Route 66

The body is now routed out for the extra pickup, and controls!!!!

Now this is a pretty easy job with the right tools... Exactly. The right tools being a router, which would polish it of in a couple of minutes. Instead I tackled it with a hand held powerdrill, and a screwdriver to dig out the scraps. I justify this to myself (apart form the fact I don't own a router) that Billy probably did the original in similar fashion - there's a note on his website about how he had to hoover the bits up from his Mum's front room carpet. Actually hoovering as you go along really does help, as you need to clear out the mess to see what you're doing.

Anyway, I tackled it in a couple of sessions, drilling out the corners first, then some bigger holes, and then bashing at what was left with a screwdriver. It worked OK, but did leave the hole looking like the surface of the moon - quite cool actually. However in a final conscession to using the right tools, I bought a nice new, and VERY sharp chisel, which did a great job of tidying it all up, squaring off the edges, smoothing the bottom of the whole, and then enlarging the whole thing slighly to fit the pickup in.

I actually amazed myself - I'm not the greatest craftsman and had pretty well resigned myself to some parts of the job being a bit rough (that is after all why fender invented pickguards!), but the final pickup route really looks good. It's totally clean, smooth and more or less square. It looks a pretty proffesional job!

Of course the control cavity also needs to be extended to contain an extra jack socket, and an extra pot. Basically the existing three sockets are used up by the P Volume, and the sockets, so we need to add new routing to fit the volume and tone pots for the EB pickup. I've made a paper pickguard template, and marked the control positions on it, so I just drilled through that, and enlarged the cavity from there. As there is not exact size or shape it needs to be, the end result is a little more messy than the pickup route, but should do the job (and it is covered up), so we're all good to go.

Next job is (I think) to oil the body. I eventually decided to try some Danish Oil (mainly Tung) to bring out the grain of the body, and make it look more woodlike. There's still some patches of the old finsh, so it might come out blotchey but I can always sand those out and re-apply if it oesn't work first time. We're not going for a perfect result. I'll probably need to put a thin layer of laquer over the top for the stickers, but I think I've got some acrylic spray somewhere, so I'll just give it a quick coat of that to seal it before I do the waterslides (I think)...

Thunderbirds are Go...

Everything is here. The EB pickup arrived yesterday, and looks great - all big, shiny and Gibson-ish. We're all ready to go!

Things are busy at the momment, but I managed to at least do something, so we're officially started. I traced the pickguard onto cardboard, and marked out the cuts that will need to be made for the front pickup, and the extra holes for the controls. I figured it was easist/best to make them on the template. Then I'll be able to transfer it to the scratchplate once it's all checked and tested.

Once the SP template was done, I transfered the pickup cutout to the bass, and checked it against the neck, so that it's all in the right position. The bass is now marked up with all the routing it needs to take the extra hardware.

I've also spend some time thinking about how to finish everything. I need to use some kind of varnish/laquer to protect/attatch the waterslide transfers, so I was considering doing a full nitro finish, but figured that it was a bit overkill - after all the original hasn't any finish. I also wasn't sure it could cover the cuts on the headstock reshape.

The current plan is to use some kind of oil finish (tung?), with a light overspray of acrylic laquer (matte or satin) where it needs it for the logos.

More bits...

I can't help it. The pickguard, and bridge cover arrived today, so I just had to lay them all out and see what it looked like so far... Pretty classy actually (or at least it would be without the skull sticker on there!). The perloid and the bridge cover look awesome. I even tried the bridge cover on my old P-bass and it looked AWESOME - I may have to get one for it. As far as anyone can remember they're just cosmetic, but they do look sweet.

The pickguard isn't a great match to the body - it's a little small in places, and barely covers the control cavity, but with a little wrangling it should all be ok. I didn't expect the scratchplate to be one of the parts that cause problems, but it's one of the simplest bits to bodge. All the important parts go together smoothly.

The pickups are from an old Warlock - I upgraded it do 1/4 pounders, but they should be ok in combination with the Mudbucker. I've still got a complete loaded body turning up at some point, so I could use the pickups from that, or maybe I'll leave that as it is - I thought I'd strip the second body for parts, but there are only a few bits I can use, so it's probably easier to leave it in one piece.

The PostMan Cometh...

It's been about a week since I started ordering stuff, and it seemed like nothing was happening. Finally a whole load of stuff arrived today, and it looks great.

