UGLIEST Frankenbass Ever ! (todays project)

So a while back I bought a Mike Dirnt signature Fender body and neck, and I had some plans for it. Unfortunately when it arrived, I found out the neck was bad (The seller, being an upstanding guy, made everything right). The tricky thing is that the Dirnts' neck pocket is routed to accept only necks with a square heel, so neck choices are limited to...well, pretty much just Tele Bass necks. Anyway, I decided to keep the parts around, not knowing what to do with them, but figuring I might use them "someday".


Flash forward a bit.


Last week an auction came up for a Squier VM Jazz neck...you know, the maple neck with black block inlays and black binding. It was dirt cheap, so again, I bought it not knowing what to do with it.


Flash forward a day.


In the classifieds here, a loaded SX Precision body came up for sale at what I thought was a fair price. It was the white body with black pickguard, so I thought "I'll mount the VM neck on this...it'll be a cool "tuxedo bass".


Flash forward again, this time to today.


UPS arrives. The VM neck was here ! Awesome. I unpacked it and everything looked good.

After unwrapping it I thought "I wonder...." ... so I grabbed the Dirnt body and pickguard and did a quick visual. Yep, it would look really cool, but I would need to route the end of the neck pocket to accept the neck. Yeah, I'm that crazy.....so I did ! After fitting the neck, I needed to decide on pickups, and it just so happened that I had a set of Nordstrand NP4 Precision pickups just sitting around....so in those go ! The Squier tuners had to go as well. They are "functional", but I had a nice set of heavy duty vintage style Fender tuners from the Dirnt bass, so a bit of drilling later, and voila ...on they go !

Specs:

*Dirnt P Bass body (ash, if I remember right)
*Squier VM neck
*Fender heavy duty vintage tuners
*Nordstrand NP4 pickup
*CTS pots
*Orange drop cap
*Allparts bridge
*D'Addario Chromes


This bass sounds fantastic and plays like a dream. Seriously cool bass !


Enough about that stuff...you probably want to see it, right ?


OK....pics:















Flash forward to 10 minutes ago...

The SX body arrives. Well, I assume it has arrived...I havent unpacked it yet. I'll have to save it for another project !

J. Crawford said:

Whoa! This just proves that youre the man..

It needs a headstock logo though! I hate the look of blank headstocks! Thats the only bad thing about it.. the rest is killer.

It needs a tort or black pickguard, though!

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Yep - I'm gonna put a logo on there as soon as I get clever enough to figure out what to put !

I was thinking tortoise too. I have one on order, so I'll look when it gets here. Till then I like the white just fine. I might pop a thumb rest on there though.

Govier966 said:

I don't know why this is titled ugliest frankenbass ever, If you don't like it ill take it off of your hands free of charge! hey Ill even pay for shipping.

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If I just put "NBD" or "Pretty bass" nobody looks....but put the word "UGLY" in the title and people flock to the thread !!!

mongo2 said:

Cool, a Geddy Dirnt Signature Model.

I also started a project today. It'll be basically a P bass made from a conglomeration of parts I've had laying around for quite a few years including a 2Tek bridge from the mid '90s.

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Definitely post pics ! It's fun to have a bunch of parts lying around that you can "mix and match".

Flaked Beans said:

Looks awesome! Soud clips? I'd really like to hear the beast!

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OK...real quick clip. Excuse the sloppy playing.

Tone all the way open, then tone rolled all the way off, then a second of tone "open" again (digging in a bit).

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