Mouri Sunlight

my favourite headache generator has given me what I hope to be a last hurrah of headache, taking out the neck pickup.

the fucking two pieces of spring foam for the neck pickup had become a single, rock-solid piece of moldy ex-foam, with a previous owner's Ontario Social Assistance cheque (i dont actually know the full name, this program has been defunct since the 00s and was replaced with ODSP and Ontario Works) being used to shim up one side of the pickup, presumably to wring the last little bit of springiness out of this foam as it was already not expanding anymore when this would've been put in.

I know there's going to be something painworth under the bridge and the bridge pickup but I'm not replacing the bridge pickup for now and the bridge... I hope there's nothing under there. I Really Hope There's Nothing Concerning Under The Bridge.

repairing my fretless bass, I'd bought this from a friend a while ago who'd bought it from an unknown individual. identified as a Vantage (defunct ~1994?) bass, from a mid-range fretted series marketed as touring instruments that weren't beaters but weren't expensive and stealable. confusion about this neck, obviously made by Vantage themselves for this bass, since this series only came in fretted.

found out why, though. obvious marks of defretting once the strings are off, and the fretboard wasn't fully refinished afterwards, nor coated. I posted a photograph of a spot where it looks like someone tried chewing on it, this is not the worst damage to the fingerboard. fingerboard has heavily dried out, worse near the tuner end, and is bowing only at the far end (even when truss rod at tension). Truss rod confirmed working.

The person who defretted this instrument did a very good job installing the lines and filling the remaining gaps, but forgot to replace the nut with a lower one and reseal the fingerboard, so the tuning has been haphazard at best and it needs a lower nut. Which is convenient, because the original nut came off with the strings and seems to be made of breakium.

Entire fingerboard needs to be rehydrated, refinished, and then coated (it's a rosewood fingerboard that was intended for a fretted bass, this wood is delicate). The neck needs a debanana, though, and that's best performed simultaneously with rehydration of the fingerboard. The fingerboard has a large number of gouges from roundwound strings (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ROUNDS ON UNCOATED ROSEWOOD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA) that need to be filled as well. Edges of the fingerboard are damaged and seem to be collecting human oil.

Neck has a few chunks of wood taken from it in the truss rod area (not in hand's reach), and the upper area of the neck needs to be rehydrated and resealed.

In-depth analysis of other portions of the bass come later. This is not the end of the issues.

On the electronics analysis, the amp's reduced function isn't actually related to the capacitors. I already only planned to play the bass repaired with this same amp for a couple weeks, for the novelty, so the capacitor fuckery isn't going to be an issue in that time. It's all just the loose solder balls and copper frays, and uncovered wires, plus the incorrectly-done bypass switch. I'll just need to desolder the output jack to clean the thing out, and undo the bypass mod, to get that back into order. In a couple months, new amp goes in, likely one of my own designs.

Hardware analysis is... bleaker than I'd hoped, but only for the tuners. All of their brass gears are chewed to hell so the tuner head wobbles as it rotates when under tension, which makes the tuning far less stable and also accelerates damage to all of the hardware. They also are missing a small plastic bushing that helps with the alignment, except one of them. I'm just going to try to get new tuners soonish.

The bridge, on the other hand, I literally just need to derust it. Not even a lot of derusting, too! It might benefit from new screws and springs, though, so I might try to get it some of those. The only portions of the bridge rusting at all are a couple of small spots where the protective paint was removed by friction, and the bridge height screws. All surface rust, and there's no other rust on it. Pretty good.

Neck repair event below the "read more", CW for hypothermia.

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ok so the neck wasn't actually banana'd very far and I was keeping it in debanana, since the fingerboard wasn't straight, and I just measured the fingerboard thicknesses on a whim. this... fuckin guy... who defretted this thing tried replaning it and put a slight divot in the upper end of the fingerboard. the neck is done debananaing and is keeping itself at-attention, and the fingerboard just has a CUUUUUUURVE to it

yea, tho, I can resurface this actually-flat. I'm starting the coating process in about 30 minutes to an hour from now, I just need to get my ""desk heater"" (aka computer with some heavy software running) going. That's gonna take a bit.

repairing my fretless bass, I'd bought this from a friend a while ago who'd bought it from an unknown individual. identified as a Vantage (defunct ~1994?) bass, from a mid-range fretted series marketed as touring instruments that weren't beaters but weren't expensive and stealable. confusion about this neck, obviously made by Vantage themselves for this bass, since this series only came in fretted.

found out why, though. obvious marks of defretting once the strings are off, and the fretboard wasn't fully refinished afterwards, nor coated. I posted a photograph of a spot where it looks like someone tried chewing on it, this is not the worst damage to the fingerboard. fingerboard has heavily dried out, worse near the tuner end, and is bowing only at the far end (even when truss rod at tension). Truss rod confirmed working.

The person who defretted this instrument did a very good job installing the lines and filling the remaining gaps, but forgot to replace the nut with a lower one and reseal the fingerboard, so the tuning has been haphazard at best and it needs a lower nut. Which is convenient, because the original nut came off with the strings and seems to be made of breakium.

Entire fingerboard needs to be rehydrated, refinished, and then coated (it's a rosewood fingerboard that was intended for a fretted bass, this wood is delicate). The neck needs a debanana, though, and that's best performed simultaneously with rehydration of the fingerboard. The fingerboard has a large number of gouges from roundwound strings (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ROUNDS ON UNCOATED ROSEWOOD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA) that need to be filled as well. Edges of the fingerboard are damaged and seem to be collecting human oil.

Neck has a few chunks of wood taken from it in the truss rod area (not in hand's reach), and the upper area of the neck needs to be rehydrated and resealed.

In-depth analysis of other portions of the bass come later. This is not the end of the issues.

On the electronics analysis, the amp's reduced function isn't actually related to the capacitors. I already only planned to play the bass repaired with this same amp for a couple weeks, for the novelty, so the capacitor fuckery isn't going to be an issue in that time. It's all just the loose solder balls and copper frays, and uncovered wires, plus the incorrectly-done bypass switch. I'll just need to desolder the output jack to clean the thing out, and undo the bypass mod, to get that back into order. In a couple months, new amp goes in, likely one of my own designs.

Hardware analysis is... bleaker than I'd hoped, but only for the tuners. All of their brass gears are chewed to hell so the tuner head wobbles as it rotates when under tension, which makes the tuning far less stable and also accelerates damage to all of the hardware. They also are missing a small plastic bushing that helps with the alignment, except one of them. I'm just going to try to get new tuners soonish.

The bridge, on the other hand, I literally just need to derust it. Not even a lot of derusting, too! It might benefit from new screws and springs, though, so I might try to get it some of those. The only portions of the bridge rusting at all are a couple of small spots where the protective paint was removed by friction, and the bridge height screws. All surface rust, and there's no other rust on it. Pretty good.

Neck repair event below the "read more", CW for hypothermia.