Frankenstein's Bass! Part One

Hot damn! A post with a work actually in progress.

This is a Peavey Patriot bass or the clean picked carcass of one. I haven't looked up the serial number over at the Peavey forum to tell where it was build and when, but... does it matter? When I got this poor girl she had been thoroughly cleaned of all hardware except three old tuning machines and the frets which look pretty flattened to my untrained eye. No bridge, nut, string tree, truss rod cover, pick guard, electronics, strap buttons, screws, neck joint plate, even the microtilt (I believe is the name) "coin" (if you have ever broken one of these older Peaveys down then you'll know what I'm talking about). Correct me, please. All this was done to refinish the body, I gather.
Okay, so we have some potential here. Being the Peavey fan I am, I may be giving it more credit than its due, but I like the body shape and I had the parts from another project and the mysterious fourth bass I own, but haven't posted about yet due to it general unplayability.

There she is, my firs bass, a 1985 Peavey T-40. Kept in a closet like a bad child for many years with string tension ruined the curvature of her neck beyond my ability or pocketbook to fix. If you look closely, you might be able to see the second defret job I have ever done. Its pretty nice and would play well minus the wicked s-curve. Oh well, she may just be destined for her own resurrection some time in the future, but for now she is an organ donor.

Side by side. I wished I had a pair of old wooden rack looking tables, kinda Frankenstein's monster fantasy. I'll refrain from any declarations of living. Maybe. The bridge I used is a cheap jazz style thing that isn't much different fron the original bridge it came with. The tuning machines, string tree, nut, strings and neck plate were transferred over and tuned up. It's very important you don't take the action you get immediately to be the action you are going to end up with tomorrow. The wood needs time to adjust naturally. At this point, I have decided it to be worth the time and effort to tinker with luckily.
Here's a picture of what I assumed it originally resembled before its gutting.

Well, except mine was obviously black. I have a lot of ideas for the job, but have run low on the necessary parts for its fruition. More to come.

Refoaming Subwoofers

From another's ignorance comes my new toys!
First, a little story. Back around Christmas, I was helping my cousin haul some trash to the dump when we happened upon a subwoofer cabinet someone had just thrown away. Now, to be sure, the six 12" (six 12 inch subs! in a vehicle?) subs appeared to be done for, especially when we go there. One had been removed and the other five had thorough foam deterioration. few surround materials short of butyl rubber can withstand the intense humidity and heat of the oppressive southern climate. I just mentioned humidity? Yeah, it had also been raining for about an hour by the time I found them, so all the cones were holding water like dog bowls!
Well, anyone who knows me knows I've a reputation as a dumpster diver, so it comes as no surprise that I fished the massive cabinet, which was worthless due to size and water damage, out of the bin and brought i home. I let the speakers dry for about a week while I found a generic refoam kit from Parts Express.


Yup, it really comes in a pizza box, medium I think. They are reasonably priced for what you get: glue, applicators, voice coil shims, dust caps and four foam surrounds of two different sizes. These surrounds are supposed to fit different cone and basket designs, so I assume they intended for you to choose one or the other, but I had five woofers and refused to spend anymore then the $25 I already had so I made the other pair work. I did this by inverting the surround. That's it and it worked like a charm. Actually, I kinda like the look of the inverted surrounds a little better.
The instructions are simple and easy to use. Remove the old foam from the cone and under the gasket (which you should be careful not to damage, though I really don't know what purpose it serves. No one rear mounts speakers much these days and if I did, I would most certainly not trust those type gaskets to seal completely. I used some rubbing alcohol to get the last of the old glue off. I then took a razor blade and carefully pried out the old dust cap. Easy enough. The shims they give you are just little pieces of plastic to be wedged between the voice coil and magnet. These make sure you retain an even spacing in your magnet gap so your new surround doesn't make the cone rub. Then apply the glue and let it set. I wished I had pictures of the process. Perhaps in the future, but for now you'll have to take my word for it all.
The surround takes a little persistence to get to stay in place, but isn't hard. We then let it dry over night before removing the shims and replacing the dust cap. Repeat three times. I ended up throwing the fifth woofer away as I didn't have anymore surrounds for it ad the woofer I feel I did the best job of repairing...ended up being the likely culprit that got him and his whole family tossed in that dumpster. The woofer rattled around something fierce when connected to a amp and frequency generator. Whether this was an already present defect or a mistake made by me, I can't say.

