Hello peeps! I currently have a somewhat odd bass in the works. Might divide opinions, this one.
This one began in late August of last year. I happened to - somewhat spontaneously - buy a cheap Russian bass that was for sale on eBay... the Ural 510L. Having researched the Ural basses for a while, I decided to take a risk and pull the trigger on one of these instruments, fully aware I'd probably end up with a dud of a bass. Just wanted something cheap to work on & improve.
Ural model 510L bass
The bass didn't seem that bad at a glance, but on closer inspection the flaws became apparent. Sighting down the neck, a slight sideways bow was noticeable, but I couldn't yet decipher whether the neck was warped beyond repair. A pretty big obstacle in the way of determining whether the electronics & pickups actually worked was this - shall we say - thought-provoking input jack:
That's a five-pin DIN input jack. Obviously insuitable to use with modern amplification and whatnot, so wasn't going to find out anytime soon whether the bass actually made a sound.
So, I got onto cleaning the gunky fretboard. Upon cleaning just the first three frets, a noticeable difference was already there. The frets themselves also had massive amounts of crud, and my wiping cloth wasn't too happy after this. But anyhoo, the fretboard was finally clean.
Then, I decided to pull off the electronics & pickups, seeing I wasn't testing them anytime soon without some replacement parts:
And, examined the pickups a bit closer:
Good lord. I'm certainly no pickup expert when it comes to guitars & basses (I do have experience with P Bass & Jazz Bass pickups though), but the construction of these pickups is again somewhat exotic. I'll probably run out of vocabulary describing the intricacies of this bass!
I took a DC resistance reading from the pickups, and got a whopping 0.3k! In other words, from my knowledge, a seemingly dead or just plain weak pickup? I promptly did the utmost sane thing a man could ever do:
Tore the bloody pickups apart! After doing this however, I was faced with a certain dilemma: what now? I then stumbled upon an ambitious idea: rewinding my own pickups into the original cases. No routing necessary! Although... some butchery on the original plastic frame, probably. Haven't yet decided how I'll pursue this whole pickup renovation though. Might just get some guitar pickups instead?
Then, it was finally time to get some cheap strings and string up the bass to see what kind of a piece of firewood--- I mean instrument I had ended up with.
Not too shabby! At least looks wise, the playability was rather horrible at this point.
So, having strung up the bass, upon inspection I happened to come across a pretty major inconvinience:
The fretboard was beginning to separate from the neck itself! That would be a "minor" annoyance in the long run, if not corrected.
I had already noticed the cracking under the fretboard upon first inspection, but didn't think too much of it at the time. It wasn't really until I got the bass strung up (and adjusted the truss rod) that I happened to discover it to be a major issue.
And speaking of adjusting the truss rod: I discovered it did absolutely nothing. Clearly the huge amount of relief wasn't going anywhere, as I tightened the rod as far as I could. And the reason for the cracking in the neck: the rod had actually been bent sideways from being cranked so tight, and thus had caused the fretboard to break off from the base of the neck!
So, to say the least it was a pretty big disappointment and bit of a blow on the whole "cheap refurbish" I had initially planned for this instrument, to discover that it had such a basic fault. But I did purchase a bass known to be somewhat lacklustre in fit & finish.
I thought for a while that I would scrap the whole project, and bin everything I had received in the mail. It all felt pretty much like waste of money... and I felt a bit scammed, as the eBay ad said the bass was in playable & good condition. Seems Ukrainian definitions differ from mine.
However, after some pondering and as I researched Youtube (among other places), inspected what I actually had and in what condition the rest of the bass was, one could say I had a light bulb moment.
Seeing these makeover videos (especially the latter somewhat Van Halen inspired one) made me believe I could turn my Ural into something half decent. All of it would just depend on the budget, and the level of modification I'd be willing to go to.
After I had glanced the previous videos and whatnot, I decided to take on the project of rebuilding/improving/modifying this bass. And doing it properly!
Thinking at first that maybe the truss rod was just stuck or maybe the neck itself needed some heat treatment, I opted to do the classic clothing iron trick.
