My new red homebrew jazz

Here's the culmination of a very long project. This bass started as this bass that I built about 6 years ago, while in college, with parts I managed to procure at good prices, and some help from my dad.



Tung Oiled Allparts swamp ash body
Fender 62 reissue Jazz bass neck
Fender Vintage reverse tuners
Black Chrome Badass II Bridge
Fender Noiseless pickups
Fender pots, guard, pickup cover, plate, etc.
Rickenbacker knobs
Push/pull pot for series parallel.

Nice bass, played well, and had good action and tone but it had a few flaws.
-Neck heavy
-I found that Jazz bass necks are too small for comfort for me.
-body was getting dented, and didn't match the vintage tint neck.
-Bridge didn't match the hardware

So I...
-Sold the neck/tuners and used the cash to get a warmoth P-Neck
-traded the black chrome BAII for a chrome one
-Completely rewired my juvenile quality wiring job
-sanded all the oil finish away, and had my Brother in law finish the body and headstock in trans-red auto paint. I finished the back of the neck with 12 coats of hand rubbed poly.
-got a set of hipshot ultralight tuners
-Used a veryfine sharpie to darken the PickGuard holes.

I just finished it yesterday afternoon. Here's the results:






It rocks. I took it to a country gig last night, and it sounded great through my Traynor YBA200 and Carvin RL810. It plays well, but I will be adjusting the action and raising the pickups. The series/paralell switch is super usefull.

A few flaws, none of which are bothersome to me.
1- I didn't fill the grain on the swamp ash body, so the red finish has some unevenness and pinholes along areas where there the grain is strongest. Nothing that you can see from 3 feet away.
2- The neck pup died somewhere through this process, so I have a mexi-jazz pup in there. It actually sounds good, so I will take my time getting a new set of pups.

Do you folks think it needs a guard? I like the look now, but this is the first bass I've owned that is making me consider a white pearloid guard.

Thanks folks,
I think I'm going to play it as is for a while. The holes are already there from the last time, so even if I go guard, it's not hard to go back. Now the nitpicky question. If Guard, regular pearloid, or vintage creamy pearloid?

I like the vintaged look, but I'm not sure that this bass looks old enough to justify it.

Thanks Greg,
The setup is settling in nicely. If they ever have another Chicago GTG I'll bring it along for you to try.

DopplerShift,
Thanks for the mockup, and for the tuners. I hadn't thought of black, and it really does look good. The white is too plain, and I hate tort on red, though Jeff K's picture does make it look pretty good. I had the bass on stage on Friday, and it looked quite orange under those particular lights.

In the end, if I go with a guard, it will probably be pearloid. The red headstock really does lend it'self to a more flashy look. I have the used Fender Tort from the top picture, anyone want to trade for a pearloid?

I played it again last night, and while I may experiment with pickups and electronics over the years, the physical quality of this bass, and the comfort of finally having a jazz with a precision neck make this an instrument that I could keep for a very long time.