Thank you!
I love the aging of the white myself, it was one of the things that caught my eye about it. I had been looking for a used P style bass that I could work on. A new Glarry off of Ebay wasn't going to cut it for me. I wanted a P style bass, something that had been abused, but had stood up to the test of time, and this one fit the bill. I just never imagined it would be an Epiphone. I didn't even know they had made a P Bass copy, much less a string through body.
The maple neck with maple fretboard being in good shape was very important as was a working truss rod. The electronics I didn't care about. And they were pretty shot in this one. The volume was either zero or 10, no inbetween, the tone pot was a push pull type, why? The owner didn't know either. It didn't work at all anyway. The output jack was so worn out the jack could fall out just by turning the bass upside down, and the ground wire to the bridge was disconnected from the output jack. So that left me the opportunity to gut the pups and electronics and throw some EMG stuff in there, Geezer Butler P set.
There was a small crack in the fretboard, 2nd fret, ran across the fret from the edge of the board under the G and towards the D string. Filled it with CA, smoothed it out with an emory board, filled it again, smoothed it again. Other than that the neck is mind blowingly straight as an arrow. I got the intonation set, but going to go back and raise the E & A strings just a hair more and probably will have to re do the intonation on those. But it's a very good feeling neck. I've had four guitarists compliment me on it so far.
The tuners work, and hold it in tune. The bridge does what it's supposed to do. So those will not be replaced anytime soon unless something with them breaks or they quit working right.
So over all to get her back to a good playing condition I bought the EMG pup set ($109), two Fender road worn knobs($22), a Fender thumb rest($11), a strap($15), a set of DR Black Beauties($25), and a new, engraved, truss rod cover($22), leaving me with a total investment of $269 in the bass. I gigged it tonight. Needless to say I'm very happy with that investment and what is now my first Epiphone bass, she's a keeper.
And now I've seen the new Epi you bought and I'm gassing for one of those.
Love the color, love the huge humbuckers, and that pickguard shape is awesome. The entire look of that bass has a vintage style to it. I'm finding myself gravitating to the vintage look over the more modern look of my Ibbys even though I bought the white 2012 SRX2EX2 just today for $150. I couldn't turn that down
That kind of put me off. Not enough to dismiss it, but it was something I noticed.
