1986 Yamaha Motion MBII bass [8.0 lbs] :: setup

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I'm lucky to have a great bassist that is always bringing me interesting basses he picks up.  Here is an 80's Yamaha 4 string in for while-you-wait setup.  The player likes super-low electric guitar action so it's always a fun challenge to see how low you can go.  Working with this player has made me totally rethink my approach to bass setups.

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Check out the round over on the treble-side horn - the pearl white finish flashes slight pink in certain light.  Really subtle and very cool.  Also the bridge is a unique design that I have not seen before, but the head stock really got my attention.  I don't know why, but this folded head stock looks killer!

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Neck strip, oil & fret level :: 1982 Yamaha BB2000 [9.9 lbs]

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A neck-through early 80's Japanese Yamaha PJ (note the reverse P pickup) in for a neck strip and refinished with Tung oil.  There is some nice birdseye figure in this neck that didn't really show until I stripped the thick poly and started to apply the oil.  During the setup I found many uneven frets so a level, crown and polish was required to get the action super low for this player.  With older guitars, often the screws are an odd assortment of non-originals.  This was missing a few pickup screws that needed to be replaced with the proper metric ones.  The bridge pickup even had a coarse wood screw holding it in place.  Thankfully the pickup threads were not damaged (somehow) and cleanly accepted a new screw.  The side-mounted output jack plate also fell victim to the random screw swapping so I replaced them all with a matching quartet.

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Video of the fret level and neck strip from the vlog below.

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Bass fret level :: Yamaha BB2000

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An older neck-through Yamaha bass in for a setup.  Along with the setup we stripped and oiled the neck and here I am leveling the frets.  This bass player uses the lowest action of any other basses that I work on so it is absolutely critical that there are no high frets.  The fret level video will be posted on the vlog later today.

1986 Yamha BX-1 Bass :: Piccolo setup (octave up)

1986 Yamha BX-1 Bass :: Piccolo setup (octave up).