My SX (Essex) Fretless Jazz Rebuild

[MglMatador]

I've been collecting parts over the past year to build up a fretless 4 string based on Rondo/SX/Essex parts. Anytime Rondo had an old headstock neck for sale I bought one of them, and I scoured Craigslist/Ebay for bodies. Now that I have everything I can begin!

The first part of this process is working on the neck. About 6 months ago Rondo had a few old headstock fretless necks for sale so I bought the last one. Here it is in all of it's nuclear orange glory:







The sticky orange coating had to go, so out came a few rolls of blue painters tape and the necessary supplies (mainly Citristrip, a plastic scraper, and a disposable foam brush):



A good slathering coat on all of the orange parts brought me to here:





I let the Citristrip sit for a good two hours since it was cold in my garage. I waited until the characteristic orange peel like surface started to appear across most of the wide flat areas:



A quick swipe with the paint scraper confirmed the orange finish was starting to lift off:



I scraped off everything that could be lifted easily with the scraper and applied a second coat to all of the more stubborn bits (mainly around the tuner holes and the curved areas of the neck). I let it sit for another hour and here's where it stood:







A second round of scraping left a few really stubborn bits. A third coat plus another hour:







A few last pieces did not seem to want to lift with the Citristrip, so out came the 400 grit sandpaper, followed by 600 grit. I then removed the blue painters tape and gave everything a sanding with 800 grit. Here's the final result after rubbing everything down with acetone:















The neck is now smooth as a baby's bottom and all of the orange crap is now gone. It's too bad SX feels the need to spray over decent wood figuring with that atrocious 'plasticky' coating!

I then stripped all of the hardware from the bass body I bought on Craigslist for $45, and did a complete shielding job on the body and pick guard. I then placed the neck on the body to get a sense of the final result:







Things I still have to do:

1) The rosewood fretboard was stained with a walnut colored stain that is spotty in a few places. I'm going to give it a quick once over with some Minwax wood stain to even out the color.

2) I'm going to epoxy the fretboard with Mirror Coat.

3) Fit the neck to the body and drill for 8-32 stainless steel inserts and bolts.

4) Measure out and drill for one of Rondo's High Mass bridges.

5) Install a set of Dimarzio Area J pickups and wire up the control plate with 250K pots and a Switchcraft output jack.

[Valiant Bandit]

Wow that looks great man. Plus now I know what to do when I get my SX 5er in to get rid of that orange paint!

[::::BASSIST::::]

Mmmm..... Daddy like.

[ian_s]

So you're the guy who beat me to that Rondo neck.

[MglMatador]

Originally Posted by ian_s

So you're the guy who beat me to that Rondo neck.

I hate to say it, but back when these necks were routinely popping up (perhaps a year ago), I actually wrote a cron job on my linux box that loaded the 'parts' page from the Rondo site every 30 minutes, and scanned the results for the words 'bass' , or 'SJB' or 'neck'. If it found any, it would immediately send me an email. I knew that they wouldn't last long!

Despite a few false alarms, I got:

1) 1 fretless neck that's seen here
2) 2 black block-and-bound jazz necks in maple
3) 2 mother of pearl block-and-bound jazz necks in maple

Mostly as backups to my other two SX jazz basses, as I knew that if I ever dropped a bass or cracked a neck I would be looking at a complicated repair (far more costly than $60 for a spare neck).

[ian_s]

Lol, I had some web service (I forget which) sending me daily diffs of camp.html for a while. #rondoaddicts

[rumblethump]

Neck brace, still another use for the mainstay Shure SM 57.

[MglMatador]

Ugh, after a long delay of work and house projects I finally get to spend time on stuff that really matters...bass building.

Here's the process I went through to get the epoxy finish on the neck (I don't have any in-process pics since I had to work fast):

1) I used Envirotex Lite, mixed in equal volumes per recommendations. I sanded down the fretboard with my 12" radius Stewmac block until all of the rosewood was sanded down evenly. I then taped up all of the maple portions of the neck with blue painters tape.

2) I mixed up 40mL of Envirotex (20mL resin and 20mL hardener) and mixed vigorously for a good two minutes. I then poured it out and spread it evenly over all parts of the fretboard.

3) I used a propane torch whisked over the epoxy to force the air bubbles out.

4) Since my garage was about 50 degrees, I let the epoxy set up for 5 days before I peeled off the masking tape and started sanding. I started with 100 grit, and worked my way up to 400 grit (passing through 180, 220, and 320). This stuff really goes through sandpaper in a hurry: I think I went through eight 8x11" sheets of each grit.

5) I ended up going through the epoxy on the edges so out came the Envirotex for a second coat (steps 1 through 4 again!).

6) This time, it leveled properly, and I went up to 600 and 800 grit, then buffed with steel wool until I had a semi-gloss finish. I ended by wiping on a coat of lemon oil and buffing it lightly with a cotton cloth.

Here's a shot of the neck after the 800 grit and before buffing it out:



Here's a shot of the end after I reattached the neck and after polishing with lemon oil and 0000 steel wool:



To finish the rest of the neck, I wiped on three coats of Minwax Wipe-On Polyurethane in a satin finish. I added a touch of yellow stain to the urethane to add a bit of warmth and to match batter with the finish on the ash body. Here's a shot of the headstock after the poly:

[MglMatador]

To finish things up:

1) Attached the bridge with #6 stainless steel screws:



2) Screwed in the Dimarzio Area J set:



3) Wired up the pots, output jack, and DPDT switch for series/parallel switching (the pickups are hard wired in series, and the neck volume pot pulls up and down and switches the two pickups either in parallel or in series):



That completes the electronics.



4) Install tuners and install a new nut:



5) Three black aluminum knobs were added to finish it off, along with a black pickguard:



Next I have to string it up and get it setup and ready for some sound clips!