Telecaster Bass (WRHB for bass?!): Starting a project.

[kalipigeon]

The Squier reissue is quite a nice bass, and has a great neck.  Its the same neck on their Mike Dirnt signature bass, only with a maple board, and its one of the best profiled P-Bass necks I've ever played.  If you end up hating the tone, you can always drop in a Darkstar pickup and not feel too bad about modding it.

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I *must* have one of these someday...YUMM

Shit, that's rad.

[hieronymous]

I picked up an early/mid-'70s Telecaster Bass back in the mid-'90s for $250 - my friend had modded it first to look like an early P-Bass with the single-coil (failed miserably) and then with a regular split-coil P-pup - and gave away the original humbucker - idiot! I found a NOS humbucker and had it installed. Said friend had also put a Badass II bridge on it and refinished it black.

The humbucker works great with flats - with a powerful amp you can get a full, deep sound. In my opinion, mud happens when you try and get these kinds of pickups to do something they weren't designed to do.

For some reason, as much as I loved the bass, I never played it much. But I finally found a set of Alembic Activators and had them put in the bass, and had it refinished - now it's one of my favorites!

Here it is:

[hobb_masta_flex]

So, I ended up getting one of those Squire re-hashes. I had heard enough mostly positive feedback about them, and the price wasn't bad at all! I paid cash, actually, at my local music store. How many times can you actually do that with a guitar? Anyhow, it's an alright bass overall. The only thing that really bothers me about the bass is it's neck. It's uneven, warps within hours of correcting the truss rod, and I'm not digging it's finish. Oh, and the tuners hardly stayed in tune, so I put on some american standard-ish tuners I had lying around, but that's all I've done so far. Wait, no, I lied... I picked up a MUCH better 4 saddled through-body bridge to replace the crappy old style 2 saddle bridge. So, for now, it's a fun kick-around bass. Right now I'm scoping a full scale bullet-bass neck on the 'Bay; so if I get that, and then start a refinishing and new pots project, I'm sure it will be a lovely bass to have in my arsenal for whenever I need a sound other than a Jazz Bass, you know? I'll post some pictures when the project comes along.