As bought with years of dirt attached.
Normally I’m rather a minimalist and avoid mere decoration.
Wax drips on back. Used as a candle holder?
But on seeing this encrusted Ibanez GSR 200 4-string bass at Denio’s big flea market I was intrigued.
Smooth, straight 2-piece neck with nice frets.
The Steampunk ornamentation was quite artfully done. And I know from previously owning and playing two old Ibanez basses that they are frequently very nice instruments despite their generally low selling prices.
Loose screws throughout.
So I bargained and bought it for $70USD. Maybe I should have haggled more though.
Always called a ‘bolt on’ neck, it’s always fastened with wood screws and never bolts.
Buying old used basses, you know you’ll usually at least need to clean it up, tighten it down, change strings and set it up.
Cover plate is shielded, hard to tell about the cavity.
And I could see from this extremely bad restring job and the sour sound that the aftermarket modder, bless his or her heart, possessed far more artistic skills than bass guitar tech chops.
So wrong on so many levels.
Friends, this is not how it’s done. Note reversed winding on the treble strings with consequent bad string angles.
Worse, trying to fasten strings to pegs the wrong way-the guitar way-led to scarring of all pegs and outright destruction of the D string machine head.
Because it could not stay tuned, the novice bass luthier torqued the D string tuner to the bending and then breaking point. And it still wouldn’t tune. I’m replacing all four heads.
What I’ll be using. The steel is supposed to have a large response.
Most old bass strap hanging screws will need the toothpick/glue treatment to fill in hogged out screw holes. Just drip in some white glue, jam in broken off toothpicks, cut off when dry and reinstall screws and strap buttons.
Use a 15mm wrench (spanner) to tighten or remove machine heads.
But no BFD, they’re totally modular, these children of Leo Fender, easily fixed and tweaked at low cost. Cheap tuner sets are about $15.
The all-in-a-line intonation adjustable saddles means sour sound played up the neck.
I’ll switch to black tuners and maybe paint the bridge black too. Maybe replace the missing truss rod cover with some weird thing or other, swap or paint the control knobs.
So this old beauty remains a project until my new machine heads arrive. Sure, it sounds sour now, but fixed up and set up right it should soar. And it looks pretty cool to me.
Buying and fixing old axes is always a gamble and a challenge. This one more than most I’ve tried because of the failed DIY work. But I love a cheap project and have two other basses to play.
Unless noted, all text and images produced and copyrighted by todgermanica.com.
Non-commercial, nonpolitical, non-religious, non-ideological use free with attribution
todgermanica.com 
Pingback: ‘Beautique’ Ibanez Steampunk Bass | todgermanica.com