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by TRGuitar » January 14th, 2012, 6:39 pm
Well, my son has a 8 string bass. He hates one thing about it the most. Active electronics and they are way too hot. He wanted passive and he wanted rid of the extra strings. For those who may not know, an 8 string is not like a 5 or 6 string bass. It is like a 12 string guitar except the extra strings are a set of guitar strings tuned E A D G along with the bass strings. He really liked the feel of the bass so he wanted to make a Frankenstien Bass out of it. I was like ... ARE YOU SURE! It was a cheapo Rogue bass that cost less than $200 so he said "Yes, I want to play it and as an 8 string I won't". It had a real funky bridge and tail piece. Wish I had taken pics prior to deconstruction but I didn't.

It has a brass nut that he didn't want to part with. Keeping it makes the strings a little off center at the top but he insisted. It's his bass. We put a new milled bridge/tail piece on it. He ordered gold to match the brass nut. (You don't want to know what a brass one cost) We stripped the pickups and electronics. He went with a single humbucker at the bridge position. A real one! EMG HZ (passive as opposed to active, that is the HZ ... AKA high impedance) There is a cavity under the bridge from where the old TOM styled bass bridge was. No pickup in the mid body, just a vacant hole. This is a FrankenBass after all. We put in a pair of new full sized 500K pots and a gum drop cap. We had 3 control knob holes to fill. I creatively did that tonight after a trip to the automotive section of Wal-Mart tonight. You will see in the pictures. We still need to fill the holes from the guitar tuners. I'm still shopping there. Not sure if we will fill the space under the bridge or not. I think the old battery compartment would make a great place to store pics. By the way, it plays and sounds awsome! OK ... pics .... OH, the red tape is just holding the allen wrench in place so we don't lose it til we get the new strings and I set the intonation.
With holes .....
The fix!
Let us know what you think! Not pretty .. it's a FrankenBass .... sounds and plays fantastic!
Last edited by
TRGuitar on January 26th, 2012, 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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