Assembling your own basses vs buying production basses vs modding

[Gilmourisgod]

I think you can fully cheap out on a Fender style body (which tends to exclude The Stratosphere) as long as the neck pocket fits, I’ve never seen or heard any convincing evidence that body wood makes enough difference to care about, so save your money for a nice neck and pups.

 

[Yellow Bang66]

Great thread. I've personally built (assembled) a few basses from scratch using Warmoth or other Fender-ish parts and have been extremely happy with them. My main player right now is a Warmoth Gecko and it's absolutely fantastic. I've also taken stock basses and made a few changes to them to better suit my needs. Almost every bass I own has had the electronics touched in some way, shape or form. Sometimes this was just a change in cap value, others it was a complete gut and rebuild.

I think that if you can get close to what you want in a production bass, it's definitely more economical to buy one off the shelf and replace what you want (pickups, tuners, etc.). Once the router comes out...well, maybe you're best served with a more custom approach.

yes. i too have ordered a customneck from warmoth, a real beauty! all done to my spec. Great Quality! Iknew going in it would need a little fret work (fret tangs needed rounding/filing)but I know a very good repair guy that does a lot of fret work so, i wasnt concerned.upon delivery I was really impressed with their craftsmanship. fret ends were a little sharp, but thanks to stew-mac i fixed that problem. the fit on my fender body was super tight, better than my nonmodded fennder bass. i'm super happy since I got to custom order every thing to my preferences, from the wood to the neck profile, the the only thing it I wasnt crazy about.. it was on the heavy side, but not crazy heavy (i believe due to steel support rods) gladly it was remedied with ultra lite tuners! I had a great experience with warmoth, and I will do it again soon! Happy new Year!!

 

[SactoBass]

yes. i too have ordered a customneck from warmoth, a real beauty! all done to my spec. Great Quality! Iknew going in it would need a little fret work (fret tangs needed rounding/filing)but I know a very good repair guy that does a lot of fret work so, i wasnt concerned.upon delivery I was really impressed with their craftsmanship. fret ends were a little sharp, but thanks to stew-mac i fixed that problem. the fit on my fender body was super tight, better than my nonmodded fennder bass. i'm super happy since I got to custom order every thing to my preferences, from the wood to the neck profile, the the only thing it I wasnt crazy about.. it was on the heavy side, but not crazy heavy (i believe due to steel support rods) gladly it was remedied with ultra lite tuners! I had a great experience with warmoth, and I will do it again soon! Happy new Year!!

Excellent!

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Great thread. I've personally built (assembled) a few basses from scratch using Warmoth or other Fender-ish parts and have been extremely happy with them. My main player right now is a Warmoth Gecko and it's absolutely fantastic. I've also taken stock basses and made a few changes to them to better suit my needs. Almost every bass I own has had the electronics touched in some way, shape or form. Sometimes this was just a change in cap value, others it was a complete gut and rebuild.

I think that if you can get close to what you want in a production bass, it's definitely more economical to buy one off the shelf and replace what you want (pickups, tuners, etc.). Once the router comes out...well, maybe you're best served with a more custom approach.

I have too many basses and too many need a little tweaking, so I am tempted to do a couple of builds myself. Two. because I like backups. It's quite an investment with Warmoth parts, though. With a couple of fretted P/MMs with a series/parallel/single set up for the MM pickup (two push-push pots or one switch will do the job). I could replace three other basses which thins the herd a little, without getting rid of any I have a sentimental attachment to. If I was being realistic I'd then butcher the cheapo HB fretless which has a great neck to make a fretless P/MM,. do the same to another one, and dump the VM fretless Squier. But I know I could pick up a Sire or HB Deluxe to create the fretted versions at a pretty low cost but that thinning the herd by one would lead me to buying a vanilla P Bass to fill the gap.

 

[Thumper]

I think you can fully cheap out on a Fender style body (which tends to exclude The Stratosphere) as long as the neck pocket fits, I’ve never seen or heard any convincing evidence that body wood makes enough difference to care about, so save your money for a nice neck and pups.

I am using a Squier Classic 60s J body in my ThunderJazz project. I wanted Oly white, and found one here on TalkBass that was also light weight. I also found a sweet B Hefner neck here. Along with all new electronics, I have no doubt it will sound as good as any all-Fender bass (my other project bass does).

