Update from Rick Turner:
I've started in on replacing missing wood. I got some Osage orange and duplicated the neck laminate layup...Osage, walnut, and maple...and inlaid it between the neck and past where the original tailpiece was mounted. Next I'll inlay two pieces of koa to fill in the top on either side of the central neck beam. I decided not to completely replace the top, even though some of the repair seams will inevitably show, but better that than doing more horrendous damage to what is left of the original top. I think I can match the color and grain reasonably with some koa I got from my pal John Reuter ( Roberto Venn School of Lutherie...major Deadhead ).
Still mulling over pickups and electronics. My thought is to bring this bass forward about 40 years and honor much of the original intent while allowing what I've learned in that time to come forth. Yes, it will get a quad pickup, but this time it will be one of my piezos, and the full quad output may wind up as an option. The neck and bridge pickups will be self-hum canceling, and they will be mono/stereo pickups, that is, in mono mode, each will be a hum canceller with coils that sort of overlap for the A and D strings. The effect in stereo mode is a true stereo pan, and in this mode, the pickups buck hum from neck to bridge, neck to bridge. The magnetic arrangement is:
N S
S N
I'll use some filter electronics from John East, and the two channels will stay separate at the normal output.
I'm not even going to try to duplicate all of the micro-processor pickup assignment switching that was touch switch operated on the original setup. That was all the white circles on the bass side of the face. I'll just do inlays there and maybe pop LED's in next to them for kicks.
I am documenting the hell out of this process, and I'm writing this all up for an article for Vintage Guitar Magazine.
Much thanks to George Gruhn for finding Mission Control and sending it to me for the restoration.
OH, it's in the original case as well.
