My Spector Project

Earlier in the year I purchased a Spector Legend 5 for just $400 with a case and shimmed neck. It became my favorite bass immediately. The feel, the looks, and for certain the tone. The very best tone on the planet as far as I'm concerned is Alex Webster's Spector. So guttural and burpy.

One day I was reading up on the specs of his Spector and comparing them to mine. For $3,500 more than what I spent, you get a slightly wider neck (Yuck), brass nut, brass frets, and the most important IMO the EMG DC40 Pups with the EMG BCQ Preamp. This preamp and pup set runs around $330. That's when I decided to make myself a webster Spector. People in this area are afraid to work on brass nuts for some reason and charge insane prices to have them cut due to their lack of experience with them so far now, I will go sans the brass nut.

I ended up stripping the bass and ordered the BCQ first. IT DOES NOT FIT. The Legend series routes out the control panel with circular indention's that shape to the Tone Pump Jr. preamp that comes with it. I ended up going to a Luthier here in town and he said he can't fix this. His router only goes 1 inch. He pretty much told me to go to a furniture maker and they can probably do it. I kind of like this idea so long as they can in fact do it.

I just ordered the pickups. I ended up reading about the EMG X-Series and after asking a few people about them compared to the originals, I decided to spend an extra 20 bucks and grab the EMG 40DCX pups. More head room, less compression, and more POWUH!

It's an exciting project for me. The idea that I'm saving $3000 and hopefully getting nearly the exact same tone, maybe even more so.

Ill make a video of the end result which should be in a couple of weeks. I still haven't called in furniture makers.

http://www.spectorbass.com/uploads/ProductPage_HeroLg/EURO5LXAW_1920x500.jpg

Post pictures of progress?

Right now I'm in the process of calling furniture makers. I've not gotten any contact so far. This is a diagram of how the control looks now and what changes I want made.

I also commissioned a brass nut replica of my current nut and after shipping, it's only costing me 19 bucks. The only thing really missing after all is said and done will be the brass frets. That's a $300 job about.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/Spector%20Control%20Cut.png

Well, I lucked out.

I tried Guitar Center as a last ditch effort (I don't like the company nor the specific store here). I walked in thinking if they COULD do the job, they would charge $250 and take 3 weeks. Instead, the guy is doing it for $50 and it will be ready in 2 days. Can't wait to get this thing setup and plugged in.

I ordered a small brass nut off of eBay and the guy filed the string slots to a smaller gauge than what I had ordered. I asked the GC tech how much it would cost to have him make the gauges bigger and he said $80 by itself. Routing 2 inches into a block of would and carving out detail costs less money than a 3 minute job on a nut. Crazy.

I ordered a small brass nut off of eBay and the guy filed the string slots to a smaller gauge than what I had ordered. I asked the GC tech how much it would cost to have him make the gauges bigger and he said $80 by itself. Routing 2 inches into a block of would and carving out detail costs less money than a 3 minute job on a nut. Crazy.

that's fair for the routing work which is a an easy day's work that you could do yourself if you had a good router and workspace.... that's a deal for the nut, shaping a nut, particularly hard materials like bone and brass is tedious, difficult and (believe it or not) poisonous work. He is hooking you up for 80 bucks out of a corporate retailer like GC. I would charge you 100 to work on it in my shed.

the refret will cost you... refretting is REALLY tedious and time consuming and even I won't DIY it... its removing the old frets that wigs me out... I really have to question what brass frets willa dd to your bass tonally. Nickel/silver frets are another medium hardness alloy and should sound similar, heck, even stainless steel frets don't sound THAT different, they just last longer. It seems like the expensive refret is really just cosmetic work that you could put off or ignore completely. If it were me I woulda got a nut made from an alloy that matched the existing frets, brass doesn't have quite as much musical magic as people think. I have a lot of experience with brass vs steel as far as nuts, saddles and strat sustain blocks go and only in telecaster and ABR-1 saddles is there a distinct difference... any metal nut does the metal nut sound on guitar (though I think brass is popular because its a little easier to file than steel), though on bass YMMV

Update:

Guitar Center's tech did a really shitty job. He cut through the wall of the pickup cavity and ended up sloppily gluing a chunk of wood in the way to cover it up. His carving job looked like he whittled the wood with a pocket knife. It was so unprofessional I really should have just risked doing it myself and buying a router. He also did not route out all the pieces I wanted.

I decided to truck along and attempt to put the pickups and preamp in. Because of the new piece of wood in the pickup cavity, my screws were getting stuck. I bought a 4 amp power driver and ended up stripping the hell out of the screws. I've never seen a perfectly round screw before today.