First to arrive was the neck and associated trimmings - which is pretty neat, as they were one of the last bits ordered. Thumbs up to CHGUITARS ebay store. The neck seems really nice, and the "slight marks" which meant I got it cheap are trivial. I'll probably do worse damage the first time I take it to a gig - if it survives that long. They were also good enough to contact me and adjust the order to make sure it all fits together. I got the neck, machine heads, and nut from there and it all works together nicely.

Next to turn up was the body. I got this for less than I had to pay for shipping. It's an old Squier, which unfortunatly means it's ply, but other than that it seems pretty nice. I guess someone decided to sand down a red body, and then discovered it wasn't solid wood. I'm OK with this - it looks just rough enough to pass for a bass that's taken a beating. The ply is only visible at the edges, and from the front it looks great. I might add some darker stain round the edges to hide the layers. It fit's the neck nicely, so we're all good.

Other bits to turn up include some electrical components and a couple of string trees.

But wait... there's a "you were out" card! Actually I was out back in the studio teaching a bass lesson (lots of chromatic scales are sorting out Mike's left hand nicely...), and missed them. A trip to the post office later, and I've got the Hipshot D-Tuner. This is a big item. It was one of the most expensive items on the shopping list - I was lucky enough to get one half price, or it would have been by far the most expensive part. It's also a component that comes in a bewildering range of almost identical versions. The one I found for a good price was the BT-2 "for Fender basses", which I hoped was the right one, but what if I got it wrong?

Turns out the hipshot is a serious piece of machinery, and is a perfect fit to the machine head bushing that came with the tuners I bought. It's all going very smoothly so far.

So everything fits together, most of the main parts are here. Soon we'll be ready to start assembly. The first job is to reshape the headstock to be more Tele like - that's a pretty scary place to start, but it's really just some cutting and sanding... Maybe I'll find time to do that at the weekend.

Stickers

Billy's bass has a number of distinctive stickers on it. Reproducing these was a challenge that I'd need to tackle asap, so lets get it out of the way while we're waiting for the parts to arrive.

The two stickers on the front are pretty similar - a skull logo. putting Skull into google image didn't help much, but searching for the text "Bones brigade" showed we were in skateboard territory. Searching for Skull and Skateboard, got us there pretty quickly. It turns out that the stickers are from the Powell Skateboard makers, and they're associated skate team. It's generally refered to as the Powell Ripper. Maybe that's obvious to a lot of people, but I'm not a skater, so this was a major breakthough.

The coloured skull was pretty easy to get. An almost identical sticker was easilly availble from online skate shops, and ebay. The B&W image was more tricky. Getting close was pretty easy now we know it's the Powell Ripper. It's generally listed as the Powell Winged Ripper, and again stickers are easily available. Trouble is they're COLOUR, and much higher quality that the messed up one on Billy's bass.

My solution was to download the coloured image, and photoshop it to better match Billy's The result isn't identical as I chose not to move the wings (which are higher up on the original), but it looks pretty good, and I don't think I could do as good a job if the wings were moved. It will be printed onto waterslide transfer paper, and sprayed with acrylic varnish.

On the back there's a large red dragon. Now we know Billy's love of all things Powell it was pretty easy to track down the rear sticker as the "Powell Peralta Oval Dragon" - available from all good skate shops.

That leaves one stiker unidentified - a small BW sticker on the back of the bass. The letters S A D are visible, which stands for Skate And Destroy. However thats where we hit a dead end. It appears to be some kind of bat/dragon. Again it's a candidate for a home made sticker, but so far I don't have a good picture of it. If that's the worst problem we have, then I can live with it.

So thats the stickers pretty well covered - two easily purchased, and one that I can make.

Hopefully some stuff should arrive tomorrow.

Shopping

Let's hit EBAY.

First snag is the bridge cover. Strange place to start, but it was on a cheap Buy-It-Now, so that's the first part I grabbed.

For the body, I found a stripped Squier Precision body for $5. Cost me more to ship it! It's ply, which may look pretty bad, but this is a "beater" anyway, and worst case it gives me something to cut into and screw up.

I picked up a second body - it was fully loaded, so that's a bridge, P-Pickup, and wiring sorted. Plus a spare body just in case (tobacco sunburst - may be good to "relic" it). There's a pickguard but it's white, so it can go in the spares bucket.

