No one commented on whether I'd have problems with the odd fingerboard on this project. I have not been making a lot of progress, except in thinking about it...but felt like it was time for an update.
I am hoping that the fingerboard issue won't be a problem, but it is officially in the "we'll see" category. It has definitively made me think that I will do a bolt-on rather than glue on. That way if there's a problem I can put on a new one. Might as well try it though. I have had the neck long enough and done enough sanding on it that there's no returning it now...
I have determined that I will need to re-drill the holes for the bridge because they are off a bit. Also the neck angle is off and will need some TBD adjustment...thinking about this I noticed something else...
...As mentioned earlier the pickup routs are about 2 cm farther from the bridge than they would be on a Pitbull ESB-4. I realized that if the neck pocket were routed about 1" closer to the bridge, that the neck pickup rout would be right about where a P-bass pickup would be scale-wise. That rout would also give the neck a platform closer to what it would have on a Fender, which just seems intuitively more solid to me.
Unless someone talks me off the ledge, I have decided to do this. I have been thinking hard about filling the existing pickup routs and re-routing for different pickups. That seems like a lot of work. Meanwhile, about the time I realized that this mod would put the bridge rout in P-bass territory, someone on Ebay put up a NOS Bill Lawrence EB-50 pickup, that looks like it will fit in the rout. "Kismit!" I shouted, and purchased it. It arrives tomorrow.
I think I have the bridge geometry worked out so that won't be a problem (he said blithely). The one "problem" I do see is that the neck will join the body at about the 16th fret, instead of the 18th like it does on the ESB-4. It definitely will not have access to the upper frets that a p or a j bass would have. That said, I almost never use frets above 15 or 16, and it's actually rare for me to go over the 12th. So who cares? Plus, I think it will help with neck-dive, which is not a huge problem with my ESB-4, but this has a bigger headstock...
Routing to move the neck will put the neck a bit into the pocket where the neck humbucker would have gone... So... One option would be to have just one pickup, the BL EB-50, in the p-bass position, and be done with it. I am sort of leaning to this option at the moment.
Another option would be to put some sort of single coil sized pickup right where the neck ends. There is just enough room for this. Not enough room for a humbucker, but it's right where a mudbucker would be. I could fit a lipstick tube in there... or a strat sized rail pickup (perhaps another Bill Lawrence?) or a straight p-bass single coil...
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