What’s your #1 mod regret?

[Yellow Bang66]

I bet somebody regretted this

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Hah! reminds me of a dremel job I did on a brand new Warmoth neck! Think Steve Martin's Jerk buffing a car! Yeah it got away from me, a"little" ( bad= Ultra high speed drills) not nearly as bad as this, but bad.

 

[BarfanyShart]

Weirdly, I regret that for decades I had a pathological aversion to any sort of customization. I had a bass, occasionally changed strings or adjusted setup, took it to a guy if something broke. That's it. Nothing wrong with that, but it strikes me that I've played my entire life and was never remotely interested in what was going on under the hood until very recently.

 

[aprod]

Routing a battery compartment in my '72 Jazz bass. I brag about it to my tech and he tells me the battery would have fit under the tone pots. There goes the value but I will never sell that bass anyway.

 

[DJ Bebop]

If it’s any condolence, that is possibly my favorite modded vintage bass I’ve seen around here. It really epitomizes the fact that vintage fenders weren’t always something special, they used to just be old basses.

 

[dkelley]

Using a chisel and hammer to move the bridge posts on an SG guitar to compensate for the incorrect scale length neck I bolted onto it.

Using a chisel and hammer to make room in a guitar to add a Fernandes sustainer.

I no longer use a chisel and hammer on my instruments.... I'm feeling much better now.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

I put active EMG's into a P Bass that had been previously modded to a PJ. The bass actually sounded good both before and after, so no horror there...

The nightmare part was me not having the tools, skills, parts to rout a battery box into the body. So I stupidly put the battery in an existing cavity under the pickguard. The particular set of EMG's ran through 9V's far faster than any modern active instrument I've known.

Every time I needed to change the battery I had to loosen the strings and completely remove the pickguard. In time all this motion caused random wire breaks, stripped screw holes, lost screws... It totally sucked!

 

[funkmaster p]

Here’s the result of a mistake I made about 36 years ago. It was an ESP P bass that I had modded into a 5 string. The luthier really should have tried to talk me out of it. It was slim at the nut to begin with, and after the 5 string treatment, it became unplayable (by me, anyway).

 

[satjhmo]

Weirdly, I regret that for decades I had a pathological aversion to any sort of customization. I had a bass, occasionally changed strings or adjusted setup, took it to a guy if something broke. That's it. Nothing wrong with that, but it strikes me that I've played my entire life and was never remotely interested in what was going on under the hood until very recently.

I suspect that's quite a healthy approach

Learning about different pickups and bridges didn't spur me to start spending money. Even when I had a dodgy volume pot replaced a few years back, the guitar tech told me the stock pickups were in fine condition with a VERY healthy output and there was little point in changing them - it would make no discernible difference to the sound on stage.

My only regret is fitting a new OE pickguard to replace the original one which was crazed around the jack socket, some time in the 1990s. I swapped it out before it got any worse. The new one had no holes for the thumb rest, which I could have easily drilled out to put the thumb rest back (not that I used it). I didn't bother, and the thumb rest is lost in time now.

 

[lermgalieu]

Not a horror story, but I put a complicated Nordstrand preamp into my Stingray and took it back out after a few months. It was too complicated for what it gave me, which was more EQ and a passive toggle. If I want a passive bass, I have 5 of them.

 

[fhm555]

Team Associated RC8 if memory serves

 

[Sixgunn]

All of em. I've yet to make a mod to an existing bass and come out better off than I was before.

The worst ones are always pickup replacements which do no good for the highest cost at a rate of 100%. A perfectly good set of pickups comes out, another perfectly good set of pickups goes in, I have a spare set of perfectly good used pickups that I can't sell, I'm out the cost of the new pickups and the bass sounds the same.

Gotta disagree with you on this one. I was ready to sell my beautiful, awesome playing Warrior because it just sounded dull and lifeless. I have a Prometeus bass with single coils that sounds fantastic so I figured I'd try some in my Warrior. I got some Nordstrand Big Blades, took out the Bart humbuckers, installed them and voila!! Fantastic, new bass! Now it's one of my two favorites.

 

[JimmyM]

send me the neck and I'll fix it, then you can play like crap on a decent neck.

A very kind offer, but I'm just not very interested in doing it. Thanks though!

 

[satjhmo]

If it’s any condolence, that is possibly my favorite modded vintage bass I’ve seen around here. It really epitomizes the fact that vintage fenders weren’t always something special, they used to just be old basses.

But they never were - as in many situations, it's a projection. Like old Strats, Fender designed them to suit a purpose and seems to have put them together well enough that they'd last many years. If an "old bass" is the same as a "new bass" except for the date of manufacture, I think that's a job well done.

Of course, for today's music you may not choose what is effectively a 1951 (well maybe 1957) instrument, but there are plenty of situations where it still works, rather like a blues turnaround.

 

[james condino]

In 1983 I helped a friend put a Floyd Rose in an original 1959 Les Paul.....

He paid good money for it- traded a 1962 sg style Les Paul plus a 1964 strat + $1100; you couldn't get a guitar gig without big hair & a FR back then...

 

[Scarysharkface]

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That was his old P bass and he lamented that cutting the body down ruined it.

John

 

[chadds]

You mean what do I regret saying to get kicked off here by a Mod?

 

[Sixgunn]

In 1983 I helped a friend put a Floyd Rose in an original 1959 Les Paul.....

He paid good money for it- traded a 1962 sg style Les Paul plus a 1964 strat + $1100; you couldn't get a guitar gig without big hair & a FR back then...

That's definitely the biggest tragedy I've heard in a LONG time!

 

[john_g]

I dont have any major disasters, but the biggest regret was trying to strip a Fender PJ bass down to the wood and stain it. I figured if the grain was nice, it would work. Took off the paint which went well and the grain was good. I tested a few spots with stain but it was all blotchy. Sanded down several times but couldnt get it to work. Im guessing it was grain filler I couldnt get out. Then decided to paint it another color and it didnt go well. Got really frustrated and left it as a cheap practice bass. Shouldve just scruffed up the existing finish and spray painted it but oh well.

Most of other times I had modded basses, it hasnt lived up to my expectations. New pickups, preamps, etc just never made a huge positive impact.

 

[Deleted member 365158]

This thread is making me have second thoughts about ripping out the "bass boost" in my GSR200 and routing out the J-slot for a humbucker........

I re routed the j slot for a humbucker on my sr300, if you make a template and practice a couple times on scraps, its easy work... with a decent router and bits of course.

 

[Axtman]

I amateurishly refinished a 1976 Fender Precision bass. The clear coating had cracked when I left the bass in the trunk of my car on a cold winter day. I should have left the cracks in the finish.