Here's a post I posted on an earlier thread. It tells about a G4M bass that I bought (a customer return, ostensibly in newish condition but which actually had a loose tail block and so had to be repaired).
I've got to agree with Fuzzball - you can get the cheap eBay basses working and sounding half decent but it can be a huge amount of work.
Here's my experience (and these are just the bits I remember!):
Bought a customer return from an eBay bass supplier. A £400 (UK) model which after haggling, I got down to £160 because it needed repairs (except I underestimated how many!). Note that I had previously built a classical guitar and have been setting up guitars/bass guitars for friends and myself for some time.
My basic message is- unless you have lots of time, patience and some crafting ability - be prepared for some disappointment or, seen more positively, a useful period of instrument making practice witha reasonable chance of a playable instrument emerging at the end.
What did I have to do?
- Take the front of the bass off! This took ages because it had been glued on with modern glue, and so I also lost some of the inner edges of the solid spruce top. As a result, I needed to rebuild some interior sections ( with new tone wood (and plane to shape) and to glue spruce diamonds on a few small splits (and reglue the splits).
- Reglue and recarve the bassbar (to make the top more responsive) involving copious tapping to get a decent sound.
- reinforce the flimsy sides with a few carved struts.
- repair and reglue the tail block which had come adrift - also requiring regluing the lamination of the lower sides adjacent to the bass block.
- reglue some of the linings
- plane smooth many rough interior blocks and tidy up the inside generally
- reglue the top - but first had to make 40 violin-type spool clamps (which I made myself at a cost of around £40)
- reduce the bridge height by around half an inch, requiring total recarving of the resultant bridge to make it responsive
- reduce the nut by a huge amount, including reshaping and filing new grooves
- make a new ebony string saddle (at the tail end) to replace the useless whitewood one
- Touch up the varnish as necessary
- replace the strings with a set of the fabulous Innovations costing around £80
- shorten the extremely tight soundpost, reshaping it and resetting it several times (with a setter filed from a metal coat hanger) to get a good bass response.
NB all the gluing (at least the bit that needed to be reversible) was done with hide glue which I heated using a baby food jar and some second hand bottle warmers which worked a treat. This is great glue to use but takes some practice to get right.
Total cost of repairs/materials/strings and bass came to around £300, or including a Shadow NFX965 pickup, totalled £400.
What did I end up with? - a decent (not great), playable bass that sounds OK for jazz (with the pickup) and just about OK with a bow - the sort of bass that is pleasant enough to play but not inspiring. What would you expect for this outlay?
Satisfyingly, I have had good feedback on the sound from my musician friends and now am playing in a 5 piece (Joe Henderson style) jazz group.
Although I now can't wait to get a better bass (at least £3000 upwards going by the ones I've tried so far) this bass is fine for me at present. The solid top made it worth working on (I also had to recarve the inside a little where it was just too stiff and to fit the internal blocks better).
For me, it was a great learning experience and I just like repairing things but I wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone else unless, like me, they have some instrument making experience. I also have a couple of grade 8s and an ALCM in guitar so my musical knowledge/experience probably helped a bit in getting the sound I wanted.
You will be able to see a few pictures of the process here before too long (I'm updating the webpage this week):
http://www.geocities.com/dc.hobbs/bassrepair.html
Thinking back, though, if I had known the effort and amount of research involved (took 2 months beginning to end as I had to fit it arounf work and my 4 kids etc), I probably would have waited a bit and obtained a cheap but playable bass for around £1000 second-hand. On the other hand, without this experience I would have much less knowledge about what make a bass playable and well-constructed.
Good luck, what ever you try to do. Feeling the first few notes in your belly makes it all worthwhile!
