Sent off my new Rondo Solid body to mod.

As some of you might remember, I'm having my blue Rondo Hadean solid body u-bass modified by Fren Asken luthier here in Los Angeles, and I also talked about having a u-bass violin Hofner style made, which I decided to do with the Rondo sunburst I bought recently.

I sent it off today to Bruce Herron of Blue Star Guitar in Michigan who made me the Telecaster style mini bass. The Rondo is going to be a solid body in the violin shape with a simple red sunburst color. He's going to use a slab of butternut wood he has, also called white walnut. The parts will all come from the sunburst and that body will serve as a guide for the new body to route the neck pocket, bridge and electronics wells. The scale will be exactly the same, but the body will be longer to accommodate the tailpiece I sent.

I would post images as he progresses, but he has a policy of not showing the progress so that the final product will be a big reveal to the customer, which is OK with me since the Tele bass he made me came out so well. In lieu of that, here are images I've posted in other threads of both the blue and sunburst mods.

Wow Mike, those are really great looking, you always come up with interesting ideas. How long is it going to take to get them done?

The blue one has been sitting with Fren for about 6 weeks and he hasn't touched it yet. The sunburst I just sent to Bruce and will be there next week. He took about 4 months to build the Tele mini bass from scratch, including searching out wood and making a custom shaped and chromed bridge plate. Since he's only doing the body and pickguard, I hope it's just a month or so, he has the wood in hand.

Why didn't you have both done by the same person?

I thought I would have Fren do both of them since he's so close to me, but he's so busy that it's taking a long time just to cut the horns, refinish the head stock and make pickguards, so I decided to split the work just for the sake of shorter gratification time. I'll have one or the other first and play that, and very shortly after have the other, instead of a long wait for one, then another long wait.

Mike, are you talking to yourself on this thread? Each post has your name as the poster! Anyway, what a cool idea that violin bass is!

Yep, there was a lag of no replies, so I was having a little fun with myself. As you can see with both basses, I like having something different.

That's funny! I played my bass uke with a band I was subbing with on Saturday night. Since I'd never met them I brought my birdsong along just in case. However, they loved the uke bass and the birdsong stayed in the case. I have to say, I used my tc head plugged into their 4x10 cabinet, and the LR baggs electronics make such a huge difference in the sound. I also am running it through a tech 21 vt bass just for a little "ampeg-ness" but my zoom b1-on, which was providing major corrective eq with the stock hadean preamp, has been on bypass since the new electronics install.

With that being said, I look forward to seeing your modded basses! You're creative with your choices and have given me hope that arthritis won't derail my gigging life!

Mike, I love love love the blue one. Is that one a picture of an actual bass or a mock up of what it is going to look like when it is done? I hated the Hadean solid body that I had but you certainly make the idea of modding them pretty interesting.

Thanks Sherry, that's a mock up from Rondo's online photo, so it should look like that when it's done... who knows when. (It's my pseudo Rickenbacker when I knew I wouldn't spend $3000 on their 325 guitar to convert to bass.) After removing the shim from the sunburst, the sound was much improved, so I'll do the same for the blue when I get it back.