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Modulus BASSSTAR Fan Club

#221
I will bet that if you turn and twist the neck in just the right light, you will see a pattern. It may be a long flat one like mine, but it will be there. Rather hard to see, but pretty cool looking... Great looking bass though.. Did you keep the original tuners, bridge and pickups? She is shiney for sure!!
 
#222
fclefgeoff said:
I picked up a super clean Bass Star from the classifieds last month and I love it! The neck has no pattern on it at all. I already owned a 2001 VJ4, it has been an amazing workhorse for me and has seen steady use as my #1 instrument since I bought it. Based upon this, I was seriously considering purchasing a Funk Persuasion (FU with a P pickup) when Modulus went belly up. When I saw this bass, I thought this would be a great substitute and would allow me to realize my dream of owning a graphite necked P. I don't have any photos at the moment (I'll try to take some ASAP) but here is a link to the sale thread...

http://www.talkbass.com/threads/very-rare-modulus-basstar-pj-graphite-neck.1120637/

The body is super light and in immaculate condition for a 30+ year old instrument but it had some serious neck dive so I removed the original tuners and bridge (heavy duty!) and added Hipshot Ultralite tuners and a Babicz FCH bridge which shaved off about a 1.5-2 lbs from the overall weight. I also pulled the original Bartolini pick ups and dropped in a set of Geezer EMGs. Unfortunately, the Geezers were the noisiest pick ups I have ever heard and I believe there may have been something wrong with them, so I exchanged them for a regular active EMG PJ set. EMG shows the J in this set as having the same dimensions as the GZR J but this isn't the case and the J won't fit! I'm thinking I could coax it in if I sand a little but at the moment, I'm just running the P. I slapped some TI flats on it and it sounds fantastic! I'm very very pleased!
Click to expand...

Ah, that looks super nice. So glad you are enjoying!
 
#228
Per the suggestion of Iriegnome I've come to say hello to all you Bassstar Fans.

I recently resurrected an early '80s matte black J Fretless with a Kahler Whammy Bridge. This fretless neck is amazingly comfortable and thin and I wanted to preserve it's playability but transform it into a lighter, nicer looking bass so with the help of Joe Perman who supplied me with a 5A Quilt topped replacement body, a lighter bridge and a new set of pots and Rich Hoeg who offered the services of his favorite finish guy and did some amazing reassembly I now have a much more appealing, fun, more playable and more eye catching Bassstar in my collection and it's been getting a lot of use as of late.

The E string on this reminds me of the B on my Q5 as it has tons of growl, character and depth - not that the A, D or G are bad - but the bottom on this thing is FAT.

Enjoying the bass life in SF!

My Newly Resurrected Modulus Bassstar Fretless | TalkBass.com
ModOrangeTop.jpg
 
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#232
The tale behind that newly minted orange and black fretless (I call it my SF Giants Fretless):

I was in Philadelphia for some personal business and scanned the local Craigslist when I found this for sale in Narberth (a very nice suburb) for less than $500. I was pretty amazed to find it cause to me the neck alone seemed worth more than $500.

I managed to get it back home to SF where I played it only occasionally mostly due to it's excessive weight. It felt like it was crushing my shoulder.
After a while it started eating at me that with a little help I could make this into a better, more playable and more attractive bass.

Luckily, as stated earlier, my local Wiz-Bang Luthier is Rich Hoeg, former Sr. Luthier for Modulus. Rich dissasembled this and weighed the Kahler Whammy Bridge and determined that was the chief culprit behind the imbalance and heaviness. Thankfully Rich maintained good connects with Joe Perman who still keeps a stock of NOS Parts and bodies and I was able to obtain a great looking body, new, lightweight bridge and new pots from Joe and then Rich took this all the way to home plate for the score.....

It now plays beautifully, is way less burdensome on the anatomy and sounds growly and deep.
 
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#233
A heads up. There is a BassStar bass, or perhaps someone's project bass with a BassStar neck, for sale at Cream City Music in Brookfield WI.
A fretless, with a natural mahogany finish body that looked like a Fender shape, but modified to allow better access to the upper range of the fretboard.
It has noticeable player wear, but nothing broken apparently.
Read Cream City Music's description and see photos here: Invalid Link Removed
Directions for contacting the store are also at that link.
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