A couple of new basses for blablas

[blablas]

Done some small modding on the Harley Benton shorty P.
Replaced the pickup with a Seymour Duncan Quarter pounder, also replaced the chrome pickguard screws with black ones for a nice visual contrast.
Even though the pickup cost me more than the complete bass itself, I think it was some well spent money.

[blablas]

The finished modified JB-shorty.
I Like the short scale Harley Benton PB so much I decided I want one with Jazz single coils, can not be bought so I had to convert a P version.
Bought me a second one and started converting it, below is the final result.


details:






It was a fun little project to do, the end result is exactly what I had in mind, sound wise and looks wise.


The twins.

At the same time I made the mint green pickguard for this one I made one for the older P one as well (I could get two from one rough pickguard plate).

[blablas]

A NS Design NXT 5 LH, the replacement for my old and worn-out double bass.
 
 
Bye bye.
R.I.P.: the thing - 19??-2015

[superheavydeathmetal]

That double bass looks pretty sweet. Lots of character. What did you do with it?

[blablas]

It absolutely looked nice, however it is to big and cumbersome to have standing around as a unplayable decoration piece.
In the end it's a cheap old and worn out plywood bass I found as trash and repaired almost 25 years ago.

This time the neck was loose and there were several cracks everywhere on the sides of the body, I decided it was beyond fixing and took it apart for donor parts to do other projects with.
I must admit I did this with some pain in my heart but it would be too much of an effort to overhaul and try to fix everything again.

I've still got all the loose and big parts and might change my mind, but for now I feel I'm done with it.

[blablas]

Finished rebuilding a third Harley Benton Shorty.


Official portrait:

[J-meister]

Nicy and tidy looking Bentons! Really tight how you made room for the Jazz pick-ups

Why the choice for this brand, low cost, or something else?

[blablas]

Low cost versus fairly good build quality.

[blablas]

One more. (somehow I can't hold back)

Harley Benton B30 NT Acoustic Bass Series 'Deko'

Sold for decoration only..... We'll see about that.
It came with a hump between fret 10 and 17 and had quiet a few sharp fret ends, the bridge saddle seemed to be too low, it was truly unplayable.

First thing I did was level out the hump in the fretboard by leveling the frets, it's alive and plays (the hump was not that high but rather long).
Next step was Removing the sharp fret ends and giving all the frets one final level session, after that I crowned and polished them.
Also put a shim (half a millimeter thick) under the bridge saddle, as I already suspected it was set up too low, while I was busy working on the bass I gave the nut some tweaking as well.
Another thing I needed to do was tightening all the tuner screws and nuts, they were all loose.

Put a set of D'addario ETB92 Nylon Tape Wound strings and a 'de afwerking' thumbrest on it and gave it a final setup.
The action is a little under two millimeters at the 12th fret, precisely what I like.

Given the fact I bought this bass as a 'Deko' for only 45 euros I can't really complain it needed some TLC.

[blablas]

Been doodling with my standard(ish) PB-Shorty.
Finally came to the conclusion I don't really like this bass without a bridge pickup. I had an old (unbranded) bridge position J style dual coil pickup floating around in my parts box, decided to put this one in. The controls are volume/balance/tone and a series/parallel switch for the bridge pickup.

Now that I can dial in the bite of a bridge pickup it sounds exactly the way I want it to.
The only thing still wrong is that this old pickup is seriously microphonic, a DiMarzio DP148 is on it's way to solve this problem.

[blablas]

Got the replacement DiMarzio yesterday.

Experienced some problems with the wiring while replacing the old pickup, it also took a while to adjust the two pickups to get an even sound from both together.

In the end I'm glad I did replace this pickup, the new one sounds better and is dead quiet, no microphonic noise and no hum.

[blablas]

Harley Benton Kahuna CLU-Bass.

Fun little acoustic bass, not sure yet if I like these thick rubber strings.

[blablas]

Finnished another PB-Shorty conversion.

RiB-Shorty

[blablas]

Another new toy for blablas, I do hope this will be the last one for a longer period time.

Sandberg Basic 5 Ken Taylor zebra red.

Received this one almost a month ago (and forgot to post it in my own topic here).

[superheavydeathmetal]

That Zebra Red finish is neat.

[blablas]

In real life the finish looks even better, the wood has a real (sandblasted) 3D texture with the grain nicely colored-in.

This by the way is how it looked when I bought it with the original pickguard, a shame to hide all this nice woodgrain underneath a piece of plastic.

Not that the pickguard looks wrong but in my opinion it's just not necessary (and I don't like pickguards ).

[fivebass52]

Enjoy seeing all of the basses you buy, and tinker with... and that red Sandberg is awesome!

[blablas]

Modified this one


Into this

The Black Beast

[blablas]

First one for 2016.

A Chinabacker R-4005. It's still a work in progress.

Done: proper shielding, refining the pickguard - Still to do: better (visual) alignment of the pickups and make a new trussrod cover, also need to crown and polish the frets - they are level but a bit rough.

[blablas]

The first scar is also a fact, it had to drop from the table while I was working on the nut.
Colored it in again with a red sharpie and after I took this picture sealed and stabilized it with some CA glue.

Don't ask what that black spot is, it's underneath the lacquer and there are several more on the sides of the body.