NOBD

Kittyfrisk

I have become the accidental owner of my first bass guitar...
Fairly sure it's an Epiphone by Gibson as it says so on the headstock  Rock Bass from around 1989 as far as I can tell from researching.
Weighs around 10.8 lbs /4.8 kg & I think most of that is down the huge brass saddles  There are no serials or details to be found anywhere.
The body appears to be mahogany. I had the neck off & the body isn't maple or plywood. No hidden stamps , just an pair of undecipherable characters on base of the neck in black felt tip. Haven't had the scratchplate off yet.
 Rosewood fretboard in good condition, cleaned up nicely after removing years of gunge, one tiny chip on the lower edge at the 7th fret, no real fretwear. It's a 34" scale.
I'd say in fair condition for it's age with no real damage, just missing a backplate cap on one tuner & the usual couple of small chips & minor lacquer cracks around the neck pocket.
That's about everything I know, so I thought I'd do the sensible thing & ask the smart folk here about it.
Anything would be helpful, apart from piss taking & general derision...

Funkfingers

Generic Korean hardware on a punishingly solid lump of lumber. (I have a project Höhner Professional from the same era.) Easily improvable via replacement nut, pickups and control electronics.

IMO, a "rawk" J Bass would benefit from properly noise-cancelling pickups. To my ears, side-by-side coils retain more of the wiry Fender sound than stacked coils. e.g. DiMarzio Ultra Jazz, Bartolini 9J L/S et cetera.

Inspect under the pickguard. There might be a one-size-fits-all pickup cavity. This would enable conversion to alternative pickup formats. (Provided that a replacement 'guard can be sourced.)

UnclePsychosis

Looks cool to me. good score! 

Kittyfrisk

UnclePsychosis said:

Looks cool to me. good score! 

Ta. Letting it get chucked in a skip just didn't sit right with me   Now I'll probably need to find a bloody bass amp as well as some hardware. What a chump...

jennywallace

Looks good, enjoy.

ICBM

Some features of this are similar to my Washburn Force 4 ABT, which is Japanese-made and from the mid-80s. I suspect this may have been made in the same factory (probably Kasuga), a bit later if you think it's from '89. If so I probably wouldn't rush into changing anything, they used quite decent pickups and parts.

You can play bass through a guitar amp quite safely at low volume at home - contrary to popular belief - the risk is to the speaker if you crank it up, not the amp itself.

If you want to buy an actual bass amp, the Fender Rumble 25 is really excellent for the money - much better than the slightly cheaper (and albeit much smaller) Rumble 15.

Kittyfrisk

^ Thanks for the advice John.  At the moment, all I have are a lot of variables & possibilities.
The 1989 date was plucked from the internet based on similar guitars, it isn't definite at all.
As it is, it makes noises intermittently, but that could be the guitar, or the cable, or the amp etc.
I need to cautiously explore further before fiddling with anything/everything.
Why there isn't a pickup selector switch is puzzling to me, but that's not an unusual situation these days
At my age I really should know better than to still have the instinct to rescue musical waifs & strays, but I can't stand the idea of an instrument being trashed 'just because'.
Windmills, tilting etc   

ICBM

Kittyfrisk said:

The 1989 date was plucked from the internet based on similar guitars, it isn't definite at all.

It's probably about right . My Washburn is from 1984 though, so it may be slightly earlier.

Kittyfrisk said:

As it is, it makes noises intermittently, but that could be the guitar, or the cable, or the amp etc.
I need to cautiously explore further before fiddling with anything/everything.

It could be the jack - that's usually the worst quality component in Japanese instruments. However, if it's Korean then it's probably all much worse.

Kittyfrisk said:

Why there isn't a pickup selector switch is puzzling to me

Because Jazz Bass wiring uses the less useful two-volume system . You still get three sounds, but it's harder to switch quickly between them - plus a small range of very fiddly to dial in sounds where the volumes are set slightly differently, but they sound more or less the same as one of the other three sounds... and it tends to hum when you mute the bass by turning down both volumes.

I've never really understood why this system has remained so apparently popular - a volume, balance and tone control arrangement is far better. Balance controls with 'MN' tapers actually do work properly and give a useful range of not just one or both pickups, and the volume can be wired the normal way round so it properly mutes the output when turned off.

Funkfingers

My approach to passive Jazz Bass VVT controls is to set the tone and bridge pickup to 10. I roll the neck pickup volume down from 10 until the pickup signal blend creates a comb filtering "notch/honk". That done, I achieve tonal variety by picking position along the length of the strings. (Much the same way I do on my RIC when both of its pickups are selected.)

Kittyfrisk

Well, that was fun 
Went to take the control plate off to check & clean the pots.
The heads of two of the three screws were totally rounded, rusted & immovable...
Much drilling, grinding & swearing later it appears that some twat had used two screws twice as long as the originals... 



Pots were smaller than I expected but everything otherwise seemed fine.



I left checking the pickups for another day...

hollywoodrox

That is sooooo cool , love it 

Kittyfrisk

Funkfingers said:

Generic Korean hardware on a punishingly solid lump of lumber. (I have a project Höhner Professional from the same era.) Easily improvable via replacement nut, pickups and control electronics.

IMO, a "rawk" J Bass would benefit from properly noise-cancelling pickups. To my ears, side-by-side coils retain more of the wiry Fender sound than stacked coils. e.g. DiMarzio Ultra Jazz, Bartolini 9J L/S et cetera.

Inspect under the pickguard. There might be a one-size-fits-all pickup cavity. This would enable conversion to alternative pickup formats. (Provided that a replacement 'guard can be sourced.)

This is routed for the pickups that are there, no swimming pools.

Funkfingers

Kittyfrisk said:

Funkfingers said:

Inspect under the pickguard. There might be a one-size-fits-all pickup cavity.

This is routed for the pickups that are there, no swimming pools.

Not to worry. 

The Epiphone Rock and Power Bass models were very similar except that the latter came with PJ pickups. I hoped that the same body might have been used for both models.

Plenty of aftermarket pickups options to turn yo' Epi into a perfectly giggable or recording instrument.

The one possible fly in the ointment would be the controls area.
1) Can the routed channel accommodate full-sized pots, a selector switch or a PP3?
2) Would the holes through the control plate need enlarging? 

Dave_Mc

I thought I'd commented on this already but I guess I just gave it a wow- it's very nice 

Funkfingers said:

The one possible fly in the ointment would be the controls area.
1) Can the routed channel accommodate full-sized pots, a selector switch or a PP3?
2) Would the holes through the control plate need enlarging? 

I'm not sure exactly what size those holes are, but (as you're well aware) you can get mini CTS pots, and also metric CTS pots. Whether you can get both mini *and* metric ones, I'm not certain!  I think I've only ever needed one or the other...

This is partly my complete lack of any DIY nous talking, but I always prefer not having to cut up a guitar if there's a (good quality) direct swap available, since reversible mods are the best mods from a resale point of view. Granted, you can replace "always prefer not having to" with "I'm genuinely incapable of"!