Guitar Archeology

Today I received a ‘91 Jazz Bass bought off of eBay. Seeing as how many of us that buy a guitar end up modifying it to our liking I thought I’d share a few photos of the changes I’ve made right out of the gate. This is how it arrived – white pickguard and these gnarly little Strat knobs:

I’m not a big fan of pickguards but as you can see in this photo there’s a nasty trench [didn't know this was done so early on] running thru the front of this one:

It has these puny little pots & a green cap that I couldn’t find a rating on. If I was gigging with this bass I’d usually go thru and paint the cavities with shielding paint. If comes to that I’ll replace the electronics with a set of EMG JV X pickups.

This is a mod that I consider essential on a Jazz Bass:

I can’t understand why “toaster” knobs were even considered much less used considering the Jazz Bass was introduced as a “Deluxe Model”. With the silly knobs this bass came with there was just no option IMO.

In another post [

That’s pretty much it. All-in-all this bass has lived up to my expectations. Its lively in that I’ve never had a bass that made my hand vibrate when holding down a note. Being Alder its lightweight. It looks good – always wanted a red guitar. And the sound is everything a Fender is supposed to be. Makes me want to go out and find a gig. A Mega Bass Strap and a Babicz bridge arrived just before dinner so tomorrow I have to decide whether to string it up with flatwounds or keep these roundwounds for a while longer. We’ll see how that goes . . .

. . . I promise.
Okay, so I took the plunge and replaced the stock bridge with the Babicz [pron. babitts in case you're interested] and went ahead and strung it up with some GHS Precision Flatwounds. Even with the suggestions for using round wounds I already had an idea of what I was looking for after playing a friend’s ‘62 Stack knob Jazz bass. If I ever used flat wounds on a Fender before I couldn’t tell you when it was so I’m familiar with their purpose but in this case I was going for a certain retro vibe.

That said I went in a completely different direction with the bridge:

When I look down at this thing the term “speed racer” comes to mind. It really is a bit of engineering wizardry. The truly amazing thing is it feels lighter than the stock bridge when you hold them in your hands. I didn’t weigh them but its noticeable. It took a bit of wrangling to suss out the in & outs of mounting this thing. Dialing it in was pretty easy after getting the first string set up. Unless you’re a constant string changer I can’t imagine you’d have to do much to it once it’s set.

The best part of this experience was plugging in and playing a song. What is it about playing a Fender bass? The sound speaks such in a familiar voice – probably due to all the songs that have been recorded using one. But its the neck, too. It just lays so naturally in the hand, at least for me it does.
A friend mentioned that I hadn’t posted a full image of this bass with the Babicz bridge on it so, here it is:

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1024×493 and weights 224KB.

Since I didn’t take the time to A/B the old bridge with the flatwounds* or the roundwounds with the Babicz I don’t know how they might compare but, I can say this, “Wow!” This thing rocks in a very R&B sorta way. Just what I was lookin’ for . . .

Fender

Jazz Bass

‘62 Reissue

Black

MIJ

Great Used Condition

Well Played and Worn

Already a Relic !

Chips, Dings & Wear

All Original

Hard To Find Version

Made for the Japanese Market

Your guitar was made at the
Fuji-gen Plant (for Fender Japan), Japan
in the Year(s): 1993 – 1994