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Hoo boy! I think I'm done; I looked at this bass long and hard when it was posted for sale a few years ago, and regretted having missed it, so I didn't want to miss my second chance at it. Gotta restring with HiBeams or Pure Blues, lower the action a smidge, do a thorough cleaning, test the battery, and snug down the knobs, but it plays great.
- Dec 21, 2007
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- Lark in the Morning Instructional Videos; Audix Microphones
I know that not everyone agrees, but I really like the "Special" pickup config, even on fretted Zons. (I know your fretless has it, too.)
I think that my Legacy Elite Special 6 is the best-sounding bass I've ever played.
Looks killer!! Great score.Hoo boy! I think I'm done; I looked at this bass long and hard when it was posted for sale a few years ago, and regretted having missed it, so I didn't want to miss my second chance at it. Gotta restring with HiBeams or Pure Blues, lower the action a smidge, do a thorough cleaning, test the battery, and snug down the knobs, but it plays great.
Hoo boy! I think I'm done; I looked at this bass long and hard when it was posted for sale a few years ago, and regretted having missed it, so I didn't want to miss my second chance at it. Gotta restring with HiBeams or Pure Blues, lower the action a smidge, do a thorough cleaning, test the battery, and snug down the knobs, but it plays great.
I love this bass. I got to play this one (or a very similar one) in the shop a long time ago and was blown away. Special pickup setup + mahogany/maple + TJ setup = perfect. I would have already ordered one if I hadn't had the whole Hyperbass thing happen. It's such a great sounding setup. It's a 519- imo their best all-around sounding bass- in my preferred package. Nice catch!
Has anyone ever had to get fretwork done on their Zon? I've got a 2004 that I bought used recently and have had a hard time getting the buzz out of it. I did some testing with a straight edge today and found a couple of frets (16th and 19th) that are a touch higher than the rest.
On a normal instrument with a wood fretboard, they can just be hammered in, right? Or would they need to be ground down? Is there anything about the frets Zon uses or the fretboard material (this one is old enough that it's just black and doesn't have the woodgrain-look to it) that I would need to let a repair guy know about?
Any insight will be appreciated!
On a normal instrument with a wood fretboard, they can just be hammered in, right? Or would they need to be ground down? Is there anything about the frets Zon uses or the fretboard material (this one is old enough that it's just black and doesn't have the woodgrain-look to it) that I would need to let a repair guy know about?
Any insight will be appreciated!
From what I’ve been told, Phenowood and phenolic fingerboards are no more difficult/special than a similarly hard fingerboard material when it comes to refrets.
I thought Zon glued in their frets with CA? I would think it strange for the frets to be lifting. The Phenowood boards don't shrink like natural wood. It may just be wear. When I bought my '98 back in '08 there were multiple frets with visible string wear that needed to be leveled and recrowned.
It's unclear if they're lifting or what the deal is, but they aren't worn at all; this instrument has barely been played. The biggest part of my appreciation of Zons is how good the necks and frets usually are. And with the frets being installed in a stable material, I'd be surprised if it was lifting too. I've got a good local tech who I'm sure can level the frets, but I'm sure he's not used to dealing with non-traditional instrument materials like the ones in Zons. I'm 2-3 hours away from the nearest shop with a Plek machine, which I'm considering, but the soonest I can get an appointment is in October. So my big question is whether I wait and take it to a Plek-equipped shop or just take to the local guy around the corner.
Depends on how good your local guy is. I use someone who worked with Paul Reed Smith for decades, I trust him more than a machine, but techs that good can be hard to find.
I'm conflicted on this. I've only used him once before as I do most of my setups and mods myself. I sent him my cheap Schecter 8-string with two requests: it needed a new nut (the old one had worn through), and I wanted a second output jack installed (I wasn't comfortable drilling holes myself). While I was there he showed me a couple other instruments; a Bo Diddley-square type guitar he was building and the binding looked terrible, and a super-Strat he built for himself, and the finish was remarkably bad. He did a great job cutting a new nut for my 8 (not an easy thing to do), but when he drilled the new hole for the second output jack he drilled through one of the pots that was installed. Kinda thinking I wouldn't trust him for anything cosmetic, but he did a great job on the nut, so he probably knows how to do setups really well.
I love that Schecter 8 for that reason: I use it as my test mule for electronics testing and tuning experiments. If he had ruined it, I had only spent $200 on the guitar and I could always pull the electronics out of it for something else. But it played great when I got it back, and the pot was one that I was going to replace anyway, but it still makes me nervous that he didn't think enough to ensure his drill wouldn't hit it. So dropping off this rare Sonus-8 with Aguilars and an incredible top makes me wonder if he'll pay enough attention to not wreck something else while he's working on it.
I'm a 2 or 3 hour drive from some repair guys that have Plek machines. Maybe this is the wrong way to think about it, but if they have one they've seriously invested in their craft and are looking to provide the best results possible.
ZOINKS
for my part, there is _no way_ i would trust an expensive instrument like a Zon, especially a rare one, with the pot-drilling-through, poor-finishing guy
I’d prefer substantial inconvenience and a longer wait, to the risk of leaving my Zon with a known-clumsy tech
Is that at SF Guitar Works? Another alternative if you are already going to drive that far is Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto- they do exceptional fretwork and are used to dealing with expensive/high-end and fragile instruments. I went to them for a decade for repair work when I lived in California and never had anything but great experiences. Long drive though (but not a lot further than SF already is for you).
The fingerboard shouldn't be any problem for them. They do actually flex with moisture/temperature contrary to the marketing, so you can have frets that lift on older instruments if it's had a lot of climate transitions. It's a stabilized composite wood but it's still a wood base.
There are quite a few Plek-equipped repair shops in the Bay Area on down to Santa Cruz, and SF Guitar Works was one of them. They're all backed up for repairs. I found a local shop that sounds promising after a coworker told me about some work they did on his vintage Martin D12. But Gryphon looks good too!
I know it's in here somewhere but I'm not finding it... Around what year did Zon start making their neck with truss rods, standard? I think they were doing it before the end of the 90s but not sure.
2007, per Martin. They did a short run of truss rods in the '90s but the rods weren't beefy enough.
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Hmmm. Are the first two digits of the serial the year? If so I've got a 2004 with a truss rod. Were they optional before 2007?
I've seen some real new ones (last couple of years) that have a truss rod wheel similar to EBMM. I'm not sure when that started.
Often (but not always IME) the first two digits of a 6-digit SN are the year built. (There are some 7-digit Zon SNs out there as well.)
I appreciate the data point! I'll check in with Martin the next time I interface with him.
There were plenty made before then, for clarity- my 2006 has a truss rod. But they transitioned to every bass having a truss around that point.
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