That didn't really do much in straightening the neck, or helping out the truss rod. So, after this, I finally deducted that the truss rod was kaputt.
Before I had tried to properly crank the truss rod with strings on however, I had happened to put... epoxy into the fretboard crack, in a somewhat impatient move. Believing the clothes iron trick would work. But alas, it didn't.
After the diagnosis, it was time to get cracking. Cracking off the fretboard, that is!
Heating up the neck/fretboard with a heat gun for about 10-15 minutes, and then shoving a chisel into the crack through the softened epoxy.
With a bit of help from my dad, we managed to get the fretboard pryed off the base. And rather cleanly, thank goodness!
The base of the neck seemed to be rather straight, the fretboard itself however was a bit warped. And overall, the quality of the wood left a bit to be desired. But, a decent quality fretboard will look nice on there.
Afterwards I got too personal with the headstock veneer and happened to tear some of it off.
I'll just fill that one out, or alternatively put a new veneer over it. Also put a matchstick into the string guide hole in the headstock... matchsticks and toothpicks make for nice hole fillers.
I had at first thought of re-using the original fretboard, but then I happened to crack it in half when I was trying to sand it more level. It probably had already cracked during the removal phase, and now just received the final send-off. On the other hand, good riddance! I had begun to see how awful it was, anyway.
I made some temporary shims out of printer paper, into the sides of the neck pocket (that are visible in one of the upper pics). Seeing how the neck pocket was routed too big in comparison to the neck itself... well, guess these kinds of factory cock-ups are to be expected. I'll make some proper wooden shims during the rebuild.
Then, it was out with the old and in with the new.
Yeah, that wimsy bar was the truss rod on the Ural. Time to upgrade!
Now THAT's a truss rod. Double-action, two welded rods and the works! And only 10 euros.
Shame it didn't fit into the original truss rod pocket.
But fret not, I'll make it fit!
After a few hours of Dremeling: it fits rather snuggly and right around the level of the fretboard as it should be. Next step: a new fretboard! Maybe this whole project will actually go somewhere...
Woah, a pretty long first post! More to come!
TO BE CONTINUED
This one began in late August of last year. I happened to - somewhat spontaneously - buy a cheap Russian bass that was for sale on eBay... the Ural 510L. Having researched the Ural basses for a while, I decided to take a risk and pull the trigger on one of these instruments, fully aware I'd probably end up with a dud of a bass. Just wanted something cheap to work on & improve.
Ural model 510L bass
The bass didn't seem that bad at a glance, but on closer inspection the flaws became apparent. Sighting down the neck, a slight sideways bow was noticeable, but I couldn't yet decipher whether the neck was warped beyond repair. A pretty big obstacle in the way of determining whether the electronics & pickups actually worked was this - shall we say - thought-provoking input jack:
That's a five-pin DIN input jack. Obviously insuitable to use with modern amplification and whatnot, so wasn't going to find out anytime soon whether the bass actually made a sound.
So, I got onto cleaning the gunky fretboard. Upon cleaning just the first three frets, a noticeable difference was already there. The frets themselves also had massive amounts of crud, and my wiping cloth wasn't too happy after this. But anyhoo, the fretboard was finally clean.
Then, I decided to pull off the electronics & pickups, seeing I wasn't testing them anytime soon without some replacement parts:
And, examined the pickups a bit closer:
Good lord. I'm certainly no pickup expert when it comes to guitars & basses (I do have experience with P Bass & Jazz Bass pickups though), but the construction of these pickups is again somewhat exotic. I'll probably run out of vocabulary describing the intricacies of this bass!
I took a DC resistance reading from the pickups, and got a whopping 0.3k! In other words, from my knowledge, a seemingly dead or just plain weak pickup? I promptly did the utmost sane thing a man could ever do:
Tore the bloody pickups apart! After doing this however, I was faced with a certain dilemma: what now? I then stumbled upon an ambitious idea: rewinding my own pickups into the original cases. No routing necessary! Although... some butchery on the original plastic frame, probably. Haven't yet decided how I'll pursue this whole pickup renovation though. Might just get some guitar pickups instead?
