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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Getting lucky with a dead pickup :: Yamaha FGX-412SC [5.2 lbs]

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This pickup hasn't worked in years and the player decided to let me give it a shot.  I got lucky on this one.  First thing to check on acoustic pickup issues is the power.  A fresh battery didn't solve the issue so I started checking connections with a multimeter set to continuity (beeps when a connection is good).  The culprit turned out to be the battery box.  All of the connections were good, but their wasn't enough pressure to hold the battery leads up against the contacts in the battery tray.  I used some foam to take up the slack and push the battery forward in the tray and voila! 

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After resolving the pickup issue, here's a quick string-up from the vlog:

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.

Put a humbucker in the sound hole :: Yamaha APX500III [4.7 lbs]

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Put a humbucker in the sound hole :: Yamaha APX500III [4.7 lbs]

A player brought by his custom made humbucker sound hole mount and wanted me to re-install it for him.  It was previously mounted but missing the screws and not wired up.  The guitar does have an undersaddle pickup, but the wire was broken free from the pickup.  I disconnected the side-mounted preamp and ran the new humbucker pickup directly out to the jack.

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