I’ve got some time to wait before the Wudtone finish arrives, so I did a full assembly, because it’s a Fender-style, so it’s easy enough to take apart again.

I’m using D’Addario Bass VI strings. I also took advantage of the PitBull offer to upgrade to Grover locking tuners, so that initially presented an interesting and unanticipated challenge. I figured out that I can strip the wrap on the three lowest strings and use the core for the locking device. I feel rather clever, we’ll see how well that works over time.

The action is pretty good, I had to take the 2nd and 3rd frets down a bit and add a bit of relief to get rid of a few buzzes.

The route for the whammy is pretty tight and when the strings are under full tension, the front of the plate is pulled up to the edge of the cavity and the whammy doesn’t move. I think I can fix that with a bit of filing.

The stock pickups sound pretty good. There’s no noise, so I don’t think I need to do any shielding.

I somehow wired the two tone pots in the wrong order. The good news is that there’s enough play in the wires to swap them, so I didn’t have to bother firing up the soldering iron. The bad news is that I was clumsy fitting it back together, and broke off one of the leads, so I have to fire up the soldering iron anyway.

The only hitch right now is that my usual method for pulling Tuneomatic bushings isn’t working (dropping in a shelf stud from a Billy bookcase and screwing in the post). They won’t budge. I can finish with them in, but I didn’t install the ground wire. If I can’t get them out, I’m thinking that I can make the end of ground wire very “bushy” and jam it up against the bushing through the hole and then glue it in place.