Tele Bass-Parts caster build

[Deviljohn]

So 25 years ago, I bought a warmoth telecaster bass neck, ebony fretboard, no inlays, dots or frets...at the time I was in a full time road band and my main rig was a 1972 P-bass coupled with an SVT and 8x10 coffin...my intent was to inlay the tele neck kinda like on Waylons guitars (initials etc..) and put on the Pbass, which at the time had a very bowed neck...well as figures, the band broke up....I moved out of Atlanta and that tele bass neck sat in the box...

The idea to put a tele neck on a P-bass came after I went and saw Ronnie Dawson (Texas Rockabilly extrordinaire) play a strat with a tele neck...well, with the advent of Ebay and the internet I started looking up the values of 70's Fenders and realized the Pbass was worth 3-5K...(I paid $250 for her in 1984 in a small music store out of Chapel Hill NC) I had molested the bass during my punk rock days and carved some BS in the top horn...burned it w cigarettes...put stickers and all kinda shite on the bass...so I took it to some pros, had a refinish (partial) and fret job, set-up etc...brought it back to as original as I could, and decided the original neck should never be separated from the original body...I later remedied the Pbass neck bow by adding a small bushing to the truss rod nut....guessing over time wood fibers had compressed and the truss rod nut was bottomed out..

So for the past year, I got OCD on building a Tele partscaster bass. I ordered a body from Rosser Guitars (out of NC) on Ebay, as well as all the parts, pieces and hardware to make the build..So, I'm posting some pix of the build now....I am almost done!! I am awaiting arrival of some bass nut files so I can complete final set-up...heres specs of what I put together:

*Warmoth Neck
*Rosser Body (with prelim nitro butterscotch finish) Single coil-pick-up rout
*Fender bridge, neck plate, tuners, control plate etc..
*Single Seymore Duncan 1/4 pounder p/u with stewmac pots, controls .47uf cap
*Chinese MOP block inlays off amazon

Obviously the first and biggest challenge was inlaying and fretting the neck (something I have never attempted before) And also the body finish. When received it looked more like school bus yellow vs. butterscotch. I remedied that condition with 3-4 coats of amber nitro laquer followed by 10 more of clear...Another nerve racking challenge was enlarging the string thru ferrules to 1/2" from 3/8 (you'll see the template I fabbed...) One thing I learned is that in the luthier world when you are about to drill, cut, sand at some point you just have to commit and go for it.....ie. taking an exacto knife, chisel and dremel router to a perfectly unmolested fretboard...So here's some pix over the year long journey..Cheers! And happy bass builds!! Questions, comments, please post...

 

[2saddleslab]

Well done, OP. Always happy to see another slab enter the world.

 

[Deviljohn]

And here's a couple of the resto'd Pbass..