Looking for some advice or assitance with this guitar, primarily, the neck.
The story:
I bought this beastie from a colleague about 25, 26 years ago. He'd bought it new in the '60s and played it in a band. He brought it to work to show me as we'd been having conversations about guitars, and I was playing in a band with three other guys who also worked at the same place. After seeing it I offered him 50 bucks for it. He countered with 100. We haggled and settled on something in the middle.. 80 rings a bell.
So after I got it home, I played around with it to set it up and was planning on using it in the band as a second, for some of the old shite we used to do. Unfortunately, even after playing around with the intonation, action and so on, it was (and remains) a prick of a thing to play due to the horrible action (about 8.6 mm at the 12th, to over 11 at the 23rd).
It bears no markings as to what brand it is. The bloke I bought it from had no recollection of who made it (it had been sitting, forgotten, in his cupboard for nearly 25 years at that stage). For a 50-year-old instrument, it's in remarkably good shape, probably due to the fact that it's unplayable for more than a few minutes at a time. If you're only pedalling it's ok, but don't try anything fancy. There's little to no rust anywhere, even most of the screws (all original) are pretty good.
So here's what I'm thinking:
I would like to put a new neck on it and see if I can actually make it playable. It seems a shame to waste a nice-looking instrument, that actually sounds quite good, just like you'd expect a 50-y-o hollow-body bass with single coil pickups to sound. If I could put a decent neck on, it might make it easier to play. But, that's not going to be so easy.
Even though it looks longer, it's only 30-inch scale. Currently the distance from the zero fret to the bridge is 775 mm, or 30.5 inches. I think I moved the bridge back to try lower the action; as you can see, the bridge height is adjusted all the way down. The intonation, as you'd expect, is not quite right.
So, googling for short scale necks brings up a few, but they're all too wide at the heel. The neck of the guitar is 55.5 mm wide at the heel, 42.3 at the nut (P-bass standard). Most necks I've found are around 60 wide at the heel.
By comparison, my '72 Musicmaster Bass, which is a short scale, is 57mm at the heel and just over 40 at the nut. My '98 Jazz Deluxe is 38 at the nut and 58 or so at the heel.
So if I could find a MM Bass neck I could probably sand it a bit to fit this body. But no-one seems to make replacements for them. The other thing I could try is to shim the neck with a wedge, so that it angles backwards and is lifted a few mm. I'm pretty sure I tried back when I got it to adjust the truss rod to try bend the neck back a bit, but it doesn't appear to be warped. The actual contact patch of the heel to the body is quite small too, and it's possible that the body has been warped over time from sitting in the case with the strings tightened (although, it was like this when I got it).
Perhaps it's just a crappy Chinese guitar.
So, looking for suggestions or advice. Does anyone know of a short-scale neck manufacturer that would fit it, or should I just not bother and relegate it to the cupboard for another 25 years?
I'm willing to spend a little on it if I can make it playable, turning it into a "Franken-bass". Don't really want to modify it so that it can't be put back to the way it is now. But then again, it's probably not worth more than a handful of bottle caps at the moment.
Cheers,
Pete
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