AJ's Musical Instrument Repair

Look at this cute, little grasshopper that hopped up onto my workbench! It plays very nicely! Especially, with those nice, Rotosound Swing Bass short-scale medium-light strings. It's brand new, and in for a setup, some fret edge filing/smoothing, and I'll be swapping out the stock pickup for a nice vintage style one from Lindy Fralin Pickups, that I recommended to my client. It's gonna be a tone beast!

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Happy Holidays to all of my friends & clients! Hope you enjoy!!!

Well, it's been a bit since I've had time to post on my page here. I wanted to share with everyone a recent repair project I completed last week that I did for my son, who is 11.

He decided this year to take up bass guitar (just like his Daddy!) through his Middle School band! I am super proud of him!! He is now officially the 6th grade school band bassist! I had already bought him a short-scale Ibanez Gio Mikro bass about 2 years ago that I did some setup work on, and it plays very nicely, hoping that perhaps one day he might be interested in it. He had played percussion for 2 years in school.

So, the first bass I bought him, just has the 1 P-bass style pickup, and it's kind of a drab looking black/gray color. We saw a pic of the vibrant blue model with the P/J pickups online a while back, and he seemed to really like that one.

So, I found a used one a few months ago on the Goodwill Finds website, and also found a $50 off $100 coupon code online! With the $15 shipping, I was in at $85 (as-is, no returns). I figured that there might be something wrong with it, but took the gamble anyway.

Sure enough, the neck had a very nasty twist in it, with a bad hump on the treble side at around the 4th fret. It only seemed to affect the G string, however. Unfortunately, I thought I had taken a pic of the twist/hump, but I can't seem to find it. Anyway, I've included several photos of some before and after shots.

First thing I did, was to heat up and clamp down the neck to try to get out the twist. I repeated this process about 4 times over a period of 2 weeks carefully using a heat gun, and unclamping it every 3 or 4 days to see if it was working. It was getting better, but not good enough.

However, on the 4th try, the neck snapped at what is known as the scarf joint, which is located on the back of the neck, approximately behind the 3rd fret. Luckily, it was a pretty clean break at that joint, so I immediately shot some Tite-bond wood glue into the gap, lined it up, clamped it down tightly, and let it dry overnight. Worked like a charm! Then I sanded down the excess glue that oozed out, and got it all nice & smooth.

Secondly, I heated up (using an old soldering iron) & pulled out every fret, keeping them in order for later use, since they were all in practically new condition with barely any wear.

The neck has an odd radius. It's a tad over 13", and the closest radius sanding blocks I have are 12", so I used those (8" & 4" long ones), along with a straight 8" one as well to work out some of the kinks in this fingerboard.

After taking quite a bit of wood off the fingerboard, I was able to even it out, and take out that nasty hump too! Then I slightly deepened and cleaned out the fret slots using a Zona 4-in-1 model # 35-140 Razor Saw Set. Worked beautifully! Worked the frets back into place using my trusty fret hammer, but I did have to super glue & clamp down a few fret ends to keep them from popping up. Typical of this type of repair if you're reusing the old frets. No problem though.

Then, I did a fret level/re-crown/polish job, strung it up with a set of Rotosound RS66LB Medium-light roundwound strings (cut them down to fit the 28.5" scale), my string of choice! And, here's a shout out to Rotosound Strings for keeping me all strung up over the years! (Been using Rotosounds since 1981, and I'm fortunate and very grateful to be an endorsed Rotosound player!)

Then I shielded the control cavity, re-attached the neck to the body, and did a full setup.

It plays fantastically now! Was a lot of work, but worth it for my awesome son! 🥰