First day of a new school year. I show up for the standard first week stuff: faculty breakfast, meetings with administrators and HR, etc. One of the counselors says a friend of hers was moving to California and had to lighten his load. He was getting ready to toss out an acoustic bass guitar. She asked him for it and brought it to school to give to me! I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to add a new bass to the herd.
It’s a Dean EAB, non-cutaway version. It needed some work. Tonight I cleaned it thoroughly, polished the fingerboard with some steel wool, etc. It needs a new bridge, but I had an old bone bridge that was about the right size and radius, just to try it out. I don’t think the truss rod had ever been tightened. With a few turns, the neck relief normalized. For grins, I threw a set of La Bella black tapewounds on it and, WOW, it came to life! Plugged in, with the tone control off, it sounds much like an upright, if an upright had frets. The fingerboard is a really pretty chunk of rosewood.
I still need to make a proper bone bridge saddle and put some new strings on it. The tapewounds I had were from an old viola bass and they weren’t long enough, but they had the right kind of tone and playability I want. I’ll post pics or a video when I’m done. What a nice surprise!
It’s a Dean EAB, non-cutaway version. It needed some work. Tonight I cleaned it thoroughly, polished the fingerboard with some steel wool, etc. It needs a new bridge, but I had an old bone bridge that was about the right size and radius, just to try it out. I don’t think the truss rod had ever been tightened. With a few turns, the neck relief normalized. For grins, I threw a set of La Bella black tapewounds on it and, WOW, it came to life! Plugged in, with the tone control off, it sounds much like an upright, if an upright had frets. The fingerboard is a really pretty chunk of rosewood.
I still need to make a proper bone bridge saddle and put some new strings on it. The tapewounds I had were from an old viola bass and they weren’t long enough, but they had the right kind of tone and playability I want. I’ll post pics or a video when I’m done. What a nice surprise!
