1980s/2018 Lindert/Partscaster J-Bass Electric Bass Guitar

Update: I swapped to a 110w-50w set of roundwound nickels on this and so have updated the video/soundclip and description.

A friend of mine sold me a "nice" ash Jazz Bass body in-store a few weeks ago for very little money. I thought to myself, "hey, might as well find a neck and bits for this." I scrounged this awesome, thumbs-up-headstock US-made Lindert neck from the maker himself on eBay (he'd said it was one that he'd had since the '80s and was used as a reference in the shop for making more necks) and then toodled-around for the rest of the hardware... a Gotoh bridge, cool giant-pole J-bass Alnico pickups from Plus Music, and wiring harness stuff from my parts-bins.

When I went to put it all together, I found out that the "nice" ash body was a homemade one that'd been cut a little off everywhere to the point that I pulled its neat rosewood knobs off and stuck it in the burn-pile. Oh well! I then hit-up GuitarFetish and found that, indeed, they still sell their super-lightwieght paulownia bodies. These things give you an overall weight of an acoustic instrument but they have a good sound to them. They dent easily, though, but I'm not one for obsessing with cosmetics. Even better -- they had one in the blue, holo-flake finish I loved on my Esquolin project.

So, how'd it turn out? Big-smiles fun, of course! It also has a round, warm, clean tone with very few overtones (a plus in my book) and an almost semi-hollow vibe to the way the notes sustain. The Lindert neck is, dimensionally, somewhere between a modern J-bass neck and P-bass neck, but its back profile is round-C on the treble side and a soft-V on the bass side. This makes it extra-quick and it handles like not much else out there.

Specs are: 34" scale, 1 5/8" nut width, 1 3/8" string spacing at the nut, 2 5/16" spacing at the bridge, 3/32" action height overall at the 12th fret (of course adjustable), 14" lower bout, 11 1/2" upper bout, and 1 3/4" side depth. Strings are (now) fairly heavy nickel roundwounds at something like 110w-50w. The neck is straight, stable, and is the usual rosewood over maple. The body is three-piece paulownia.

While tortoise on sparkle blue is questionable, I'm loving it. My kids are, too. Is it missing a unicorn sticker? Perhaps.

The neck and fretboard have a few minor love-bites from knocking around a workshop for 30 years, but who can resist that headstock?

The knobs (and a spare electrosocket jack in my parts-bins) are the only bits remaining from my "nice" ash body purchase. The control plate topper is from a '40s/'50s record player.