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Yet another mikro (gsrm20) bass mod post from a beginner.

I've had this bass just sitting in the corner of my room, because it has a fun little habit of the strings buzzing after a bit (i assume the bridge has a habit of lowering itself? or the neck is being funny.) This is gonna be a project bass so if I cork it im not too invested in it. Im planning on doing it all, tuning pegs/machine heads, pots, bridge, pickups... the list goes on. Any advice be that parts, process, etc... would be greatly appreciated.
 
I guess good points to start would be:
1. which tuning pegs would y'all recommend, hipshot ones look good but im not sure if they'd fit.
2. Should I leave the tone knobs alone? I'm not a huge fan of them cosmetically but unsure if its a good use of money to replace them.
3. Should I swap both pickups? Just one? If so which?
4. THE BRIDGE GOTTA GO (good alternative?).
 
Before you start shelling out money for nice parts you should verify your bulding upon a solid foundation. You can change out everything you've listed and find your bass is still buzzing with minimal tone and playibility improvement. You should use this as an opportunity to teach yourself the fundamentals of fret leveling & crowning, nut carving and general setup. Invest in proper tools and commit to absorbing as much knowledge on the subjecy as possible beforehand, in the end you might not end up needing any new parts if you take care of those very important fundamentals first.
 
I self admittedly destroyed two perfectly playable instruments during my learning process but never having to deal with a pretentious "professional" luthier again made that loss well worth it. Many will not even take you seriously and will sucker your out of money for horribly substandard work if you not a Buck Owens superfan with a Fender around these parts, so I apologize in advanced to all the commercial luthiers out there, but acquiring the knowledge and hands on experience working on your own instrument pays off in multiple ways.
 
Before you start shelling out money for nice parts you should verify your bulding upon a solid foundation. You can change out everything you've listed and find your bass is still buzzing with minimal tone and playibility improvement. You should use this as an opportunity to teach yourself the fundamentals of fret leveling & crowning, nut carving and general setup. Invest in proper tools and commit to absorbing as much knowledge on the subjecy as possible beforehand, in the end you might not end up needing any new parts if you take care of those very important fundamentals first.
Yeah this is meant as a learning experience, I've got a couple more basses and im 95% sure the issue with this is the bridge. I'll raise the bridge and measure it the strings don't buzz everything is fine, a month goes by the bridge is lower and the first 1 or 2 frets buzz / make no noise. Oh and I already do the setup on my basses, I'm not scared of an allan key haha. I've done soldering with other electronics before and I figured I could use this bass to learn that.
 

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