I'm not condoning this, but you have to start somewhere - confessions of a Teisco hack...

[reverendrally]

A part of me was sort of wishing this day would never come, but in another way, I'm happy that it has. Let me tell you a story. @JIO will be horrified and amused... hopefully more amused than horrified.

When I was 16 or so, my brother and I worked for a studio that had you record your own vocals over backing tracks at a large amusement park. We had various things as props. The following bass was one of them. I'll talk through what happened to it, but before you see the pics let me confess something. The bass has been in the possession of my cousin's wife (a great lady and upright player). I gave it to her as a sort of present. Then 10 years later, I put it together (long story). Today, she called me looking to sort out an upright pickup for a gig she has a convention over the next few days. Some years back I promised to build her a proper fretless and swap it for what you'll see below. So today, in exchange for the horror story below, she left with my liquidambar 5 string.

She was a bit speechless when I offered it to her, but pretty thrilled when she played it. The low B particularly tickled her fancy. Suffice to say, it's less than penance for what I gave her to begin with. I'm not entirely sad anyway, it leaves me with more room, some new (old) parts to mess with and fixes the sizable conscience issue I had.

So now for the horror...

 

[reverendrally]

Now, as a way of starting the story. Like many of us, I grew up screwing around with tools and bits of timber. However, neither my father or any of my parents friends were really all that handy or practical. Great people, useless with tools. So everything I can do, I've mostly learned the hard way, then the wrong way, then the hard way again and finally, the right way. I spent my late teens reading bass player mag and books about guitars of all sorts. What we have here is the remains of a teisco bass. When I got it, it was mostly complete and mostly completely awful. From memory, it had 2 working tuners, 1 working PU and everything else was pretty junky. If I knew what I knew now I could have fixed it in an afternoon with some steel sheet, an Ebay tuner and a soldering iron. In those days, I didn't even own a soldering iron. Ebay didn't even exist and every guitar part cost $100... seriously. So instead I had grand plans... the sort of plans that end in mass destruction.

Phase one;
I stripped all the paint off the bass and oiled the bass with, wait for it... teak oil. This all went ok except for one thing. Teak oil doesn't make things stronger. The mahogany on the back of the neck started to go soft around the neck screws and the screws started to strip out. I spent $200 (then a LOT of money) on a Schaller bridge and Gotoh tuners. Still the 2 most valuable bits of the bass.

Phase two;
By this stage I was working in a woodwork work shop. I'd decided I wanted a fretless, so I pulled the frets. The slots were filled with (grey) bondo and then the board epoxyed with Westsystems. To deal with the issues with the oily neck joint, I routed a (crooked) channel in the back of the body and inlaid rock maple. The back the neck also got a slab of maple (way too thick) glued on and then bogged up with car bondo. The neck also got a nondescript wood bit glued on behind the nut to stop it snapping. The maple was the greenest wood I've ever come across and cost $100 (highway robbery) for a small piece. Then I painted the body... puce (the purple on the bottom 1/4 of it) and sprayed the neck with nitro. Hmm. I did various other things I'd never do again. One day my then boss yelled at me to, "Get it out of here!" because apparently he felt I was spending too much time in hackery and not enough time working.

Phase three;
After a while original PU died and I got very sick a few mods I can't bear to mention and the puce colour. So I taped it up and got out the spray cans. That's when it got the Van Halen paint job. I had an old P PU and screwed that inappropriately to the top and hard wired the PU to jack. I chopped off an old bit of floor board and attached it as a 'ramp'. I played it off and on in bands, but never seriously. I think it even went along on my honeymoon for jamming on (along with a preamp and some headphones... seriously). Then it went in the corner shame. Then I pulled it apart hoping to do something proper with it but life got in the way. About fifteen years back I gave it to my cousin's wife as a present... in parts. One holiday we went to stay with them and I put it back together for her. It was still terrible them. Hence my shame. She deserved MUCH better.

This was years before I started building 'properly'...

So here it is in all it's awful glory

Now, why would I post all this gore? Well, we all have to start somewhere. I learned this is ALL wrong. Hopefully so will you now too. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all this nasty. Maybe you guys can tell me.

What should I do to it now?

 

[two fingers]

Send it to me. I will play the CRAP out of it.



Great story, seriously. Cool bass you built as well.

 

[two fingers]

And keep the messed up one. Treasure it and hang it on the wall. Grin every time you look at it.

 

[JIO]

do - not - touch - it ... (other than to play it) kudos for using a 3D bridge!

 

[reverendrally]

Man, you guys are killing me! $200 worth of good parts and you want me to leave this janky mashup as is!?!

 

[Matt Liebenau]

I kinda like the paint job. It has a certain “Mad Max” appeal. By that I mean repairing the cars or bikes with whatever parts were at hand as long as they kept running.

Maybe do what you can to make it more playable. If you have to pull the bridge for another project, put a bridge back on this right away. Don’t let it sit. She’s earned some playing time.

 

[Beej]

What I love about it is the story and the provenance. I'd also vote for keeping it as-is, you just can't find this kind of stuff anymore. Also, there's no way that bridge is worth any serious change any longer, and those tuners are definitely not Gotoh's so I don't know how much money is remaining in parts, but you'd still be better off leaving them on there.

Either that, or take the whole thing apart and do your dangedest to return it to it's original Teisco glory, sparing no expense or skill in your arsenal. Fix the body, neck and parts, refret it, locate original parts on ebay or custom fab things that look the same, etcetera. Either way, this one looks like fun or some excellent funky artwork...

 

[reverendrally]

What I love about it is the story and the provenance. I'd also vote for keeping it as-is, you just can't find this kind of stuff anymore.

Isn't that a blessing?

Either that, or take the whole thing apart and do your dangedest to return it to it's original Teisco glory, sparing no expense or skill in your arsenal. Fix the body, neck and parts, refret it, locate original parts on ebay or custom fab things that look the same, etcetera. Either way, this one looks like fun or some excellent funky artwork...

Yeahnah, that really isn't gonna happen.

Seriously, I can't believe how positive everyone is being about this horrible heap of trash.

 

[Beej]

Yeahnah, that really isn't gonna happen.

Seriously, I can't believe how positive everyone is being about this horrible heap of trash.

That's sort of how I feel about old Volkswagens, but I suspect you might take my position about the bass with regard to them though. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so they say...

 

[reverendrally]

That's sort of how I feel about old Volkswagens, but I suspect you might take my position about the bass with regard to them though. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so they say...

Oh don't worry, I'm feeling increasingly the same about old VWs too.