I manage to make new holes and get my pickups in. As I start to hook up the wires to the new preamp system I notice that the picture on the manual doesn't match up to my actual peices. I double check to make sure it's the same system and indeed it is. This BCQ system says its passive, the HZ version. When I bought this item, I asked the EMG salesman on the phone all the questions I could muster before the purchase. He claimed that this was the system I needed to be able to use active or passive pickups and that the other system was for passive only. Going through the manual and the wires, there are only 5 pins on the active control balance which is the first in the chain. The pickups have 6 pins worth of plug-ins. each has a black, a white, and a red.

The actual preamp itself has so little room, Im not even sure if it's possible to hook it all up now.

Here lately Ive had some major anger problems. I've been getting worse and worse to the point that I distain being around other people. Stuff like this going on just adds rage to the pile. I'm going to see if the Tarpley's music in town can get this thing together. If not, I will have wasted my best bass and hundreds of dollars on equipment and services for nothing.

Update:

Guitar Center's tech did a really shitty job.

I am not entirely surprised given the price he charged you. No one working for a 3rd party who has proper and sane attention to detail would put in that much labor so cheaply unless they intended to rush through. That said, it was a fairish price for a private tech working out of his house. I coulda done it in a day in the shed and would have charged 100 bucks. I know from my experience working for Sam Ash as a tech for a few days before getting fed up with them that they did nothing to test the skills I claimed to have and that I could have been lying out my ass about my ability to repair/modify electronics, set up guitars and perform basic woodworking tasks. In my case I was able to do all the things required of a tech and also assess any valuable vintage gear that walked in for hidden defects, however a less scrupulous person will come in having only replaced the odd humbucker and straightened a few necks planning to learn the difficult tasks on the job. Then he's learning on YOUR precious instrument.

I am sorry to hear that this negative experience has added to your anger issues. My ex-wife has major anger problems and she has attempted to quell them by avoiding people, sadly it only made them worse as solitude makes you even more intolerant of others as you become less and less used to putting up with their foibles and faults. Always remember that you have probably done some bonehead things yourself that pissed other people off and hang onto the times when you met someone who checked their rage and forgave you (or at least pretended to, sometimes pretense is the only thing that keeps society from descending into a firefight). In this case you are right to be worked up, particularly given that money was eschanged for services that were not properly performed...

but there is a lot of potential for redress because you are dealing with a national, niche retailer. When you calm down I would go to the manager and politely register a complain about the way this idiot mangled your prize spector. Gently let him know that guitar center is about to lose your business, even on strings (implying heavily that you will disseminate this story by word of mouth and through the internet) and ask him what, if anything, he intends to do about it. Given GC's sorry bottom line these days it is likely he will eat at least some of the cost of the work in order to keep his branch's reputation intact and keep his sorry-ass job shilling b-grade guitars for top dollar.

as for the stripped screws, they are probably made of cheap Chinese 'steal' (heh heh) with too much carbon in it. I run into this problem all the time with modern wood screws, but never with old ones. I try to keep a stash of common sizes around in case a modern wood screw in a guitar or cabinet strips or breaks.

Gently let him know that guitar center is about to lose your business, even on strings (implying heavily that you will disseminate this story by word of mouth and through the internet) and ask him what, if anything, he intends to do about it.

I think you should go on Reddit and start ranting.

Give details.

Let the lot of 'em know how terrible Guitar Centre is, calm down, and hopefully you will help people to avoid said Guitar Centre's tech.

Gently let him know that guitar center is about to lose your business, even on strings (implying heavily that you will disseminate this story by word of mouth and through the internet) and ask him what, if anything, he intends to do about it.

I think you should go on Reddit and start ranting.

Give details.

Let the lot of 'em know how terrible Guitar Centre is, calm down, and hopefully you will help people to avoid said Guitar Centre's tech

rolls eyes see if GC will fix your fucking bass first

I forgot to take photos BEFORE I put conductive paint back on but I will upload 2 photos later today of it after. You can still see that nothing is level and of course, the big block of unknown wood and glue jutting out.

After what Boom just wrote? I wouldn't trust my crap Aria with that tech, then again, It's probably relative to the location.

Let's hope the Hollywood branch has a good tech... for future reference.

Keep the updates coming, Boom.

Alright. I went to Tarpley's Music and spoke with the head guy. He suggested I go to McLuthier's. Dude actually has Luthier in his name. I've dealt with him before and in fact, he was the guy who I went to first about the route job and said "I don't have a router that can work that deep". Tarpley's said the only thing they could do is call a guy they know to come pick it up and work on it. I said I didn't like that idea.

