Bass “partscaster” finished

This weekend I finished work on the bass for my son. It is a white acrylic paint finish, with a red vinyl decal for the “Rising Sun” motif that he had wanted.

I had considered masking up and painting the red on top of the white but decided to try the vinyl because, should he ever want to return it to plain white it is very easy to do – just warm it up, peel it off and give it a wipe down with naphtha.

As an added bonus I’ve got plenty of the red vinyl left over so if he ever wants to go for a different design (racing stripes, flames, skull and crossbones or anything else that takes a young man’s fancy) it’ll be relatively easy to achieve.

And here’s a quick clip of it in action:

The full spec is:

• Fender Jazz bass shaped alder body;
• Generic maple neck with rosewood fretboard, headstock reshaped to mimic the 1951 Fender Precision bass. 34″ scale. It came complete with pre-installed nut and open back tulip tuners;
• Set/glued neck with the heel carved to improve upper fret access;
• Heavy Kahler-style chrome top-loader brass bridge with lock down saddles. It can be used as a string-thru bridge but we went for the easier configuration;
• Pre-assembed Jazz bass control plate with chrome knurled knobs. Neck pickup volume, bridge pickup volume, master tone;
• Generic jazz bass pickups;

  All parts were sourced from eBay. With the exception of the body and neck, from Papa D’s eBay store. Total cost £129 (which also included an unused pickguard and two spare sets of strings).