12/02/2023
My friend Nick at Rusty Spokes asked me to go over his new to him "Excel" bass almost a year ago and basically said next fall (2023) would be ok. The bass made it to my bench a few weeks ago and I thoroughly went over it. My attitude with this thing was poor since it was a $40-$50 bass bought randomly from somewhere and all the components seemed like junk. Seems I forgot where I come from temporarily, thinking everything good only if it's cost assumes quality. Shame on me, although most of the time you get what you pay for. Anyways, I dove in, and the following is a list of things I did to this bass.
1) disconnected strings from tuners and removed the neck. Set strings aside.
2) Removed the pickguard to access and inspect wiring, pots, and pups.
3) Removed the low end pup and epoxies it back into the cover.
4) Rotated and tightened the volume and tone pots.
5) Re assemble and installed pup and pickguard.
6) Tightened the bridge mounting screws.
7) Sanded neck pocket and replaced little plastic square shims with larger piece of ash wood.
8) straightened the neck checking the trussrod function and re-pressed all the frets then identified high frets. Sanded frets with a sanding beam to get them as level as can be.
9) Crowned the frets dressed the ends. Lightly polished frets with 1500 scour.
10) Installed and aligned neck.
11) Tightened tuning gear screws, trimmed and installed strings, lowered bridge saddles, tuned the strings, adjusted saddle height for no buzzing, adjusted intonation at 12th fret, and gave it a nice test drive.
After that I let tension overnight and made final adjustments and was a little surprised at how well it played and sounded for a dirt cheap bass if you play the frets light and use volume adjustment to get more bass. The bass is ready to be returned to it's owner. See pictures I will add comments to pictures to show what's up. Thanks, bill
