1960s Supro Super-Short Scale Electric Bass Guitar Mod

This was orginally a super-short-scale (22") electric guitar, made by National/Valco, and wearing-the Supro brand. Here's a similar build and here's another one. It was modified into a "pocket bass" by someone before me, bought by its current owner, and sent here for sprucing-up and conversion into a rubber bridge bass.

Along the way I leveled/dressed the frets, replaced some truly awful replacement tuners, rubbered and better-fit the replacement Hofner-style bridge, fixed a bit of wiring mess, added side dots, added a couple of extra bolts to make the neck joint more-sturdy, and set it up.

Just like all of the tenor-guitar-to-bass mods I've been doing lately, this one sounds thumpy and bumpy and delicious and the form-factor is undeniably adorable.

While the pickup is original, the wiring harness, pickguard, tailpiece under the cover, bridge, tuners, and nut are all non-original. The tuners are nice Gotoh freebie spares I had in my parts-bin from chopped-up tuner sets but half this set is "aged nickel" and half is "bright nickel." I find this hilarious and wonderful and it fits the character of the bass. What was on it when it arrived were cheaper Kluson-looking repros but it turned-out that all of them had stripped gears internally. Frustrating!