1990s Vester Acoustic Bass Guitar

This all-ply acoustic bass guitar was made in Korea and has a "Vester" brand on it. It's actually a pretty good ABG as far as these instruments go. The bracing is light enough and the body wide and deep enough that it puts out decent acoustic volume (at least from the lowest G-on-up). Still, every time I see a 16/17-fret joint on these I wonder to myself: what would this sound like if the joint were all the way at the 12th fret? Airspace! The pickup sounds decent but I wish it had a K&K in it.

It was in for a bridge reglue, fretwork, and a setup. The action had jumped-up to unusable levels and, because this is a cheaper instrument, we solved the problem via wedge-shaping the bridge almost 1/8" to get the action down to about 3/32" overall at the 12th fret.

The saddle wasn't compensated on the bass side enough, so when I reglued the bridge I moved that side slightly aft which solved that problem on-the-cheap. This was another one of those Asian-style bridge jobs where there was finish under the foot of the bridge -- which is why it came up in the first place -- not enough gluing surface. The pearl dots hide original bridge bolts.

Here you can see how I reprofiled the bottom of the bridge to make it thinner it front and retain full thickness in the back. That let the saddle get quite low without needing a neck reset. It's not the best solution, but it works fine for this application. I needed to keep the rear of the bridge thick as it's a top-load instrument. Otherwise I would've shaved the whole thing.