2000s Roberto Acha Bajo Cuarto Conversion

I have been Jonesing for a bajo quinto-style instrument for years but have been holding-out to find one on the outrageous (and funky) side as my plans for them involve modding to tailpiece string load and making sure the intonation is decent. This one popped-up on eBay "in a state" and with the "tie block" back-half of the bridge missing, so it seemed like a good candidate. It also has frigging ponies inlaid everywhere, a double-cutaway, and all of the eye-catching silliness one could desire from one of these. It also looked like it had a lot of regular gigging use put into it and I'm a fan of worn-in and ready to get scratched.

Anyhow, this started-off as a normal bajo quinto but I've modded it to a 4-course (rather than 5-course) instrument of the style being called bajo cuarto these days. That would usually leave the tuning DGCF low to high with an octave D course, but I'ved tuned it up here to EADG with the strings all in unison. That makes it like guitar's low 4 strings but with doubled, mandocello-sounding courses. Perhaps that makes it a bajo yanqui? In any case, my bass-playing brain can immediately adapt to it and I don't have to transpose anything.

Like a lot of these eye-catching bajos, it's overbuilt and very rugged and so it doesn't have a ton of acoustic volume. As long as you're playing with others who don't pick like they're trying to put a hole in their guitar (I'm looking at you, Rob), it will cut enough in a jam situation. For the vast majority of bajo players, though, the standard practice is to slap a soundhole magnetic pickup in there and play it through an amp or PA so the acoustic sound is a lot less important than the stage-ready sound.

Unfortunately for me, this poor beastie needed a board plane and refret before I could do anything else and it needed some spot repairs to a seam-separation at the neck/headstock joint and a repair to a wing of the headstock. After I addressed that, it just needed a new nut and saddle (both bone) and I then modded a reso-style tailpiece for string mounting. Once done, I added some "downpressure bolts" behind the saddle to ape some of the "bridge pull" sound of the tie-block-style bridge that would have originally been used. This gave it more of the traditional sound back and added some warmth as well.

Eventually, I'll fill the old endpin jack hole with a new endpin jack and K&K acoustic pickup installed. I want to use this instrument for The Peavine Boys for when I'm relieved of bass duties but don't want to just be playing another guitar that gets lost in the mix. The neck is ginormous and manly but I'm enjoying the way it makes me rethink playing something like this and I like that  the fourths tuning makes it very useful for faking mandocello-style lines for recording.