mellowgerman
Senior Member
About a week ago I was browsing the guitarcenter.com used database as I do more or less out of habit these days and I came across a "vintage 60s modified starfire bass." Intrigued, I called the store and requested some more photos. It was a cosmetically bruised and battered, had the following mods:
-Schaller Fender-ish bridge installed crookedly
-Schaller replacement tuning machines
-the bisonic was gone and replaced with a bartolini :'(
-additional pickup routing for a second bartolini humbucker that had been installed in the bridge position
-mini-toggle pickup selector switch had been installed
-input had been moved to the top of the bass
The thought of having an already-modified, cosmetically-worn, vintage starfire to tinker with is sort of a dream come true, so my housemate/bandmate and I decided to split the cost (which was very fair) and hope for the best in terms of playability and structural integrity... I've learned that you can never really take a GC employee's word on these things, but after confirming the 30-day return policy I figured we had little to lose. So the wait had begun.
Fast-forward to yesterday when the bass arrived! We were super jazzed to find that the bass played wonderfully; neck was flawless and the frets were in pretty good shape, with just a little bit of wear in the first few positions. Bartolinis sounded pretty good, but we had an extra vintage bisonic and one Novak bisonic, so it was clear what we had to do...
-we replaced the crooked Schaller bridge with a black Hipshot B-style bridge with .669 string spacing
-the Novak bisonic went into the neck position
-the vintage bisonic went into the bridge position, which required some additional routing and the original thumb-rest had to be removed
-re-glued a bit of the binding that had come loose
-fresh set of D'Addario chrome flats
-fresh set-up
Couldn't be happier with the results! She plays like a new bass and sounds monstrous. We just have to iron out a few kinks with the bridge pickup... seems to have a bit of a grounding bug, but it doesn't seem like anything too serious. Future plans include an ACG EQ-01 to get a little farther into the Jack/Phil territory. The bass also didn't come with a case, so we decided that we'll probably sell off some of the knobs, the thumbrest, and the Bartolini bridge pickup to raise some funds and get a nice case to protect our new baby.
Anywayyyy, here are some photos of the process and the finished product (so far anyway):
-Schaller Fender-ish bridge installed crookedly
-Schaller replacement tuning machines
-the bisonic was gone and replaced with a bartolini :'(
-additional pickup routing for a second bartolini humbucker that had been installed in the bridge position
-mini-toggle pickup selector switch had been installed
-input had been moved to the top of the bass
The thought of having an already-modified, cosmetically-worn, vintage starfire to tinker with is sort of a dream come true, so my housemate/bandmate and I decided to split the cost (which was very fair) and hope for the best in terms of playability and structural integrity... I've learned that you can never really take a GC employee's word on these things, but after confirming the 30-day return policy I figured we had little to lose. So the wait had begun.
Fast-forward to yesterday when the bass arrived! We were super jazzed to find that the bass played wonderfully; neck was flawless and the frets were in pretty good shape, with just a little bit of wear in the first few positions. Bartolinis sounded pretty good, but we had an extra vintage bisonic and one Novak bisonic, so it was clear what we had to do...
-we replaced the crooked Schaller bridge with a black Hipshot B-style bridge with .669 string spacing
-the Novak bisonic went into the neck position
-the vintage bisonic went into the bridge position, which required some additional routing and the original thumb-rest had to be removed
-re-glued a bit of the binding that had come loose
-fresh set of D'Addario chrome flats
-fresh set-up
Couldn't be happier with the results! She plays like a new bass and sounds monstrous. We just have to iron out a few kinks with the bridge pickup... seems to have a bit of a grounding bug, but it doesn't seem like anything too serious. Future plans include an ACG EQ-01 to get a little farther into the Jack/Phil territory. The bass also didn't come with a case, so we decided that we'll probably sell off some of the knobs, the thumbrest, and the Bartolini bridge pickup to raise some funds and get a nice case to protect our new baby.
Anywayyyy, here are some photos of the process and the finished product (so far anyway):
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