Sabbath Bassey Sabbath: The Devil’s Workshop
A while back I decided to pick up the Bass again after a quarter of a century of not playing. Way back in the day I was friends with some folks who were in a band, took over their sound board when their engineer quit, then ended up playing Bass when the original Bass player and Guitarist had a falling out. I can’t say that I ever really knew how to play very well, but they handed me a Bass and showed me notes to play. I bought myself my own bass, a very used G&L L2000 in the late 80s, and took some lessons, but after I also had a falling out with those friends, I didn’t really play very much after that.
Ten years ago or so a friend of mine won a few grand from Sam Ash in a contest on YouTube and bought me my acoustic Washburn Bass. Again, I played it a little and tucked it away as I pursued other interests while the reality of existence crushed my soul at various dayjobs. After moving to Providence a little while ago, I made a point of Keeping the Washburn out so I had to see it every day. This had the desired effect of urging me to pick it back up again.
The Washburn isn’t an easy bass to play since you can’t adjust the action and the G&L has always had a wiring problem that makes it sketchy, so, I bought a cheap Squire. The Squire was perfectly fine for what it was but noticeably less enjoyable to play than the G&L. It was also, well, kinda boring. I probably should have just taken the G&L to get fixed and saved myself a bunch of cash, but I got an idea stuck in my head, which was probably way more complicated than even just trying to fix the G&L myself, and I just had to fuck with the Squire.
Under the expert supervision of Oliver the Rat, I proceeded to dismantle the unlucky four string. I had considered building a new Bass from a kit just to learn how to do it all, but I figured it would probably be easier just to take one I already had and break it down. There would be a little less finishing to do and I figured that everything should fit together correctly without having to fuck with it too much, or so I thought. If this turned out well, I’d build another Bass from a kit in the future, probably a five string.
The actual spark for this endeavor was from learning that EMG made a set of signature Geezer Butler pickups that would fit (in theory) my new Bass. As with many an old thunder finger, Geezer has always been my inspiration for wanting to play Bass. Sabbath has always been my go-to band since my childhood in the 70s. As Henry Rollins once wisely said, “You can only trust yourself and the first six Black Sabbath albums.”
I bought the appropriate “PJ” set of pickups that were supposed to be a direct fit with the PJ Squire Bass that I have. A “PJ” Bass has the split coil Precision Bass pickups at the neck and one single coil Jazz pickup at the bridge. Tragically though, since this is an Indonesian Squire made on the cheap, the cutout for the bridge pickup was a bit too small to fit the new pickup. I had to Dremel out the space a which took off the shielding paint so I had to Dremel it out even more to make space for the copper tape I wanted to use instead of getting some of that paint.
Another issue with the old pickups was that they were all padded with a bit of sticky sided foam between the pickup and the inside of the guitar body. This is a ridiculously cheap way to add spring to the back of the pickups to adjust their height. Even if I wanted to reuse them, the connections on the new EMG pickups would get in the way and potentially cause their heights to be off kilter. I ordered some specific pickup springs and installed them as properly as I figured they should.
With the signature Geezer Bulter pickups installed I figured I still needed to Sabbath this ax out a bit more. I decided to black out the headstock, but only the front face. One thing I do like about this Squire over my G&L is that the neck does not have any gloss finish on it. It has a nice, sanded wood feel without any of that lacquer stick to it and I wanted to keep that. After the base black dried, I added a lovely inverted cross in purple taken from the design of a cross I’d be adding to the fretboard later. Close inspection shows that I did kind of a hack job, but it looks great from a distance and I like it.
After the headstock was done, I lightly sanded the fake Rosewood fretboard and murdered it out with black ink. After I was happy with a couple of coats, I added the fake inlay crosses. I was really skeptical about how well they’d turn out, they’re just delicate foil stickers that cover the existing inlays. I must say that, on this Guitar, they really do look awesome. My only concern is that they’ll peel and flake over time, especially if I do a lot of string bending.
Last thing for the neck was replacing the tuning machines. The stock ones worked, but they kinda sucked and I wanted them black. I could have just cheapened out and gotten a standard set of black replacement tuners but my bank account was hemorrhaging already, so I got some really nice HipShots. There were some mixed comments online about how well they swapped out on Squires and the verdict ended up being that I had to re-drill some new holes to get them to fit. The G-A strings are standard, really nice tuners while the E string got a wicked nice Bass Xtender which tunes it from standard E to a Drop D with just a flick of a switch. I do wish I left in the original chrome bushings since I think they’d compliment the silver inlay stickers on the fretboard. Ah, well, they still look great.
Instead of keeping the entire Bass black, I did want to add a bit of color. I wanted the accents to be that Masters of Reality purple, which is what I was going for with that inverted cross design on the headstock. I tried ordering a purple pick guard but the one that arrived was far more pink than purple. Since I had plenty of paint, I lightly sanded the original black pickguard that came with the Squire and hit it with that purple spray paint. It wasn’t a perfect paintjob but I really fucking love how it turned out.
The next thing I had to do before reassembling this bad bitch was add the new bridge, also from HipShot. This is their KickAss bridge and was luckily a direct fit unlike those tuning machines that I had to drill new holes for. One of the things I like about these bridges is the ability to adjust the string spacing. I set them as thin as I could (17mm?) since my fingers are short. I’m wondering if I’ll have the ambition to try some different spacing or not, we’ll see.
Everything reassembled just fine with the new, black knobs, black string tree, black straplocks, black graphite nut, and black, unbranded neckplate holding it all together. It felt solid, I didn’t strip out any wood anywhere that I didn’t intend to, and it was ready to string. Just for the fuck of it, I got a set of DR Black Beauties to fill out the blackening. The strings are really pretty and have a significant punch, but they feel a lot different than the Ball or Rotosound strings I’ve used up to this point.
It feels and sounds like a whole new instrument. It took a while to get the intonation right, and I still need to work on it a little more as it still turns a little sharp as you go up the neck. The Drop-D extender wasn’t really all that hard to set up and it works flawlessly. I am really happy how this came out and I’m inspired to now build a five string kit Bass. I will, of course, post all about that when it happens, it’s already ordered.