 

[Thumper]

Better photo, and my JPJ.

 

[cm3ohana]

I used to buy production basses and keep them stock. Then, one day I had a problem with one of the basses and decided to try repairing it on my own which led to learning to solder and experimenting/upgrading which led to building parts basses. Today, all of my basses are parts basses that I’ve held onto longer than any production bass I’ve ever owned and I’m very happy with all of them.

 

[Thumper]

I love that Jbass with the scroll, what kind of body is that?

 

[cm3ohana]

I love that Jbass with the scroll, what kind of body is that?

It’s a USACG (USA Custom Guitars) body that I purchased used.

 

[Ric5]

3 pickup p-bass with quilted maple

 

[jamro217]

There's nothing like a killer mutt. For those of us with less than desirable woodworking skills, the ability to obtain some of the high quality parts we aren't able to make for ourselves along with hand picked electronics to create a unique, functional instrument is sheer bliss. Some of my favorite instruments are mutts. I am about to build to a bass from scratch, but there is no guarantee it will be as good an instrument as one made by a skilled luthier instead of a hobbyist.

 

[TonyP13]

Hey there TB'ers!

I've been playing bass since 1972, and for most of those years, I always bought production basses and left them stock for the most part. I've mostly owned Fenders and Rickenbackers over the years, including a few Fender Custom Shops.

For most of those years, it never dawned on me to assemble my own basses. For some reason, my brain was programmed to think that buying production basses was the only viable option (for me, anyway).

A few years ago, I reached a point where I wasn't quite satisfied with production basses, primarily because none of them had the exact components that I wanted. Since resale value is of zero interest or concern to me at this point in my life (a 63 year old retired civil engineer), and because I love to tinker at home putting things together, I made the decision a couple of years ago to start assembling my own basses using the exact components that I wanted. (Btw, I'm not talented enough to cut my own wood for bass bodies and necks, so I bought bass bodies and necks.) What I ended up with is a set of basses that I absolutely love! I am so pleased with the decision that I made to assemble my own basses because I now have exactly what I want.

Now, I realize that assembling basses is not what everyone wants to do. We all like different things, which is the way it should be. But for me (and I'm only talking about *ME* here), the preference that I held for decades of buying production basses changed to a preference for assembling my own basses using the exact components that I wanted. Since I experienced this "shift" in preference (which honestly caught me by surprise), and the end result was a very high level of happiness and satisfaction (for me), I was wondering, do any of my fellow and/or fellowette TB'ers have a preference of buying production basses vs assembling them to achieve satisfaction? (That is the original reason I started this thread....to ask TB'ers that question.)

Of course, in between those two options would be to take a production bass, and perform whatever mods you wish. That is indeed what I did with my Ric 4003S shown in the middle of the pic below. That is the only production bass that I own. All I did there is swap out the stock neck pickup for a Nordenbacker. The other four Fender basses shown in the pic (two J's on the left and two P's on the right) were assembled by me using high end components of my choice (eg, USA Fender necks with 1.5" nut width, Lollar pickups, Hipshot Kickass bridges, Fender Deluxe Schaller Lite tuners, either USACG or Warmoth bodies, top shelf wiring harnesses/pots including a series/parallel switch on one of the J's, and in the case of the bass on the right, custom paint by Guitarpaintguys). Each of the Fender basses ended up costing me around $1400 to $1500 in components. IMO, they are better (for me) than the $3000 Custom Shop Fenders that I owned in the past because these basses have the exact components that I want (plus they were assembled by a really nice guy! )

Now that I think about it as I'm typing this, I think I will create a poll to gauge what TB'ers prefer!

Please vote, and also please post explaining why you voted the way you did. Bass pics are also encouraged!

EDIT1: see my post #29 for parts sourcing info!

EDIT2: see my post #46 for info on the 5-space rack.

View attachment 3647177

I agree 100%...fun & when you're done it's one of a kind. Here's my favorite (so far!).

 

[Sands]

I’ve had some nice stock Fenders, modded vintage, and some nice builds to find the right everything. It’s been crazy.

The ‘13 active select jazz bass was so great sounding, but a little too fancy. Tried finding those PUs for some time now. The ‘69 P Bass nat refin with a hot SD pickup and TI flats was magic. It freaked me out having something so nice. I duplicated the particulars on a 2011 USA P, but it wasn’t quite the same.

