Just realized the pic I posed was not the complete bass, and it's too late to edit, but here's a few shots of the finished product I used to sell it.
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Let's See Your Hot-Rodded Cheapo Basses!
- Thread starter Riff Ranger
- Start date
Just realized the pic I posed was not the complete bass, and it's too late to edit, but here's a few shots of the finished product I used to sell it.
Work in progress. So far i’ve added blacked out hardware including an aluminum Hipshot B-Style bridge for weight relief. The point is to see how light I can get it while still sounding good. The next step will be EMG GZR pickups. The bass was $200 and the bridge was $100. The rest of the black hardware was cannibalized from a longscale GIO.
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MiKros are shockingly good stock, but still make for fine hot rod cheapo candidates.
- Jun 30, 2010
- 49,605
- 222,077
- Disclosures
- musician/artist/owner - Gildaxe
- Jun 30, 2010
- 49,605
- 222,077
- Disclosures
- musician/artist/owner - Gildaxe
'93 Fender (gen 1) American Standard "longhorn" J - very modded/hot rodded and relatively cheapo. "Relatively cheapo" as these 'made in the US' Fender late '80s-early '90s Jazz basses can still be had for a reasonable price because hard-core Fender traditionalists dis-liked the George Blanda re-defined body shape that facilitated a full 22 fret neck/fb. (no ramp) The longer upper horn meant it balances well - which is a good thing. Anyway... neck & body are the only original parts. Hot-rodded mods include - Schaller Deluxe "F" Tuners, A-string retainer, chambered alder body, custom-cut mint pearloid pg, Schaller 3D bridge, Fender/Kubicki 9v pre & knobs, Nordstrand NJ4 single-coil J pu's, Burgundy Mist Metallic nitro relic'd finish by MJT. (with my own embellishments)
- Jun 30, 2010
- 49,605
- 222,077
- Disclosures
- musician/artist/owner - Gildaxe
Hah! Just realized my pic of the 'updated' V8 (above) needed updating!
Yamaha RBX 250 with stock electronics.
Not so much “Hot Rodded” but reshaped and added a two octave neck, has a new bridge and moved accordingly. This will get de-fretted soon and pics will follow…
Not so much “Hot Rodded” but reshaped and added a two octave neck, has a new bridge and moved accordingly. This will get de-fretted soon and pics will follow…
Classy
by “reshaped,” did you just make adjustments to accommodate the neck and bridge, or did you do more? Looks like they built it that way!Thanks, yea that’s about it, I took some thickness off the backside of the neck, reshaped the neck heel to fit the pocket, and slightly rolled the boards edges. I finished with a few light coats of tung oil found a longer bridge to cover old holes.Classy
This is my Glarry GIB 5 HH (you may have seen it in the Exquisite, Glarry, Burning Fire thread). I swapped out the chrome hardware, for black, TUSQ XL Nut, fret dress and polish, radiused the fret board and installed a three band preamp with mid sweep (Tone Monster SBK-3A) taking it from a confusing system to a good, versatile player. I won't be a regular five string player, but I wanted something I could turn to when needed.
Didn’t need to do much to this one- sounded pretty great out of the box. Buuuuuut, I just can’t help myself sometimes. Switched out string retainer and bridge for Hipshots- I don’t like feeding strings through holes, so top-loaders are a must. Straplocks are also a standard change- had a bad experience once and I’ll never play a bass onstage without them now. Also threw in a Bloodstone noiseless pickup, and that was the only noticeable tonal change other than the Dogal Hellborg flats I restrung it with.
Time to wake this thread. (Re)introducing the Peavey T-Fury. While this one has appeared in here before, and I have only ever made cosmetic changes, I think it remains enough of an upgrade to warrant an update.
