWhoFan]

I like the look of both of them, but the tort guard really makes the neck pop out at you in the picture.

[pjmuck]

Fantastic job, and fantastic photography too. Come 'round my house to photograph my basses anytime.

[blablas]

Thanks.

If you pay for the trip.

[frankenjazz]

So how do they play?

[blablas]

Out of the box - crap.
After some work - great.


They need quiet a bit of work, but after you've done that they are real nice players.
I'm not disappointed in what they have become, they are cheap but you can make something nice out of them.

[blablas]

Made this pickguard for the white one yesterday.

[belinmad]

gorgeous pickguard!
Can you make one like that for me??

[glefty5]

Any reason y the white one has 21 frets instead of Fender's usual 20, as on the burst?

[blablas]

I haven't got a clue, it's just the way they arrived at my doorstep.
I can think of several reasons, but those will only be assumptions.