$9 Rogue Bass Upgrade

[tabdog]

Hi Folks,

Cheap Rogue basses are reported to be junk.
The one I recently acquired was one of the worst
basses I have ever had. With this bass, cheap is
an understatement.

Acquired Rogue SX100B bass during a trade for
for another item. It didn’t cost me anything. It is
years old and the neck had a bow and a twist
along with numerous other problems.



List of upgrades;

Defretted neck
Filled slots with wood filler
Reshaped headstock
Painted bass and matching headstock (black paint, $6)
Changed neck radius (912” to 9”)
Reduced neck width (1 5/8” to 1 7/16”)
Reduced neck thickness (2/3” to 7/16”)
Removed twist in neck while removing neck material
Applied Tru-Oil to neck and fingerboard
Installed nut ($3)
Installed new wiring
Installed new pots
Installed MIM split pole P bass pickup
Repaired numerous stripped out screw holes









It is now a nice light weight basswood fretless bass
for a $9 investment,

Tabdog

[Pilgrim]

It looks very fantastic!!....and I'll bet this was a great learning experience. That learning does have value.

And that's a good thing, because it was only a $9 exercise if your time is worthless.

Placing a conservative value on your time of $10 per hour (and you should be insulted by that), you probably have the equivalent of at least $200 invested in the bass.

But - given that it was a learning experience, you invested only about $209 (I'm counting $9 "out of pocket") in building a set of skills that will probably come in very handy in the future. That's a very reasonable investment.

[JLS]

Hey, good on ya! Looks like a clean defretting job, too.

[A-Step-Towards]

Looks great in the first remodeled photo i thought it had white binding on it! either way it looks sharp , i had a rogue bass , it was a mess but sounded good. I should have put a little work into it

[Slax]

Wow! Great job!

[tabdog]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

It looks very fantastic!!....and I'll bet this was a great learning experience. That learning does have value.

And that's a good thing, because it was only a $9 exercise if your time is worthless.

Placing a conservative value on your time of $10 per hour (and you should be insulted by that), you probably have the equivalent of at least $200 invested in the bass.

But - given that it was a learning experience, you invested only about $209 (I'm counting $9 "out of pocket") in building a set of skills that will probably come in very handy in the future. That's a very reasonable investment.

Thanks for taking the time to look and
comment on my post.

You are very close on your assessment.

The only thing is that I'm old and disabled.
I do stuff like this for entertainment.

My gigging days seem to be history. But
I can not get out of my blood.

Tabdog

[tabdog]

Hay everyone,

Thanks for your positive responses.

It is hart warming when something works.

I won't tell you guys about all the bone-
headed things I've done. That's no fun,

Tabdog

[RED J]

>>My gigging days seem to be history. But
I can not get out of my blood.

With ya on that !

[trkelley]

Very well done. Classy looking bass now, good job on the defret especially, it's so easy to badly botch that job. I did a similar upgrade thing thing with a "J Reynolds" cheapie that I got on CL for $20. A high-mass bridge, Quarter-Pounder pickups, straight-through signal path, new SC jack, deeply contoured the slab body and painted the whole thing salmon-peach. I call her Dory; short for "hunky dory peachy keen". She roars like a 70s Rickenbacker, of all things....

Great hobby! Thanks for sharing.

[ksandvik]

The cool thing with mod:ing a $9 bass is that if something bad happens you don't cry when you throw it into the dumpster.

[Buskman]

Very classy, Tabdog - great job!

Did you paint the bridge as well? (noticed bridge 'upgrade' from the prior chrome finish)

If so, you should paint the tuners too (IMHO, of course)... that would really kick the 'classy' factor up a notch.

Either way, I commend you on a job well (and inexpensively) done!

[Steveaux]

Ya gotta love a great salvage job.

Well done, sir ... well done.