This is a RAT ROD really (as cheap as possible). I originally got this P-style Harley Benton bass kit (thomann, 88€, basswood body) as a gift from my wife in early 2016. Here it is in its original state, except for the nut slots, filed from the get go to be strung BEAD. Only work it took (apart from usual assembly) was to paint the body (a few layers of polyurethane) and cut the headstock shape (and put some more poly there for finish). Now, for making it clear, there's absolutely NOTHING WRONG with this kit bass. Everything dpoes what it should, can be setup perfectly comfortable and in tune, just had to shim the neck a little bit. Sounds like a P should. In fact, the P pickup in these is SURPRISINGLY GOOD, I much prefer it to a Delano P (big poles, most DEAD P pickup I've ever had) and aso prefer it to a Wylde P-46 I've had (too "classic"/tame sounding for my taste). This is how the bass looked after first assembly:
This is how it sounded (clean & driven)...
Now after only a gig I changed the pickup to a reverse P disposition. Not radical, but helped both tighten the low B and give some balls to the high strings (more important the A, I can dela with a weak D, but a thin A was too much). Had to do a pickguard (on my own, out of some mirror plastic I had lying around at home).
There's a sound demo for this one too (clean & driven)...
Time after this a guy showed up in some FB group selling a neckside J pickup from a VM Squier Jazz. Got it for 15€ and added it. The bass lost the tone control, now it was V+V and I seized the oportunity to change the neck pickup volume pot for a push-pull one ad wired the series-parallel (S1) thing. Also gave the headstock some "message".
Here are some (clean & driven too) samples for the reverse P+J...
I don't have photos of 2 "minor" mods I did in-between so I'll just mention those. First I added 2 extra neck bolts at 45º (they way new Yammie BBs have them). Then I also changed the headstock to a 3+1 configuration to solve a dead spot and it sure as hell did (after playing with a Fat Finger for some time). I was looking for something funny to cover the remaining hole when I decided to reserve that decision for later, 'cause maybe this bass could be converted to a 5er. At that point I just fantasized with the idea and fact is I started to play this bass less and less by late 2017. So that didn't happen 'till early this year (2019). I got a cheap narrow (16mm spacing) 5 string bridge from AliExpress (9€) and some 42mm 5 string "brass" nut (BTW, first and last time I try the metal nut thing, HARD to fine tune, didn't gain a thing). I had a spare tuner I used. Also didn't procrastinate this time and gave both the body and the headstock a real finish, "distressed" red. This is the resulting creature...
The drill for the bridge's grounding was momentarily out of order, thus this pretty rat rod exposed wire...
Now, I still played this bass very little (can't compete with my other 5ers, Stingray5 and Schecter CV-5 -my all purpose Fender killer 5er-). In parallel, I started missing fretless (out of it for 16 years, before that it had been my main instrument for some years). Didn't NEED a fretless, and truth is it'd see little real life use, so the choice started to become more and more obvious (with the incentive of some more hours of fun out of this franken-build). So I went at it, once again, on the cheap. Heated the frets, took 'em out with as much love as I was capable of and filled with epoxy putty. Then did some light sanding and applied linseed oil a couple times (wiping excess, you don't want a greasy fingerboard). For some day I'd use it with roundwounds but then I got a set of LaBella LTFs (BTW, lovely, strings like these didn't exist 20 years ago, fretless was a synonym for tough hands). The bass also got back its tone control. I replaced the pickguard with a properly routed (yet slightly retouched when I fitted it) black pickguard with the 3 holes a little more cramped than in usual VVT P+Js (I want pots out of the way, can't stand them being in the way of my picking on fretted basses). This added 35€ to the cost of my bass. Still I'm under 200€ on this bass, which is great for what it does for me.
This is a sound test where you can hear bridge PU, neck PU, then both, then both in series. The bass is setup as low as possible so as to extract all the mwah these flats can give, but not as much as the roundwound kinda' mwah, I like it "upright'ish" most of the times.