Next post should be on the eventual home of these woofers. Maybe not. I like surprises.

Practice Amp Revival

This is the Johnson Reptone 15, a combo amp with a vented 6.5" speaker for guitar practice. It's an inexpensive little number that actually looks pretty nice if you dig green. It has a jack for headphones and one for a distortion switch, which I thought was pretty nifty. Those knobs are for gain, master volume, and three equalizer adjustments.
I found one at my local gear shop for $20 used. Apparently the previous owner had stepped on their cord and snapped the plastic input jack. They even tried to glue it back together with less than stellar results. So, I snatched it up and decided to fix it up for my ladyfriend who was interested in learning the electric guitar. A new metal jack from Rat Shack was all I was going to need to get her going again, but, as the fates would have it, such was not the eventual outcome of a simple repair job.

I opened her up and found a pretty basic single transistor circuit with switchable diode distortion. I have to confess here that my knowledge of electronics is less than adequate to describe much else about the amplifier component. I can solder and use a multimeter, but beyond that and I'm mostly in the dark, unfortunately. But, in this case, it wasn't my ignorance that screwed me. No, it was impatience, naturally. In removing the PCB from the faceplate, I somehow managed to rip out two pot shafts. Yes, after doing it once and realizing my mistake, I did it again. You may point and laugh as you like.

Anyway, the pots were tiny surface mount things that took me quite a while to find on the internet. I did manage to track them down for cheap and bought many different values for fated future fuck ups. In the interim, I decided that the tiny green cabinet with the tiny 6.5" speaker just wasn't what I was going for in terms of a present, and what rockstar worth his blood alcohol level plays 6.5"s anyway? I happened to have a cheap 12" hifi speaker that would have been destined only for the garbage if it weren't for its owner's ridiculous sense of experimentation so I built a whole new cabinet.
If you can't guess, that's her favorite band. Or at least it was at the time.The grill is a t-shirt stretched across a simple window brace. Yeah, that damn shirt was the most expensive piece of the project and I could have saved the expense had I not attempted secrecy with it. Apparently, she had an old shirt I could have used. Oh well, whatever.

The real bitch was trying to get the faceplate to mount to the wooden frame. I don't have an inside shot to show the mess I made getting it to mount at the correct angle. I will summarize the process: it was a major bitch and you can see the boo boo I made doing it on the lower right. But, good glue fixes everything. Except plastic 1/4" jacks.

The back is removable and I reused all the black plastic hardware cause I had it and it was paid for as was the black rat fur, which didn't come out as nice as I wanted, but it does the job. As does the woofer. I know," you never use a hifi speaker in place of a PA speaker", but in this low wattage application it keeps up just fine. The way I figured it, sure, the 12" cone requires more power than the 6.5", but should have a higher sensitivity to help make up for the lack of amplifier juice. If it craps out, it's no real loss. Actually, the 6.5" in its vented cab sounded okay, but I had the 12" and a bug up my ass to use it so there it is.

This is another one of those rare projects that ended with me pleasantly surprised with its performance the first time. Shit, maybe I'm beginning to learn something.The 12" naturally has a deeper tone that helps seems to help smooth a little of that bright nasty diode distortion.
Overall, not bad. And her cat hasn't scratched it to fuzz and splinters yet. In the future, if the bug returns, I may make a switch box for it. Maybe in the near future I'll have audio of it. Maybe not. We will see.