The pickup wasn't too tough, but I did have to order it form the USA. It's a generic EB replacement, rather the than the Dimarzio models, which will look the part. The DiMarzio's are black, but we need silver.

The neck turned out to be a toughy. A Tele style neck is out of the question - a real one is crazy cash, and finding a copy isn't going to happen. Even finding a cheap used neck was tough, because of the requirement of the maple fretboard. Loads of cheap rosewood fretboards - in fact I'd have considered just picking up a cheap used P if there was such a thing with a maple fretboard.

I finally found a "slight second" new neck from an ebay parts dealer. It's a P-style headstock, so it'll need reshaping, but other than that it's good. I also picked up most of the odds and ends (extra pot, jack, tuners) etc. At this stage I noticed that Billy's bass may have a brass nut. I could have sourced one of these pretty easily, but it wouldn't fit the neck without some cutting. I decided to go with a plastic nut, and maybe add the brass one later on.

The hipshot was going to be a big hit in the budget - no cheapskating options are available, as there's basically only one manufacturer. Fortunatly one came up on ebay, and I got if for half price.

I also bid on a couple of extra bridges - they were basically free, as no one bid on them. I'm not sure which I'll use. It doesn't really matter as the bridge is hidden by the cover anyway. I did consider a bridge you could hook the strings into rather than threading them, which would make life easier with the bridge cover, but I decided to go with something more classic.

That just leaves the pickguard - should be simple to get, though the red shell finish makes it a bit harder. I'll pick one up soon. There was one on ebay, but I figured I'd get one cheaper.

All of this stuff was ordered over the course of the last week. None of it is here yet though. In the end it added up to a bit more than I expected for a cheapskate project - unavoidable and distinctive features that you wouldn't find on a regular bass, like the EB pickup and the hipshot bumped things up quite a bit.

I just hope it all fits together when it does arrive...

Background Research

A big more digging, and we've got most of the info we need:

For anyone who cares it was originally a Tobacco Burst. Not that you can tell, so I guess that's not important now!

To make things a little easier, someone in Japan made a really nice copy, and posted some pictures. Of course they're not the original, but they've done some good research, and their pics are a lot clearer than the ones of the real bass.

in additon to the standard components we're going to need:

a body without any finish.

A Bridge cover

Red Tortoise Shell pickguard

EB Pickup

Hipshot

A whole load of stickers.

Ideally we should use a second black pickguard to fill in the jack socket area (and bolt it down with some washers), but we can sort that later.

I've not found definitive info on the controls for this bass, but it's safe to assume they're the same as the Yamaha Attitude. From front to back that gives us EB-Volume, EB-Tone, P-Volume, and then two jack sockets.

Time to go shopping.

The Wife

So here it is. The original "wife". This is the Bass Billy used in Talas, and in fact pretty much every gig he did until he joined the Dave Lee Roth Band, and signed with Yamaha. THIS we can build!

Billy's website tells us he got this Fender Precision around 1971, and swapped the neck out shortly afterwards for a 68 Tele Bass neck. He also added an EB style pickup, routed to a seperate output jack (in 1972), and scalloped the upper frets in '85.

Still a lot to figure out, but not a bad place to start.

Lets start buying some parts!

Lets build a bass!

The release of the new BB series Billy Sheehan "signature" started me thinking... Though I LOVE the Yamaha BB series, the BB714BS is a real letdown. It's got a "mudbucker" pickup added, but it's nothing like Billy's original BB3000. For a start it's not available in pink, lacks a maple fretboard, hipshot d-tuner, stereo outs, scalloped frets and even the pickups aren't the real Will Powers. It isn't even listed on his website!

That set me thinking if it would be possible to build a real BB series BS Signature... And I concluded it's NOT. Bah! At least not practically. For a start where are you going to get a BB body in pink? You could try to use a P-Body (which you can get in pink), and live with the slightly wrong shape, but the BB's are rear-routed, without a pickguard, so that's a non-starter. You'd need to respray a real BB body, and they're not cheap.

Even if you've got a body you then need a maple fretboard - Yamaha only do those on the Attitude, so you need another neck, reshaped to the right headstock, and again resprayed pink.

All that's going to add up to a lot of cash, and work that's not easy to do...

We need a plan B: Billy's original Fender Precision!!!! aka "the Wife".