Here’s a Japanese 4-string short-scale bass body and neck I bought from Alex, my Afghanistan music man junk instrument vendor, at Denio’s flea market in Roseville, California for $30.

These are the parts I plan to use from my spare parts bin.

These are the worn out machine heads: definitely a bass guitar from Japan and probably an Aria clone of a Gibson EB-0 if I’m guessing.

The stock bridge. There was a saddle or two but they got lost on the walk back to the car. That’s one massive bridge, fastened down with actual bolts and hard to remove.

Here’s after I installed four guitar tuners from my bin, and two possible nuts. The torsion rod nut is frozen and rounded off but I’m hoping the light guitar strings will still be usable on it. The neck has a slight up bow so it could work.

After light sanding of the plywood body. Parts I hope to use: 2-saddle ‘vintage’ bridge from another project, straight coil pickup stripped from a Behringer trash find guitar, output jack, and V/T knobs to cover the holes- fakes since I don’t know how to wire things very well and the amp will control everything.

I have a good choice of cheap and cheesy flea market $6 USD guitar strings.

Frets are worn but look usable. I’ll find a substitute neck if the neck bow is wrong.

Is it a 31 inch scale? Hard to determine lacking the saddles I lost. I’ll finger it out.

Binding is pulling up on one side.

And a chunk is missing on the other side. The frozen, rounded out, extruding Allen torsion rod nut can be seen.

The extra holes don’t bother me.

Imagine it sanded more, stained, and Tung oiled. And operational.

Stay tuned.

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