Stagg Acoustic Bass

Right here, we have a Stagg acoustic bass with cutaway, active piezo electronics, and short scale length (30"). I bought her for more than I should have considering what I quickly came to feel about playing her. I was working three weeks on, one week off out of town for a while and needed a light weight and easily portable instrument for practice. I thought, I'll get an acoustic! Its self contained, doesn't get loud enough to bother the renters next door in those paper thin walled excuses for hotels, and will be a different experience musically for me as I had never really sat down with one before. Well, its hard to find any ABGs in music stores, much less two different ones to choose from. I needed my fix and made a hasty impulse buy on what I felt to be a comfortable, thumpy, pretty instrument.
A month later, it collected dust. The neck was chunky, the action was high, the tuning machines sucked, and the under saddle piezo caught more noise than notes. She sat unloved for nearly a year...

I thought I would sell her, but what was the point? Give her misery to another gullible fiend? Besides, she was so pretty and had some good thump and the short scale was a nice change...
So, I decided to take a chance and do my first bass mod. That is, jerk her frets out. Her scale is short, so the fingers have less travel between notes, therefor less stretching for notes and more precision (theoretically). I had only in passing played fretless, but it intrigued me. Enough! I got to work.

I was too rough on her and probably should have heated the fret wire before I yanked them out, but whatever. Filled the slots with wood filler, finished and slapped some flatwounds on her. I'll be damned if it wasn't a new life for her! By removing the tall frets, the truss rod was able to straighten out the neck to a very comfortable action all the way up the board. I removed the piezo from the bridge to help drop the action and sanded a little off the saddle and nut.


Played so sweet, though quietly for the longest time without a pickup until I did some more research. Apparently, the piezoelectric element found in smoke alarms and other similar devices that buzz really fuckin' loud and the piezoelectric element found in acoustic instruments is the same damned thing. I went to Radio Shack and bought a $2 piezo buzzer, 108 db I think, and removed the element. Look! A pickup! I was going to experiment with placing it in different areas to affect tone, but all that ended up happening in the installation was attatching a 1/4" piece of foam to the back and gluing that under the bridge in the body. I don't even remember what side of the bridge was favored. One of the few moments in my life I was pleased with something immediately! I knew I'd better not touch it again or my curse would surely catch up to me.

Fretless is a different animal. It requires really listening to yourself to properly intonate the notes. I feel the short scale really helps with this, though I think a long scale wouldn't be much more difficult to play with practice. Your fingers also mute the strings much more than frets do, so this girl is practice only unless amplified for sure. I don't care; she's fun to play and sounds nice with some D'Addario Chromes on her.

I'm still not crazy about the tuning machines, though. They slip which makes tuning more of a chore than it should be and they are stiff to boot. That's cool, though. I haven't replaced tuners before so that will be a nice project to look forward to. For now, I'm pleased with her.

Peavey Cirrus

This is my baby, a Peavey Cirrus 4 banger. Oh yeah, shes too good for me, but I found her on sale for $900... I know... financial fail.
But she's so sexy! Claro walnut top, walnut maple through neck thin as a razor's edge, the lowest action I have ever encountered in my life as a guitar shop dreamer, gold blingin bridge and tuning machines...Goddamn, I need cold shower!
Seriously though, she's beautiful in form and function. The steel Peavey strings she came with were enough to make me fall in love, but Dean Markely's Blue Steel complements her perfectly to my ear. Got to find those expensive bastards on sale, but they so worth it. I have been experimenting with tap since its almost as if they took that playing style into consideration when they made her. If I can do it and not get frustrated within minutes (like with picks, damned things) then you know its set up preternaturally well.
This is an early model, without the mid sweep pot found on later models. Never got the chance to play with one of those so I don't know what I'm missin' and that's just fine by me and my wallet. Also, mine has a natural headstock finish while later ones have this weird graphite weave stuff I don't care for. The tone is strong and...complex, I think is the right word. This may just be the way active electronics sound, but its gorgeous to me, full and tight and dead silent when it should be.

