This is the episode 1 of "A 50-year old guy makes a DIY electric bass guitar to start learning bass guitar" video series.
I started playing guitar in the middle of my 40s. Six years later, I found myself enjoying making guitars (mostly acoustic) rather than playing them. That was already something I could not predict, but I never thought I would start learning electric bass guitar at the age of 50, haha.
I have a feeling that my skills about making acoustic guitars passed an intermediate level, but the playing skills are still somewhere between beginner to intermediate level. I do feel I am getting better every year a little bit, but it's very mild.
I think the reason for that is I am spending most of my (free) time for making, but honestly, I would like to be able to play much better. I am starting to recognize my time is limited, so I was going to narrow down to one type of instrument (classical?, acoustic?, electric?) but...
About six month ago (right after the Stay In Place order for COVID-19), started a voluntary activity to provide a free maintenance and restringing service of guitars to my local community, and recently I got some requests for bass guitar maintenance.
I thought bass guitars must be somewhat similar to electric guitars, so I think I can provide a basic maintenance at least, but I started to wonder what are the differences between bass guitar and electric guitar?
So I started some research about it, reading articles, watching RU-vid videos, etc., and then, when I noticed, I was so attracted by bass guitar.
Bass guitar is so cool! It's so different from electric guitar not only the number of strings but also how to play it too. I would like to be able to play a bass guitar, not only providing maintenance! :-)
What I learned is, there are two big groups in bass guitar. One is Jazz Bass (JB) and the other is Precision Bass (PB). I didn't know anything about it until a few days ago. I started wondering which one should I get to start learning?
I had no idea which one to get, so I want to try both to figure out, but I don't think I can justify buying two in this situation, so I decided to buy two DIY kit (which will be cheaper than buying new ones). That way, I can also learn the structure of the bass guitar and how to restore those. Both are about US$150 price range kits.
Today, I received a precision bass kit:
www.amazon.com...
It's no-branded, so I wasn't expecting the quality of the kit that much, but actually it's not bad at all. The body and the neck look good.
Of course the body was not finished so I have to sand and finish it, but it did not look like a $150 kit.
Those are not the only things. I thought the tuning pegs and the bridge must be cheap ones, but they are heavy and in good quality.
The pickups and the electric parts such as pots don't look high grade ones, but they don't look that bad either. Plus, those are replaceable later on if I don't like them.
The neck is also built in good quality. Usually the neck in a DIY kit needs a lot of works such as removing burrs of the side of the fret wires, nut is too high or nut slots are too shallow, etc., but it looks like this neck is already in good condition.
Anyways, this is the episode 1 of making the Bass guitar #1 (PB). Please watch the video for detail :-).
15 сен 2024
