Makaya McCraven's Ibanez EX

Sticking with the theme of drummers and purple ibanez basses… here is Makaya McCraven's purple P/J Ibanez.  I had a rehearsal a couple weeks back with Makaya and mentioned that I would love to take a crack at fixing this one up.  He agreed and told me he wanted flats and for it to play and sound more like a P Bass.

First thing I noticed was the nut had some pieces of what looked like toilet paper wedged under the string (work courtesy of the one and only Josh Ramos I hear.  Next time use aluminum foil).  So obviously the nut slot was cut too low.  I tried to pop the nut out to shim it and unfortunately broke it in the process.  So this one got a new nut (with some serious help from my good friend Carl Pedigo)

Next thing I noticed was that this thing had some serious mojo built up on it.  So I went thru the usual process of cleaning everything.  Wiping down the board to remove the funk and hitting it with a little Howards Feed N Wax.  Then I noticed that the back of the neck had some pretty serious gunk build up.    You can see it in the discolored areas in the pic.

So to remedy that I went at the back of the neck with a grey scotch brite pad for a few minutes until it was gone.  Then I hit the back of the neck with some Howards as well.

Plugged it in and noticed the tone knob wasn't working at all.  Opened up the cavity and found out why

Capacitor was not hooked up correctly, plus the 2nd volume pot was wired straight to the jack.  Re-wired everything and replaced the battery and the foam around the battery in the cavity.

Then I strung it up with the flats and gave it a setup all around.  

Good as new (almost…)

 8.  Makaya McCraven's Ibanez EX bass
- Replaced Nut
- "De-Gunked" finish on back of neck
- Re wired electronics
- New strings (flats), setup, cleaned, tightened hardware

Andre Beasley's Ibanez GT

Just got this one last night.  Was on a gig with drummer Andre Beasley and he mentioned he was having some issues with his bass and was wondering if I knew anybody who could look at it.  I said me obviously! Luckily he had it on the gig with him, so I grabbed it and brought it home.  He said the action was too low especially in the first few frets and there was a crackling noise from the electronics.  So first thing I looked at was the setup issues.  As I suspected the nut was cut too low.  To confirm it I put a little aluminum foil under the E string (which was the worst) and restrung it.  Helped significantly.  So I figured this would be a great candidate for a nut shim.  First thing was to pop off the nut. Then I grabbed some maple veneer I had laying around and rough cut out a shim piece with a razor blade.

Then I cleaned up the shape and glued the shim into place.  Waited a bit for the glue to dry and then carved out the truss rod access area with my exacto knife.

Then glued the nut back on and re strung the bass up.  Huge difference.  Lower notes were playing much better.  Gave the bass a setup all around and cleaned it and gave the fretboard a little rub down with some Howards.
I plugged it in and played it for awhile and no buzzing or crackling.  Opened up the cavity and took a look at the preamp.  This thing actually had a circuit board in the control cavity (old school!).  Everything looked normal but to be honest, this kind of electronic setup is a little out of my comfort range.  So if it keeps making noise I will refer Andre to my good buddy Carl Pedigo.
7. Andre's Ibanez GT 4 string
- Shimmed Nut
- Setup
- Cleaned

Same kid, different disappointment

So here is the next one up.  This was a Squier Affinity Precision bass brought to me by my buddy Luke Malewicz.  This was his students, the owner of the SX bass I worked on before with the busted truss rod.  Well this kid has no luck with basses apparently.  The bass looked just like this.

So Luke gave me this one just saying that it wasn't making any sound (again!?).  So I opened it up and found this

The wiring was all goofy.  I don't know who wired this, if it was the factory or another repair guy, but it was weird.  So I found a P Bass wiring diagram and completely re wired it.  I was getting sound know but a lot of buzz and not a lot of signal.  Tried an alternative wiring, but same issues.  So I called my good friend Carl Pedigo and brought it over to his shop.  He double checked my wiring and found an issue.  When I went about re wiring everything I had forgotten to ground the volume pot.  He fixed that up and the hum was mostly gone.  But we were still not getting very much signal.  Carl took out the pickup and checked it with the multimeter.  It was reading all over the place.  Turns out there was a problem with wiring inside the pickup.  So that explained the low output and remaining hum.  Brought the bass back to Luke.  We will see if the kid wants to get the pickup replaced.  If he does, this will be back on my bench soon.

6. Squier Affinity P Bass

- Rewired electronics

- Cleaned and Setup

- P Pickup broken

Uncle Monte's guitar

Here is my first work done on a guitar.  This one belonged to my wife Mallory's uncle Monte.  It is an old japanese starter guitar with the name "Audition" on it.  We found this one in Mallory's grandma's house in a crappy gig bag hiding under a bed.  I figured it would be a cool project to get in playable condition again.  This one was in really rough shape when I took it out.  All kinds of cosmetic issues and it was missing a couple strings.  Not really too much work for this one.  Gave it a good rub down all around to try to clean up the gunk on it, especially on the reflective pickguard.  The pots were really noisy so I twisted the shit out of em to clean em up and removed the knobs and tightened everything including the jack. Was really careful with the knobs.  You can see some of the pickguard and knobs/jack below.

Then I went about re stringing the guitar.  Removed the old rusted out strings and strung it up with some flat wounds.

Then finally I went about dealing with the weird bridge.  For some reason, on this guitar the bridge saddles are movable to adjust string spacing.  Doesn't make sense to me but hey, it's old.  So I found the center line, then measured to get an ideal string spacing from string to string. 

Plugged it in and it is good to go. Not the best sounding guitar but kinda cool, especially with the flats.  Did a little setup and it is playing half way decent. 

5.  Uncle Monte's Audition Guitar

- Cleaned

- Cleaned and tightened knobs and jack

- Restrung with Flats.

- Setup