Yamaha bass page

I sold my bass because it was just collecting dust and taking up space (and I needed the money). Bad move. It would currently cost the equivalent of 6 months of car repairs to replace my old '71 Jazz Bass; so, like many guys seem to be doing these days, I decided to build one. (Plunking down a couple of hundred $$$ to buy one that's already assembled would be too easy and anybody can do that, right?) I paid $31 for this Yamaha BB450 bass body on eBay. I don't know what type of music the seller played, but it looks like it involved target practice. One reason I chose this particular body was because it was modified to accept a Fender-compatible neck.

The BB450 is described as an intermediate-level instrument that was only available for a couple of years in the '80s. If it was a decent instrument to start with, I figured that with a little tweaking of the electronics, I could stretch it out a little.

(all pictures are thumbnailed)

This is what a Yamaha BB450 bass looks like in the catalog or on the wall of a music store...	...and this is what mine looked like when I opened the box from the eBay auction. Note the plug in the neck pocket for the Fender neck.

Here's the beast once again, after sanding and plugging up the holes. Note that the control holes have been filled in to accommodate my modifications to the electronics.	Being the high-tech kind of guy I am, I applied the primer using the latest Computerized Pigment Application Technology (C-PAT). No expense has been spared (none whatsoever!), including the 'natural' system of overspray removal. (The lawn deer are the QC inspectors.)


If anybody ever tells you that pick-up covers and guards don't grow on trees, now you can set 'em straight! Like the body, the plastic had also been through the mill and needed refinishing, too.

Okay. After flushing an entire summer down the drain trying to make this thing look any kind of decent, I finally gave in and let a pro take over. There's a body shop in an industrial area near the airport where their paintmeister, who is also a guitar player, makes silk purses out of sows' ears. This color is Nogaro Blue, from the Audi color chart (as seen on S4s).

And voila! The finished product, completed on Jan. 18, 2004! For the propellerheads: * Mighty Mite Fender-licensed Precision Bass neck (with no-name tuners) * Original Yamaha BB450 P- and J-style pick-ups (that actually sound quite good!) * Volume/Tone stack is a pair of 500K/500K concentric pots (a la '62 Jazz Bass); .047 uf caps for each pick-up * Gibson-style pick-up selector switch * DPST phase-reversal switch for the bridge pick-up (for that '80s sound...the jury's still out on the merits of this) * Medium-gauge flatwound strings (for that '60s sound) anchored onto a no-name bridge * Plexiglas pickguard over plastic silver/white pearloid drum wrap

No decent instrument would be complete without a nickname. My last purchase was a used case from a music dealer in Grandview. As I was checking the fit in one of the cases, he asked, "So exactly what have you got wrapped up in this Frankenstein bass?" The name clicked -- and stuck. It fits like a glove.

Frankenstein: The Bass Guitar

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