Dilemma - what would you do?

[wokkaboy]

Hey Poida, can you maybe take a photo and maybe add some notes in paintshop exactly what you are intending to do ? Its a bit hard to understand exactly reading text, cheers

EDIT I missed all the photo's on page 1, ignore my comments, I will have a read when time allows and get back to you

[Simon Barden]

It's possible that you could do a J-bass two-part guard from the two guards you've got. Use the white pearloid guard for the control section and the brown tortoiseshell one for the rest. All depends on how well you think you could cut the guards so they matched. I'd cut the white guard up first, so you can then place that over the brown guard and use it as a template for the edges.

Or if you go for the overhanging board neck, you can paint the exposed area under the board black; which being in shadow, will help make it look less obvious. I've got a Tele with someone else's home-made body where the neck pocket is too short, so like your bass, there's a gap between the guard and the neck. It was originally hidden by a 22-fret neck overhang, but it was a terrible neck, so I replaced it with a standard 21-fret one and coloured the gap black with a Sharpie (though I did have a black guard which helped).

I've since removed the frets on the original neck (most fell out when pushed by hand), reprofiled the neck, fitted new frets, and re-lacquered it, so that's all ready to re-fit. Now I just have to strip the body (one piece of solid mahogany), elongate the neck pocket, thin the body a bit to lose some weight (as it's very heavy) and re-paint it.

[wazkelly]

Hi Pierre,

Suggest you PM Pablo Pepper as he can custom cut acrylic scratch plates. Lives in Brissie too, possibly southside.

[stan]

I agree a custom guard from pabs is the any to go - he did one for me following a minor routing error on a strat - you'd never know.
And send the retailer some pics, you might get some store credit or something...

[filthyPierre]

Hey fellas,

Sorry for the delay between replies, been away and busy with work unfortunately. Hopefully will get some time soon to progress with this.

Waz, Stan, thanks for the advice, I will PM Pablo and see what he says.

Stan, best I could do was a 20% discount off the body, which worked out at $9.95 US, or about $13 AUD. Actually that reminds me, I don't think they've paid it back yet.

Simon, yes thought of doing that as well, but not sure how it would look. Still haven't ordered the neck, will try to get that done this week. Probably best to wait and see when the neck arrives.

Wokka, here's a photo of my '98 US Jazz Deluxe, see the metal plate - most P-basses don't have this, but other Fenders do, J-bass being one, Jaguar another. Not sure why they do it for those models and not others, or what function it has other than being metal to ground the pot bodies to. It looks ok, so that's what I was figuring for this bitza/parts-caster bass. But as I said, haven't done much metal work so dunno if I could get it looking as good as this.

Will update when I hear some more. Thanks for all the advice.

Cheers,

Pete

[Dedman]

Pitbull sells necks btw and might be worth asking if they have a spare switch plate.