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.