WBO '24 [Assembly] - Best Bass for $50*

[J Posega]

OK, the title is mostly clickbait.

Warmoth posted on Instagram recently (2 weeks ago, I think) that they'd be adding stuff to their Screamin' Deals page for $50, bodies and necks. Well, I'm compulsive and my annual bonus just hit and I had just been looking at necks, daydreaming about an unlined maple fretless.

Imagine my surprise when I hopped on the website and found this Jazzmaster IV body for a whopping $50. You can hardly find cheap import bodies or half-destroyed Squier for that cheap. The pickguard cost nearly as much as the body.

As I pondered going with some cheap but decent Guitar Madness J pickups, I checked out the Hot Deals subforum and found out that Wilde Pickups is running a holiday sale, so I placed an order immediately.

Specs:

• Warmoth Jazzmaster IV body, in alder with some lovely grain; 5.13 lbs so not super light like most but I think it'll help with balance since the upper horn is slightly short on this body style
• Warmoth J neck maple on maple unlined fretless
• Warmoth pickguard
• Hipshot Vintage bridge
• Wilde J45 pickup set
• Passive wiring

I'm going to finish the neck in Tru-Oil. It's way too pale right now and I want a nice amber tone. I could've had Warmoth do their vintage tint but I have a tinted neck of theirs and it's so ugly. It's not tinted, it's Homer Simpson yellow.

For the body, I'm taking inspiration from walnut-bodied Fenders and I'll be finishing it with Rubio Monocoat Cinnamon Brown. Just looking for a nice, warm brown color.

I have a switch plate on order. Rather than going with slide switches, I'm keeping it simple with a single 4-position Tele switch for neck solo, both parallel, both series, and bridge solo options and a simple volume and tone setup. Headstock will get a 3-string retainer, but I'm undecided on tuners.

I have some Schaller M4S tuners I accidentally bought for another Warmoth project I did, not realizing they've got a different mounting nub pattern than the BML that Warmoth uses for their SSB necks. I'll have to figure out how to accurately mark for the mounting nubs.

 

[Bent77]

Woo!

 

[Dark Horse]

What a deal!

 

[J Posega]

No major updates here, having ordered a bunch of parts and supplies around the holidays means some things haven't shipped yet.

But I did receive my switch plate which had me question the choice to go with black hardware and then I found this chrome Hipshot A bridge that I forgot I almost used on a different project. With chrome parts now in hand, I ordered a set of Gotoh GB640 Res-o-lite tuners for the bass. The chrome is more traditional to the walnut/maple Fenders of the 70s that is inspiring this build anyway!

I also went ahead and did my shielding now because, as I've learned from some other projects, the tape doesn't stick well to anything oil-finished (and Rubio Monocoat is a type of oil/wax). I gotta say, shielding J pickup cavities with tape is a huge PITA. My other projects have much simpler routs (soapbar shapes) or I was using noiseless pickups and didn't shield them. I'm gonna look into shielding paint for my next project.

 

[J Posega]

Several items came in today, the most exciting being the Rubio Monocoat, but Gotoh tuners, pots, and Wilde J45 pickups also showed up.

Since I don't have a piece of scrap to test on, I threw down some painters tape to mark off areas I know will be hidden (under the pickguard and bridge).

I'd sanded the body down to 220 the other day. RMC states that's the highest they recommend sanding to, which feels just fine to me. They suggest in their literature to sand only to 120 which feels bad, but I'd read a decent amount about this stuff and have seen people get great results at 220.

Anyway, I decided to try a little splotch in the neck pocket and bridge area to see if I even like this color.

I think I made the right choice on color. I need to get some gloves before I do the whole body.

 

[rickwrench]

Clickbait or not - $50 bass.
I think you're on to something here!
Can a legitimate, useful, gigable, bass be built for $50?
•••
Challenge accepted...

Rick (has some experience with "$50 xxx")

 

[TN WOODMAN]

Great pickup choice, you’re gonna be happy with those.

 

[J Posega]

Clickbait or not - $50 bass.
I think you're on to something here!
Can a legitimate, useful, gigable, bass be built for $50?
•••
Challenge accepted...

Rick (has some experience with "$50 xxx")

Would be *quite* a challenge. I just watched a YouTuber build a guitar from parts from Temu. Came out more than $50 but would be interesting to do some sort of “seed part” build like everyone gets the same body and neck and we see how different their end basses are.

Great pickup choice, you’re gonna be happy with those.

I love the PJ set in one of my other Warmoth projects.

This cinnamon brown reminds me of one of my favorite basses I’ve ever owned, a Squier Precision Special 5, the one that had a huge wide neck and 2 J pickups. They sold it as “walnut” color but it was a little more reddish than this Rubio over alder. I’m super happy with this color and the grain on this body. Normally alder is kind of boring to me.

 

[TN WOODMAN]

Would be *quite* a challenge. I just watched a YouTuber build a guitar from parts from Temu. Came out more than $50 but would be interesting to do some sort of “seed part” build like everyone gets the same body and neck and we see how different their end basses are.

I love the PJ set in one of my other Warmoth projects.

This cinnamon brown reminds me of one of my favorite basses I’ve ever owned, a Squier Precision Special 5, the one that had a huge wide neck and 2 J pickups. They sold it as “walnut” color but it was a little more reddish than this Rubio over alder. I’m super happy with this color and the grain on this body. Normally alder is kind of boring to me.