I got the stock 1992 Peavey Fury for around 200 USD pre-pandemic and pre-old-Peavey-price-gouging. The T-series knobs and mirror pickguard from Pickguard Planet went on a while ago (with the stock pickguard getting @Dr. Cheese’s Fury back in shape), but I hadn’t done a clean job of either, and my toothpick trick job on the bottom strap button hadn’t held, either. In time, the headstock shape—or more accurately, the lack of it—started to bother me, and the huge stick-y-up-y clover tuning machines didn’t help. We’ve had an excellent tech recently relocate to Bigfoot Country who has already done a lot of good work for me, so I thought I’d ask him to reshape the headstock and swap out the stock tuning machines (which had gotten a bit sticky functionally as well) for the same Grovers as used on the T-series basses and some early Foundations, which I had received in a gift of many parts for a parts bass my mysterious benefactor never got around to assembling. The time had come to have someone more skilled than me neaten everything up. My tech seemed a bit hesitant about the woodworking part … until I told him it was a $200 Peavey
Then it was on 
I think it looks so much better now, but see what you think.Early-pandemic Zoom ranger program shot:
And now:
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View attachment 5378071
Time to wake this thread. (Re)introducing the Peavey T-Fury. While this one has appeared in here before, and I have only ever made cosmetic changes, I think it remains enough of an upgrade to warrant an update.
I got the stock 1992 Peavey Fury for around 200 USD pre-pandemic and pre-old-Peavey-price-gouging. The T-series knobs and mirror pickguard from Pickguard Planet went on a while ago (with the stock pickguard getting @Dr. Cheese’s Fury back in shape), but I hadn’t done a clean job of either, and my toothpick trick job on the bottom strap button hadn’t held, either. In time, the headstock shape—or more accurately, the lack of it—started to bother me, and the huge stick-y-up-y clover tuning machines didn’t help. We’ve had an excellent tech recently relocate to Bigfoot Country who has already done a lot of good work for me, so I thought I’d ask him to reshape the headstock and swap out the stock tuning machines (which had gotten a bit sticky functionally as well) for the same Grovers as used on the T-series basses and some early Foundations, which I had received in a gift of many parts for a parts bass my mysterious benefactor never got around to assembling. The time had come to have someone more skilled than me neaten everything up. My tech seemed a bit hesitant about the woodworking part … until I told him it was a $200 Peavey
Early-pandemic Zoom ranger program shot:
View attachment 5378085
And now:
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View attachment 5378089
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Diggin' it.
I got to tour the Peavey plant and meet Hartley in 1980. It was then that I learned that he had adapted a machine imported from England to carve spindles to make cnc necks. He was a pioneer in this area...
Side note: this stock, not-cheap-enough-for-this-thread T-40 and I both were born in 1980.Diggin' it.
Ha-Ha! I just rebuilt the electronics and replaced the pickup in a friends Fury!
When he lived in California, a friend put an Ibanez/EMG pickup in it. It recently stopped working. One half of the P pickup stopped working all together and the battery leads came loose. With the sealed pickups and leads, there was no repairing the EMG. I restored it to passive with a Guitar Madness Precision Bass PB Standard Alnico pickup, new strings (Black Smith Nickel Wounds from NAMM/SonoJono) and a full setup. It sounds great and plays much better than before.
When he lived in California, a friend put an Ibanez/EMG pickup in it. It recently stopped working. One half of the P pickup stopped working all together and the battery leads came loose. With the sealed pickups and leads, there was no repairing the EMG. I restored it to passive with a Guitar Madness Precision Bass PB Standard Alnico pickup, new strings (Black Smith Nickel Wounds from NAMM/SonoJono) and a full setup. It sounds great and plays much better than before.
Nice! Oddly enough, I intend to retain the stock electronics and bridge on mine, which are usually the first things I look to swap out other than pickguards on cheapos. The T-Fury sounds hot and bright, and that was true before I started messing around with it.
I got two offerings to the discussion.
One is a real cheap Yamaha rbx174ew with new DiMarzio dp127 set of pickups, and gotoh bridge and tuners and some new knobs, the the black/purple one is a used Yamaha BBnII with a set of Delano pickups. That one had better stock tuners and bridge so I have not changed those…yet.
Both have Thomann flats.
One is a real cheap Yamaha rbx174ew with new DiMarzio dp127 set of pickups, and gotoh bridge and tuners and some new knobs, the the black/purple one is a used Yamaha BBnII with a set of Delano pickups. That one had better stock tuners and bridge so I have not changed those…yet.
Both have Thomann flats.
I love Yamahas generally, and those budget RBX models seem like particularly promising hot rod candidates. My single-pickup, fretless RBX260F will probably make an appearance in this thread at some point. At the very least, I want less-cheap-feeling knobs, the headstock painted to match the body, and some shielding or something to reduce noise.
