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Marcus Miller V restoration

this is about as good as I can get the body, any staining is under the pickguard. I cleaned all the plastic parts, I had an exact Fender bridge replacement from back in 07 when I had a US deluxe that I changed to a hipshot. I'm ordering a new set of Hipshot tuning keys and some other screws and minor parts to replace the chrome stuff that is too far gone (I'll list all the parts I'm not keeping on the classifieds as 'heavy relic'd' tuning keys/bridge/screws/etc, hopefully someone needs them for a relic project, I'll clean all the olive oil and cat hair off them first :)).

This is as far as I can get, gonna box it up when all my parts come and ship it to 13th st gtr in Huntingdon Beach CA for them to refret and refin the neck and put back together/plek/setup. Hopefully everything works out well and no surprises other than what we see now. I'll be in LA next month and hope to pick it up then and have another 5er in the mix!

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Are you sure it's not flood damage? The corrosion on the tuners reminds me of what happened to a bass that belonged to a friend of of mine in NOLA who lost it in Katrina. The way the gunk is on there the old owner would have had to have been lubing the whole thing up.
 
I have the bass at 13th st guitars in Huntingdon Beach CA now. He sent this pic of after he removed the frets and Plekd the board. He said the olive oil stain runs too deep to get rid of it. It kinda looks cool but it reminds me of how nasty condition it was in. He suggested he can stain the board and will look good, I'm gonna go with that. Then next is a refret and fret plek :)
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thought I'd update this, I got some new hipshot hardware and had the bass refretted/plekd and the fingerboard has been stained/sealed. Turned out the years of olive oil killed the front pickup so Sweetwater had some Fender vintage noiseless on sale and I got those and had installed, luckily the stock pre is still good.

I have a new pickguard coming but the original still is ok and just cracked, I was able to play this bass last weekend on Fremont St in Vegas and sounded great! A little heavy around 10lb but killer sound, glad I went through with this restoration!

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A refret is definitely going to be required. Personally, I'd rip them out, and get sanding, clean up of much of that as you can then hand off to luthier/tech for refret and finish.

When I used to do this kind of work, I charged extra when the customer tried to fix it first. I wouldn't do anything to the neck before handing it to a qualified luthier.
 
Glad to see that Bass fully restored!! I love the look of a darker fret board BTW!! I would like to know
what happened to it to get to such horrible condition!! It was beyond neglect!!

I had sold this brand new in 2007 when I owned a music store on Guam. The buyer practiced daily and used olive oil on his strings instead of fastfret or fingerease, and by the looks of it never wiped it off!
 
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I had sold this brand new in 2007 when I owned a music store on Guam. The buyer practiced daily and used olive oil on his strings instead of fastfret or fingerease, and by the looks of it never wiped it off!
Wow!! I've heard of other people using olive oil, never sounded like a good idea!! SMH!! Hopefully he learned a lesson! I swear by fingerease. Been using it for decades! One can will last me for a several years!
 

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