I'd had £350 worth of pickups (2x SD NY-4) and tuners (Hipshot) left over from my aborted attempt to build an ESB-4 (which Jim C took off my hands and finished). So I thought I'd fit them into a Jazz bass. I was obvioulsy thinking about a PBG one, but with delayed shipment and order backlogs it wasn't going to happen before late Autumn/early winter here (after which no building would occur), so I was going to wait until April next year. And then I needed to order some cases from Thoman and my hand slipped and I ordered a Harley Benton JB kit. Body is boring basswood, but I've got tons of Daphne Blue left over from my Jap Strat refinish, so it was always going to be a solid colour job.



Its one feature that the PBG JBs don't have is a proper JB-style narrow width nut.

Almost all the hardware will be discarded. Thought I'd found a cheap but nice and solid locking bridge but it's got 19mm spacing and this has a standard JB 20mm. 3mm width is a lot to lose and will probably mess up the pickup alignment. Well, no-one said this was going to be a cheap build.

Body has been pre-sanded (well on top/back, but a bit rough on the contours) and sprayed with a sanding sealer, so there's minimal work to do there.

I'll need to rout out the bridge pickup cavity and the pickguard for a wider soapbar-shape pickup (The JB NYs are like two JB pickups stuck together). But the top's flat, so far less daunting than routing on an arched top like the ESB-4.

It's a shame all the holes are pre-drilled as I was intending to fit my Hipshot Lite tuners, but to do so I'll need to fill all the pilot holes for the bigger kit standard elephant-ears. I do have a 2+2 set of Hipshot standard-size tuners, but unlike the Lites they aren't reversible, so I'd have to buy two new tuners if I wanted to not have to hole-fill. I suppose I could do a solid-colour headstock back, but I'm not keen on that as I want a standard natural wood face. About £50 for two tuners if I don't want to hole-fill. Hmm. Plenty of time to think about it.

All being put to one side as I do need to finish my other builds - just waiting for the weather to pick up again.