I've not modded this lady...yet, though I don't know what I would do if I was. Perhaps a mid sweep pot. I don't know if that requires a new preamp or what. Regardless, I'm happy with her the way she is. The next post will have some modwork, I promise.

Peavey BXP Millenium Passive (Modded)

First off, I am no photographer nor do i have a decent camera. Actually, I have to borrow cameras, so not only do my photos suffer from poor operator control, their quality is also inconsistent. Deal with it.

These are my girls. While, not the only instruments in my collection, these are my go to axes. I have been playing electric bass for many years now, but don't have much talent to show for it (like most aspects of my life).
Anyway, on the left we have a Peavey BXP Millenium (my bitch) made in Vietnam, I think. The BXP stands for Bass eXPort, which means poor little Asian toddlers in a sweat shop probably put this together. I don't wish that kind of treatment on any child, but I got to hand it to the lil' guys, they make a mean axe! If you can't tell, it's a quilt top veneer on a basswood body with a black dyed finish. I paid $240 for it new from Sweetwater, which is a fair price. If you have ever played one you'd think it was easily twice that Well, except for the basswood construction which weighs almost nothing and kinda sets off your "light is cheap and weak" alarm. But the whole reason I bought it was to be abused so I don't care. It holds tune fantastically, even bitch slappin the hell out of it for a good hour and it usually keeps right up. It's a J Bass style instrument so its neck is super thin and the action can be set really low.
The electronics have received an upgrade since this picture was last taken, but it pretty much looks the same now. The original single coils it came with were fine and all, but probably the weakest feature overall. They have since been replaced with a set of DiMarzio UltraJazz pickups which were a present. Fuckin' Awesome present! An electric string instrument gets the majority of it's sound characteristics from the strings, amplification, and the player. tonewood be damned! I hear a little difference between solid maple necks and rosewood/ebony fret boards, but beyond that any quality the body wood species lends to the final sound is so subjective (or minimal) I don't really take it any further into an evaluation past sex appeal. Hell, body shape plays a bigger factor to my tastes. Whatever, back to the subject.
So, the current modifications are the new pickups and a push/pull pot to switch between series and parallel pickup wiring. The schematic and detailed step by step instructions are available all over the nets, try searching "series/parallel jazz bass mod". At first, I didn't think the sound was changed very much, but I found myself having trouble dialing in a decent sound. In hindsight, I believe I was trying to find the old tone I had been used to instead of finding a new tone because now its a beast. The parallel configuration, which is a J Bass characteristic, is nice and snarly, like a good J tone should be. But switch to series and the syrup flows. Thick. She makes me so proud...
However (terrible word, isn't it?), there are some drawbacks to her. A company like Peavey can design an excellent instrument and have it built overseas in mass quantity for much less money than in the States, but sacrificing quality control. And this came up, but it was nothing big. A faulty soldering job caused the bridge pickup to go out eventually and the bridge ground wasn't up to my standards, though it did the job. I fixed these easily, but others without soldering or rudimentary electrical knowledge may get pretty pissed off at this.
I like testing new strings on this girl, like new positions, ya know? Right now I have some Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinks and they aren't bad. DRs Fat Beams are still the current favorite, though.
Ernie Balls (huh huh...yup, that's what I call comedy) always sound like big guitar strings to me. I know, that's what they are, but lots of other companies get some pretty unique tones that I could never compare with guitar strings. Then again, I don't play guitar; I keep one isolated in its cell for times when I need to remind myself I suck. Thankfully, that's not often. I would Like to mod it though. Another day....

So that's mah bitch. Of them all, she gets the most lovin' and 'tention, mainly because she was bought for abuse. Peavey makes an active version for a little more, but I haven't heard one to know much about it. If you ever find yourself in possession of one of these gems I highly recommend you have its guts checked and install the series/parallel toggle, its awesome. The DiMarzios are fuckin' incredible, too.

Next posts will cover the rest of the harem.

Blog Cherry..........Popped!

Hey! This is Pathetic Tinkering, a tribute to my pointless tinkering and proof I need to get out more.