I head to McLuthiers place. I walk in and sit in front of his bench. He comes in and sees it's me. I have had the feeling that he does not want to work with me because of an incident we had a year ago. One of my rare Takamines were in his shop on consignment and when I picked it up months later it had a cracked neck. He said it was like that, I said Iit didn't. Months later I end up talking to a guy who I was trading with on craigslist. We started discussing McLuthiers and I mentioned the cracked neck thing. The guy's face froze as if I just said the guy was secretly Hitler. I always figured the word got back to him. Maybe, maybe not. Anyways...

I tell McLuthier what I need. I need him to install the preamp and hook it up to the pickups. I also need the pot holes widened slightly and maybe some light shaving to accommodate the massive EMG pots. He seemed very interested in doing it. We agreed on $100 for the job and he said if anything else needed to be done to make it work, he'd call me with a quote first. I explained to him my situation with this bass and all the stress I've been going through with it. He said he liked my thinking on buying a cheaper Spector and making it an expensive one. He said he does the same thing. He buys MIM Fenders and upgrades them to high end guitars for his personal preferences.

When I explained the differences between my bass and Alex Webster's, he was shocked at the idea of brass frets. He had never heard of them before.

Here are the photos of the botched route job AFTER I sprayed my conductive paint on it with a few layers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151004_043109.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151004_043127.jpg

It's not AS noticeable now, but the second photo shows where the chunk of wood was just glued over a hole. Gaps, spaces, and wood glue all over.

Oh! I forgot to mention. The reason for me going to Guitar Center was because ALL.... that's right, ALL furniture makers, cabinet designers, and craftsmen in town refused to even return my calls.

Oh! I forgot to mention. The reason for me going to Guitar Center was because ALL.... that's right, ALL furniture makers, cabinet designers, and craftsmen in town refused to even return my calls.

that's the down ide of living in a "t0wN'... where I live we get available amenities but there's nowhere to park....

Lubbock is a decent size. I grew up in a town of 6,000 (2,000 of those were university students) and then moved from there to Austin and San Antonio. Lubbock I think is 236,000 right now and we do get a lot of businesses building here but they are useless to me. Mostly "Crazy guys burgers and shakes from California" or "Trendy clothing outlet for girls that want to dress like Delia from Beetlejuice". The scene here for artistic expression is very low for some reason.

I've always said I wouldn't ever move back to Alpine, TX but I think in a year or so I will to further my education. Cheapest University in Texas and has some Ivy League professors. They call Sul Ross "Harvard on the Hill" due to a large number of high end professors going there for tenure and retirement. My first semester there, my Botany 1301 Professor was the world's foremost Peyote Expert, Dr. Martin Terry. It's pretty common to get a big scientific name out there as a teacher. Of course, Sul Ross hit the limelight a few years ago because of Dr. Sechrest. They sent The Daily Show to the town and interviewed LITERALLY the 3 most insane people we had in town as our representatives.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/mp3jqt/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-comfortably-dumb

"Trendy clothing outlet for girls that want to dress like Delia from Beetlejuice".

I love this analogy.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/mp3jqt/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-comfortably-dumb

To be honest, this interview thing made no sense to me. I didn't understand the point of it, and it left wondering why Comedy Central did that.

What I did get was that poster with the word clod. I miss using that word to stupid people.

Well, had to contact EMG. It seems the reason for me being unable to figure out how to plug it all in was that EMG had the wrong part in my preamp box. They put in an older model Active Balance control which is why they don't have enough pins for active pickups, at least that's what EMG thinks happened. We sent them photos and serial numbers. It's a good thing I ordered this directly from EMG. Makes things easier.

I was told if they are correct that the ABC is the wrong one for my box, they will send me the correct one for free. Sweet.

I was told if they are correct that the ABC is the wrong one for my box, they will send me the correct one for free. Sweet.

well there's some good new on the Spector front

After what Boom just wrote? I wouldn't trust my crap Aria with that tech, then again, It's probably relative to the location.

Let's hope the Hollywood branch has a good tech... for future reference.

I would stay away from big box stores for any tech work. As I've said many times, when Sam Ash hired me they didn't test my skills in ANY WAY. In LA you have a world of amazing guitar and amp techs at your fingertips. Seriously, you have everybody. For tube amps alone you have Dave Friedman, Billy Zoom, Fred Taccone.... you guys are lucky.

UPDATE:

My EMG Tech was sick or on vacation or something since Thursday. He's sending the part to me free of charge.

He mentioned on the phone that they have one specifically designed for the X series pickups I have that is made without a buffer. I'm hoping I get that one!