Ok, I got it for $750... probably could have talked him down a little more but he was pretty bummed to let it go (financial reasons) and to be honest, $25-50 to him is a lot more than me so I call it a good price.
Owner bought it in '79 from a guitar shop in Cali. He said it's possible it was a new Second but he can't remember if it was new or used when he bought it. Back in the early 80's, he bypassed the tone controls and pickup selector and ran the pickups straight through the volume pot to output. Crazy! So I get to rewire the whole thing. Both pickups work, low noise, and are not microphonic one bit. Seller was a bit confused when I started yelling at the body of the bass.
Fretboard, bridge, and nut are all in fantastic shape. There's one tiny hairline crack about 3/32" long in the fretboard finish between the A and D strings on 12th fret that doesn't affect playing at all. Frets have definitely been filed down a little bit but it plays beautifully. Neck is ridiculously straight with 45 slinkys on it. Tuning keys are tarnished, one has a small chip in the chrome finish, but all four have decent movement with no signs of grinding or major dirtiness.
The pickguard is pretty warped as you can see in the pics but it doesn't get in the way of playing.
He has no clue what happened to the bridge cover which is unfortunate considering the value they're going for on eBay, but I personally wouldn't use it anyway. He said he's going to look for it when he cleans out his basement but I'm not optimistic.
I've never seen a choke wired into a guitar before... what's the purpose in this case? Does it enable the mid-range tone controls? Any technical explanation how it works? Is it just a variable capacitor? All the pots are filthy and the volume knob only works from 9.75 to 10.0... the rest is just static. I'm going to try to clean everything out, but in the event that they're beyond servicing, any reason why I can't order a new CTS pot to replace the factory one attached to the choke? I'm thinking about the fitment of a replacement pot against that choke being a potential problem. Are the new Gibson Ripper reissue parts close enough in spec that I could use those parts if need be?
As for the caps, looks to have a .1u tantalum (red and small, not a fish as far as I know) and a black .047u mica. Those will stay in place.
The bridge ground wire has what appears to be only a single strand of wire connected at each end. Is that expected or should I replace it when I rewire?