I have had good luck with Warmoth, Stratosphere, Fender and G&L.

I prefer the look and feel of nitro bodies, slightly hot PUs, satin necks, stainless frets. I currently have a black jazz pro that seems great. Not stainless but narrow tall is somewhat close in feel. Not nitro. I don’t like the mint pick guard so a one ply black will replace. The headstock is sort of pale.

I’m really just trying hard to enjoy playing, but a 74 AVRI RW neck would be great, and a black AVRI jazz body would be too for that matter. I just saw one of those complete for sale (reverb), but opted to save several hundred.

Glad I did. Just trying to stay focused on playing. It is more fun. Plus, I really need the practice. Unfortunately I’m better at building than playing.

I like the pickups a lot fortunately. The neck is silky. Even the stock strings sounded good (ordered 1st sunbeams) The bass will do the job nicely.

I think I’m going to tape up the neck and file the fret edges on the pro a bit though, to get them a bit more rounded and smooth. They are a bit sharp. But that’s it! No more mods! And it can wait - they really aren’t too bad.

 

[John sase]

For solid-body instruments, I check out the neck first. (Something that I learned from the Gibson neck-grader in Kalamazoo in the late 1960s. The best one went on the high-end Gibsons (fifteen coats of finish); medium-high on the standards; medium on the Les Paul Juniors, etc.; medium-low on the Epiphones; and low but acceptable on the Kalamazoo guitar (five coats of finish).
If the neck is good, I can work with it. I found a Fender Squire as the first bass for my son. Neck played well, but the electronics sucked. So, I bought new pickups from Seymour Duncan, new electronics from StewMac, and lined the cavity with peel-and-stick copper tape. Plays and sounds professional.

 

[Rockbobmel]

Deluxe P Body & pickguard, Deluxe Jazz neck & tuners, Wilde pups(since pic), Babicz bridge, CTS pots, Q-Parts knobs. all passive.

 

[JBassDeluxe]

Biiiiiiiiig +1

My post #29 lists my sourcing for components. As you can see, ebay is my source for many of the components!

I’ve had a fair amount of success with Reverb.com...I’ve even found some unique pickups on Etsy. There are both standard issue and unique parts to be had in some mostly never considered place.

As an aside SactoBass, I’m located in Fair Oaks, CA...I reckon I’m not that far from you.

 

[Bobhmcs]

I started out with a a 1972 Fender Precision that my uncle bequeathed to me and I left it completely alone. Then I left the bass world for about 35 years because it is not easy to play, practice, or perform while at sea or humping the bush with the Marines.
Due to physical limitations every bass I have owned has been modified in one fashion or another. From going completely to wood and back up to just adding strap locks. I have only owned 2 basses I left alone since my uncle's and that is a 1969 Gibson EB3 and a 2019 Gibson SG Standard Bass. Until recently when the bridge slid off the SG Standard for the 3rd time so I replace it with a Hipshot out of frustration.
So basically it is Yes, No, Maybe, and If I Ever Get Good Enough.
Bob

 

[SactoBass]

I’ve had a fair amount of success with Reverb.com...I’ve even found some unique pickups on Etsy. There are both standard issue and unique parts to be had in some mostly never considered place.

As an aside SactoBass, I’m located in Fair Oaks, CA...I reckon I’m not that far from you.

Hey there, neighbor!

 

[dspellman]

So far I've purchased stock and left them that way.

 

[Sands]

Sourcing:

For the screws, I use Johnson’s floor wax. It doubles for other uses like protecting metal (e.g., table saw top).

roll of Copper tape, amazon

get a good soldering iron. I got a nice one a Fry’s a few years back. eBay might be a good alternative.

Something fun to do is use vintage parts, I’ve used vintage pickups in several builds. One I messed up (aaaggghhhh!!!) and had Seymour Duncan rebuild ($75). Another was lost in shipping (omg).

It does add something special IMO.

I think the vintage bodies can be a good starting point or AVRI.

I agree with many others, the neck is critical. Make sure the truss rod works well. If it’s vintage, suggest giving it a break and going with low tension flat wound strings. The neck will not last forever, but that will help it probably outlast us, at least.