NBD P bass work in progress

A few pics of my latest build. Hope to have it finished within the next couple days.

MIM MIdnight Blue body with a MIM Precision Bass Special jazz width neck. The PU's will be a set of EMG Geezer Butler's and I can't wait to hear those. Bridge is a Hipshot Kickass just because I wanted to try one. Tuners are also Hipshot products. HB7's drop in for MIM necks. Body already had straploks on it. I had 4 different PG's white, mint green, gold anodized, and black diamond pearl. Decided to let my Daughter pick the guard. She went with the black diamond pearl. Smart girl. Still undecided about strings. Rounds or flats?

So far I think I'm really going to like this bass.

 

Probably go with rounds at first. Just because I don't have a set of flats here. I've got a new set of Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 50-105 here that a friend gave me so I'll probably toss those on. Till I decide what I want to use on this bass. I've got Roto RS66L's and LaBella DTF's on my other basses and kinda thinkin about something different for this bass. Been a busy few days so I haven't finished the bass yet, maybe this afternoon.

 

Never tried a set of pressure wounds. Maybe I'll try a set of those. Any recommendations?

 

I've never tried them so I'm going to order up a set and see how I like them.

Thanks

 

Finally got around to getting the bass finished. For strings I went with the GHS Pressure wounds as oranje suggested ML7200. Those sound good with the EMG Geezer PU. Very smooth with plenty of zing and punchy. Little to no string noise.

The Hipshot kickas* bridge was fairly easy to get dialed in. Only a couple of comments about that. The allen screws for adjustment of the string spacing are a bit tough to get at. When strung up and tuned to pitch those tiny screws on the front of the saddles take a bit of patience to work the allen wrench down under and between the strings. Also the two center bridge sections for the A & D needed to be raised pretty high out of their grooves the get the action height up off the board. IMO too high. Hipshot includes a couple of higher bridge inserts so I'll probably end up using them and lowering the overall saddle height for the A & D strings. Speaking of Hipshot, I'm not overly impressed with the HB7 tuners. While they are an improvement over the stock tuners (barely), the improvement you get doesn't equal the high price of the tuners. One of mine squeaks when you turn it so I have to look into that. The best thing is that they are a drop in replacement, but again IMO they are just plain priced too high for what you gain. I have a set of Fender road worn tallboy elephant ear reverse tuners that I'll probably end up installing on the bass. I didn't use those because I didn't want to drill the screw holes in the headstock but might do it anyway. I'll work with the HB7's for a bit and then decide.

I'm super impressed with the EMG Geezer pup's. They are throaty, punchy, and dead quiet. Very much the vintage pre CBS Fender P vibe. Super close to the tone of the original pup's that were in my old 60 P when I bought her years ago. EMG has done a great job with these. They are not high output and I'm sure there will be players who will buy these thinking they are hot pup's and will be disappointed that they're not. The pup's in my 60 went bad years ago and I no longer have them to compare so I'm going off memory. Right now the 60 has Antiquity II's in it and they sound good. Sometime down the road I'll do a side by side comparison with the Geezers. I wish EMG would make a set with no logo and aged covers. I'm sure they could sell a bunch of them. My only beef with the EMG's is the included wiring harness. The diameter of the threaded pot shafts are smaller than the CTS pots so they are a loose sloppy fit in the PG holes. A minor beef to some but it bothers me. I like the fact that you get a no solder harness as it goes in quick. The tone control taper is very smooth and the tone changes gradually throughout it's range. I'm going to grab another set of the Geezers to install on my 08 P Black 'n' Maple.

Still need to do some fine tuning on the bass but so far I think it's going to be a keeper.

 

Well I worked with it a bit yesterday and here's how it worked out. The KA bridge ships with different height saddles. Low, medium, and high. By installing the high saddles in the middle I ended up moving the A & D a bit higher. That enabled me to lower the whole saddles somewhat so it's better than it was.

IMO it looks like the neck sits high in the pocket on this bass and since this bass is a parts bass it's entirely possible that the bridge needs raised more than normal.

Seems to be fine now though. If anything the action will never be higher then it's set now. I do like the fact that the KA has a ton of adjustability on it. Way more than any BA style bridge.

 

Here's a couple good pics of the way the neck sits in the pocket and how the KA saddles look right now. Maybe this wil give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

 

I saw that in the instructions and will mess around some more with the different saddle inserts. One thing I noticed is my inserts have no colored spots on them like the instructions show. No biggie because it's easy to see the different heights. The inserts themselves are all the same physical size. Only the depth of the groove is different. Going to check it tomorrow.