We received this bass at the very end of last year, and have been thinking of ways to repair it. This is bass 73-30, and it spent some time underwater after a hurricane. It is pretty badly damaged as you would expect.
Most obvious is the body laminations separating:
Kinda funky around the jacks:
Of course the bridge suffered some corrosion:
The plates need some help:
Peghead doesn't look bad from the front:
But on the back, the veneers are separating, though not really visible in this picture:
It's really hard to see how the neck shrunk in a picture, but here's a try:
So we've got several ideas on what to do here. I wish it never happened style: 1. replace the neck 2. saw the body apart, smooth gluing surfaces and add an accent laminate to make up the thickness 3. clean up the brass 4. refinish in oil 5. repair electronics I'm pretty sure we have a Maple/Purpleheart neck from 1976 that we could use on this project. We'd have to make a new neck to use the same woods as the original. Hurricane tribute style: 1. smooth the neck for playing 2. glue and clamp peghead joint 3. inject epoxy where the body lams are separating, but leave the separation as part of the history of the bass 4. clean up hardware to useable condition 5. repair electronics At least one person here wants to leave it alone, mount it like a trophy fish and leave it as a decoration. I personally vote for the first option, but you'll have to decide how aggressive you want us to be on the repair, Michael. It won't ever be the same, but we can make it a functioning part of your musical life again.