Then, it was finally time to get some cheap strings and string up the bass to see what kind of a piece of firewood--- I mean instrument I had ended up with.
Not too shabby! At least looks wise, the playability was rather horrible at this point.
So, having strung up the bass, upon inspection I happened to come across a pretty major inconvinience:
The fretboard was beginning to separate from the neck itself! That would be a "minor" annoyance in the long run, if not corrected.
I had already noticed the cracking under the fretboard upon first inspection, but didn't think too much of it at the time. It wasn't really until I got the bass strung up (and adjusted the truss rod) that I happened to discover it to be a major issue.
And speaking of adjusting the truss rod: I discovered it did absolutely nothing. Clearly the huge amount of relief wasn't going anywhere, as I tightened the rod as far as I could. And the reason for the cracking in the neck: the rod had actually been bent sideways from being cranked so tight, and thus had caused the fretboard to break off from the base of the neck!
So, to say the least it was a pretty big disappointment and bit of a blow on the whole "cheap refurbish" I had initially planned for this instrument, to discover that it had such a basic fault. But I did purchase a bass known to be somewhat lacklustre in fit & finish.
I thought for a while that I would scrap the whole project, and bin everything I had received in the mail. It all felt pretty much like waste of money... and I felt a bit scammed, as the eBay ad said the bass was in playable & good condition. Seems Ukrainian definitions differ from mine.
However, after some pondering and as I researched Youtube (among other places), inspected what I actually had and in what condition the rest of the bass was, one could say I had a light bulb moment.
Seeing these makeover videos (especially the latter somewhat Van Halen inspired one) made me believe I could turn my Ural into something half decent. All of it would just depend on the budget, and the level of modification I'd be willing to go to.
After I had glanced the previous videos and whatnot, I decided to take on the project of rebuilding/improving/modifying this bass. And doing it properly!
Thinking at first that maybe the truss rod was just stuck or maybe the neck itself needed some heat treatment, I opted to do the classic clothing iron trick.
That didn't really do much in straightening the neck, or helping out the truss rod. So, after this, I finally deducted that the truss rod was kaputt.
Before I had tried to properly crank the truss rod with strings on however, I had happened to put... epoxy into the fretboard crack, in a somewhat impatient move. Believing the clothes iron trick would work. But alas, it didn't.
After the diagnosis, it was time to get cracking. Cracking off the fretboard, that is!
Heating up the neck/fretboard with a heat gun for about 10-15 minutes, and then shoving a chisel into the crack through the softened epoxy.
With a bit of help from my dad, we managed to get the fretboard pryed off the base. And rather cleanly, thank goodness!
The base of the neck seemed to be rather straight, the fretboard itself however was a bit warped. And overall, the quality of the wood left a bit to be desired. But, a decent quality fretboard will look nice on there.
Afterwards I got too personal with the headstock veneer and happened to tear some of it off.
I'll just fill that one out, or alternatively put a new veneer over it. Also put a matchstick into the string guide hole in the headstock... matchsticks and toothpicks make for nice hole fillers.
I had at first thought of re-using the original fretboard, but then I happened to crack it in half when I was trying to sand it more level. It probably had already cracked during the removal phase, and now just received the final send-off. On the other hand, good riddance! I had begun to see how awful it was, anyway.
I made some temporary shims out of printer paper, into the sides of the neck pocket (that are visible in one of the upper pics). Seeing how the neck pocket was routed too big in comparison to the neck itself... well, guess these kinds of factory cock-ups are to be expected. I'll make some proper wooden shims during the rebuild.
Then, it was out with the old and in with the new.
Yeah, that wimsy bar was the truss rod on the Ural. Time to upgrade!
Now THAT's a truss rod. Double-action, two welded rods and the works! And only 10 euros.
Shame it didn't fit into the original truss rod pocket.
But fret not, I'll make it fit!
After a few hours of Dremeling: it fits rather snuggly and right around the level of the fretboard as it should be. Next step: a new fretboard! Maybe this whole project will actually go somewhere...
Woah, a pretty long first post! More to come!
TO BE CONTINUED
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