Paul Simonon Tribute Bass

[CochinoBass]

After digging around on the Garageland website of the guy who has done a lot of Simonon projects and has a lot of research on his basses, I think I will do the "Checker" version of the Paul bass. The Paul bass did indeed have a paint striped pickguard at one point, but I think I will do a version with the normal black pickguard without paint splatter stripes, but with the Sharpie checkers.

I think that would be a pretty cool tribute version.

 

[CochinoBass]

Here is the link to the website I mentioned, he has a lot of Simonon and Strummer tributes, and a few others. Pretty cool website.

Projects

Completed 2024 Joe Strummer “IAO” Telecaster “MESCALEROS’02” V.2 Completed 2025 Joe Strummer FENDER Telecaster “CONTROL’77” Completed 2024 JOE STRUMM…

garageland.co.uk

 

[Dark Horse]

For the PRESSURE letters I just used some vinyl decals. From what I've read, Paul used some sort of stencil and in the photos of the bass, you can see an odd outline around the letters. IDK what that is, if he made a decal and applied that or if it was overspray from a stencil. Anyway, I didn't like it and didn't see any reason to reproduce it exactly.

Paul had also applied some red tape fret markers. They say he had a full set at one point. But by the time of the Palladium gig only three remained. And two of those came off in the destruction of the bass leaving only one on the bass as it sits today. I went ahead and applied three like the bass had just before demolition.

Here's the final result including some close ups of some of the relic work.

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Super rad bass man…. Great job on building this one !!

 

[topper]

Super rad bass man…. Great job on building this one !!

Thanks!

 

[topper]

After digging around on the Garageland website of the guy who has done a lot of Simonon projects and has a lot of research on his basses, I think I will do the "Checker" version of the Paul bass. The Paul bass did indeed have a paint striped pickguard at one point, but I think I will do a version with the normal black pickguard without paint splatter stripes, but with the Sharpie checkers.

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I think that would be a pretty cool tribute version.

That checker bass would be a cool tribute

 

[CochinoBass]

I finally got around to putting the checker on my bass. I also tinted the neck with the Angelus leather dye, I used a mix of Brandy and Honey. I didnt tint it super dark, just enough to tone down the bright white new maple. The checkers are not an identical copy of Paul's bass, but it is close enough. I did the sharpie checkers on the off white and then sprayed clear over it. His checkers you could see the marker tip "brush strokes" on some of the black blocks so I tried to replicate that and it worked well. I'm pretty happy with the overall results. The lighting is weird and makes the body look pure white, when its the same off white as before, and it makes the neck look lighter than it is. The second picture is a before.

 

[filler83]

I wanted to honor Paul and have a bass that looked the part on stage with my Clash tribute band (Lost in the Supermarket). But I wasn't attempting to create an exact replica of Paul's bass. TBH I've never been a huge fan of the relic aesthetic. But it felt wrong for this bass to look shiny and new. So I decided to give the aging process a jump start with a slight relic.

I've built a few basses, but decided to make this one a parts build. Paul's was a standard Fender P. So, I didn't see any reason to start from scratch here.

Also, I prefer short scale basses. But I was worried that a 30" scale would look off. So I went with a 32" scale.

The neck came from a Squier Jag bass. The maple was bright white. So first thing I needed to do was age it. I used Angelus leather dye to tint the poly slightly.

I like how the tinted neck came out - did you have to sand any original finish off the neck to do that, or did you just wipe it directly on the neck as is?

 

[CochinoBass]

I just scuffed the finish lightly with some steel wool so the dye had something to hold on to. I thinned the dye with alcohol and went slowly multiple times until I got it where I wanted it. I sprayed gloss poly over the top to seal it all in .