View attachment 5304510

How ironic. I meant to add that I have a Wilde PJ set in my Warmoth unlined fretless.

Agreed on alder & your color choice. Looking to be a great build.

 

[Flamingo21]

Subbed

 

[J Posega]

Got my Tru-Oil yesterday and starting applying. I’ve got 4 coats on right now. After the first 2, I rubbed it down with gray Scotch Brite which flattened it out nicely. Not sure how I’ll proceed, how many coats I’ll do, whether I’ll go for a gloss finish or knock it back to satin. The body is satin, but the hardware and pickguard are glossy. Will have to do some mockups before making any decisions.

this is my first time using Tru-Oil and it really is as easy and forgiving as I’ve read. I applied my first coat by gloved finger but it wasn’t particularly even and I eventually wore a hole in the vinyl glove, so I switched to pieces of a Hario V60 coffee filter. I find it’s easier to control with the paper. Having a cat, I don’t really have any lint free cloth and this way I can drop the oiled paper scraps into a coffee can with water in it on my concrete balcony.

Don’t worry, neck leaves the bathroom when I shower and I give it plenty of time to dehumidify before bringing it back in.

How do you apply TO? Do you wet sand at any point? I’ve seen that some folks sand with progressively higher grit between every 2nd coat or so. I’m probably going to build up quite a few layers on the board itself since there are no frets to protect it and I intend to use either rounds or TI Jazz Flats.

 

[J Posega]

I ended up with about 8 coats of Tru-Oil over the whole neck. After the first 4, I just applied the next 4 even thinner so I didn't need to level it out with the gray Scotch-Brite, but went over the final pass after 48 hours with white Scotch-Brite which took it down to a nice semi-gloss state.

I meant to buy a smaller container but ended up with the 8 oz bottle of Tru-Oil and I've barely used any of it. It's prety incredible stuff for an absolute amateur like me. I'm glad I have a much bigger bottle than I need because it will be indespensible for future projects.

I know it's not as hard wearing as other finishes I could put on a raw maple fingerboard, but it'll be easy to maintain and if I decide to start over, I can easily sand it off and do a CA finish.

The bushings for the Gotoh tuners I bought are ever so slightly too large for the holes in the neck, so I've got to file them out a bit bigger. Similarly, the switch plate is meant for a standard 3 way Tele switch, but I'm using a 4 way which has the tiniest bit more travel at each end so I'll need to file the slot maybe 1/2 millimeter on each end.

Remaining steps:

• Enlarge tuner holes
• Mockup tuners, drill for screws
• Install tuners
• Feed through ground wire, install bridge
• Drill for and install strap buttons
• Install pickups
• Solder electronics
• Install neck
• Mockup pickguard and switch plate, drill for screws
• Install control plate
• Install strings
• Mockup string retainer, drill for screws
• Install string retainer
• Check neck relief and saddle height
• *As needed: adjust neck relief
• Once happy with neck relief, install pickguard because Warmoth doesn't put a notch for their heel-adjust truss rods and I'd rather keep the neck installed than put it on, take it off, make an adjustment, reinstall, ad nauseum (seriously ***. I'm not going to hack into this pickguard but maybe I can make friends with someone in Portland who would route a little notch in it for me sometime down the road)

Pretty sure I'll finish this one up over the upcoming long weekend!

 

[J Posega]

I wanted to see what the bass is starting to look like and found that my Tele switch is too big for the cavity. I'm glad I figured this out now before I started soldering anything. I'll cut out some of the copper tape and just take my Dremel with a sanding drum to it.

 

[J Posega]

Portland got its first snowfall of the season today and it’s my first time living somewhere we get snow in about 5 years, so no better time to setup the bench and finish up this project!

Wiring -

A little trickier than I anticipated since pickup wires had to go into the main control cavity and then into the switch cavity and then have a hot and ground wire come back into the control cavity. Had I thought that through, I would’ve just made a wiring channel on the root of the body since it has a pickguard.

one thing I’m doing when I solder electronics from now on is putting a piece of copper tape on the back of the pots. It’s significantly easier to solder to than just the raw pot casing. Since I’m paranoid, I also put a piece of copper tape on top of my soldering to the back of the volume pot.

To reduce the risk of shorting out, I put some heat shrink on the legs of the jack and lined part of the cavity with electrical tape on top of the copper tape.

The Warmoth pickguard isn’t super tightly routed for the switch plate and I need a way to black out the 1mm’ish reveal. Electrical tape to the rescue because it sticks well enough to the Rubio Monocoat waxy finish.

before installing all the pickguard screws and a pair of knobs.

Skip over installing a ton of screws, strings, the string retainer, and Straplok buttons and…

We’ve got a bass! I had to steal strings off another bass because Amazon deliveries are delayed due to the weather. It plays and sounds great. The Wilde J45 pickups are totally noiseless and the series option with the 4 position switch is excellent. Not sure about these black knobs, but I’ve got some chrome barrels to try on it, too.

 

[Beej]

I guess this was the first giggity bass yet, my mistake. Looks fantastic - I really like the switch plate.

 

[J Posega]

I guess this was the first giggity bass yet, my mistake. Looks fantastic - I really like the switch plate.

I just have to have series/parallel on my two-pickup basses and I couldn't just go without a switch plate - way too much plain, black plastic that way. Some models of Fender Jaguar guitars use the same kind of switch and plate. I didn't want all the switches that come standard on a Jag or Bass VI, so this was the perfect solution. Kind of needs a fancier tip on the switch, though.