That's right, I said Glarvin. The bastard child of George, Leo and Lowell. 
This is a project I started on back in the early spring. The body, bridge and pickups are from a Carvin kit bass that I bought at a pawn shop a couple of years ago. The body was unfinished and had several dings in it.
The neck is one of the Indonesian G&L Tribute necks that they were selling for $39 on the G&L site. By the time I found out about them all they had remaining were left handed necks. I had been wanting to do a reverse headstock bass for some time so that worked out well. The neck was nice for the price but had very sharp fret edges and the tuner holes were too large for the Carvin tuners I already had. I filed the fret ends, filled the tuner holes with wood dowels and then re-drilled them. The neck heel was also a bit too large for the pocket in the body so I had to take just a bit off the sides of the heel. I also felt the little cutout in the headstock was too pointy so I rounded it out with a drum sander. After that I gave the neck a light sanding and applied several coats of clear satin polyurethane.
I filled the major dings in the body and sanded it down before applying several coats of primer and then the paint, which is just a nice shade of seafoam green I found at Lowe's. I believe it was made by Rustoleum. After I let it cure for a couple of weeks I did a light sanding and then applied the same clear coat I used on the neck. I decided not to go for a more satin finish instead of gloss.
I decided to make this bass passive but needed to find something to do with the six control holes from the preamp. After asking for suggestions someone lead me to a thread about doing a switch with several different values of tone capacitors. I got a three way on/on/on switch and wired up three caps to it and wired that to the tone pot. Another switch is used to change the humbucker from both coils to single coil using the coil closest to the bridge. The third switch is just a filler and does nothing. The pots are standard V/V/T setup.
The final two pieces, the string retainer and knobs arrived on Christmas Eve so I was able to finish it up last night. I took it to band practice today and am very happy with how it sounds and plays!
This is a project I started on back in the early spring. The body, bridge and pickups are from a Carvin kit bass that I bought at a pawn shop a couple of years ago. The body was unfinished and had several dings in it.
The neck is one of the Indonesian G&L Tribute necks that they were selling for $39 on the G&L site. By the time I found out about them all they had remaining were left handed necks. I had been wanting to do a reverse headstock bass for some time so that worked out well. The neck was nice for the price but had very sharp fret edges and the tuner holes were too large for the Carvin tuners I already had. I filed the fret ends, filled the tuner holes with wood dowels and then re-drilled them. The neck heel was also a bit too large for the pocket in the body so I had to take just a bit off the sides of the heel. I also felt the little cutout in the headstock was too pointy so I rounded it out with a drum sander. After that I gave the neck a light sanding and applied several coats of clear satin polyurethane.
I filled the major dings in the body and sanded it down before applying several coats of primer and then the paint, which is just a nice shade of seafoam green I found at Lowe's. I believe it was made by Rustoleum. After I let it cure for a couple of weeks I did a light sanding and then applied the same clear coat I used on the neck. I decided not to go for a more satin finish instead of gloss.
I decided to make this bass passive but needed to find something to do with the six control holes from the preamp. After asking for suggestions someone lead me to a thread about doing a switch with several different values of tone capacitors. I got a three way on/on/on switch and wired up three caps to it and wired that to the tone pot. Another switch is used to change the humbucker from both coils to single coil using the coil closest to the bridge. The third switch is just a filler and does nothing. The pots are standard V/V/T setup.
The final two pieces, the string retainer and knobs arrived on Christmas Eve so I was able to finish it up last night. I took it to band practice today and am very happy with how it sounds and plays!
