The Cashies Rescue Bass

Ah, the plight of the absolutely destroyed instruments found in pawn shops and secondhand stores around the world. Used, (usually briefly) abused, (usually extensively) and left to rot in some corner until the fated day comes where they are whisked anyway to be traded for much less cash than their owner was hoping to get, even given their dilapidated condition.

Then they enter a new phase of their life, perhaps the longest, as they join a purgatory of hanging, collecting dust, and serving as entertainment for the browsers. Suffering the gaze of thousands of eyes that do nothing but brush over their wounded form, and when a pair do settle on--the body, the neck, the head--they wince in pain, a mocking, empathetic yet empty response to the scars left by past ‘responsible’ parties.

At the beginning of their internment, they are given a number, a number of worth, of potential value in society. They may start with high hopes, and a number much higher than what their previous owner just walked away with. The longer they spend in purgatory, however, the lower this number will go, ticking away the time remaining before the promise of their potential value has all dried up.

This is usually where a dumpster and trash compactor enter the scene and things fade to black.

Such is the story for many instruments that enter a general secondhand retailer with existing functional or cosmetic damage. The retailer isn’t going to take the time to repair the instrument, they’ll simply set the price as high as they could possibly could given the condition, and gradually discount it until some gullible sucker sees the potential value of that item outweigh the number on the tag.

I am that sucker. And regularly have been.

And, you know, I really like to think about the lives, the existences that these scarred and broken instruments have had, to imagine the world from their perspective, and hope that I can, in some way, write a new chapter in their story and provide a potential path for it continuing on just a little bit more.

So anyway, I caught sight of an absolute train wreck of a bass while browsing the inventories of the local Adelaide Cash Converters. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from before I started working on it, but I’ll try and be descriptive in the rundown.

It was an ‘Artist’ brand, left-handed, Fender P-bass style 4-string, all black with no pick-guard.

A$50

‘Artist’ is a brand used by Chinese manufacturers selling generic instruments to Australian retailers. The same instruments are sold to U.S. retailers under the ‘Rogue’ brand.

Most immediately noticeable were the multiple areas of exposed wood, where either it had been smashed with something or something had been smashed by it, or some mix of both. There was an incredible amount of corrosion on every metal surface, even the frets, which were leaking green into the extremely dry fretboard. Even the little plastic bushings on the tuning pegs were cracked. Which only slightly distracted from the nickel plating of the pegs themselves bubbling up from moisture finding its way in.

The strings were similarly disgusting, coated in rust and corrosion, and standing a fair ways above the frets. The whole ensemble said, “I was left outside on a semi-covered porch for 6 months”

The jury is still out on whether or not this bass even made it through one gig before its owner decided to attempt to remodel his garage with it. That being said, its inherent nature as a cheap hunk of mass-produced crap likely saved its life.

These cheap solid body instruments are produced with very cheap lightweight wood products like chipboard that are impregnated with an epoxy resin. Even the ‘paint’ is a thick layer of coloured resin. This not only gives the instrument weight, and the impression of quality, but also makes them incredibly strong. Strong enough to take a beating, survive, and as punishment for surviving, spend 6 months exposed to the elements.

I planned to give the bass a new lease on life as a fretless. I hadn’t had a fretless since my old Squire which was given to me by an old high-school friend and then subsequently stolen out of my brother's car. In short, I was craving it, and needed something organic to handle the low end in my production work. To that end, I also wanted to incorporate my preferred modifications for the ultimate studio workhorse bass.

I picked up the bass from the Cashies, immediately removed the old strings, and began cleaning, as I really couldn’t bear to have all that filth and neglect in my immediate vicinity. I then disassembled the bass and began pulling frets and fret inlays, using steam to soften the dried-out fretboard in an attempt to prevent chipping. I then remembered that I was supposed to be taking pictures and documenting my progress, oops.

Prior to any repairs, signs of abuse.

Avoiding any chipping removing frets from a fretboard this dry was a moot point, unfortunately.

There are many ways to fill in a formally fretted fingerboard. Strips of veneer and two-part epoxies are popular options, with great focus paid to the compressive strength of the material, as tension from the strings will make the gaps left by the evacuated frets want to close, bowing the neck.

I decided to use Cyanoacrylate glue, also known as CA glue or super glue, which cures incredibly hard compared to off-the-shelf epoxies. Cyanoacrylate, once cured, can be worked and polished to a glass-like finish, and does not yellow or become cloudy with age.

Some luthiers use sawdust and CA glue to fill voids, and in my research, I saw a few advocating for this method in filling frets on a previously fretted fingerboard.

I decided to combine this method with another method using CA glue I had seen elsewhere. This was the use of everyday sidewalk chalk as a filler, binder, and catalyst for larger CA glue repairs. The powdered chalk is used to fill a void, with tape dams used to hold extra chalk powder above the void.

Using a fast enough (thin, watery) CA glue and pouring it into the chalk will result in it saturating the chalk. The chalk then acts as a catalyst for an extremely quick exothermic reaction of rapid polymerization. Or, in English, things get very hot and very hard very quickly. The resulting plastic is as hard as stone, owed to the loosely sorted matrix of chalk particles, and completely water resistant. As a bonus, it takes on the colours of coloured chalks perfectly well as well.

I picked up a variety box of sidewalk chalk and tested a few colours before settling on a blend of an aquamarine-y sort of colour that featured little bits of glitter throughout and a deep royal blue.

I started with the fingerboard and decided to use a combination of the aquamarine colour and black, as I thought having it all coloured would be too much. I followed a wave-like grain in the wood of the fretboard as the determining line between what would be coloured and what would be black on each fret-line. Secretly I hoped that this would come out looking similar to the fretboard of Victor Wooten’s signature bass.

The atrocious mess on the fingerboard that this process created did not dissuade me, and I continued with the same process patching the damage to the body of the bass.

Despite looking horrible and smelling worse, I was already confident at this point that this method was going to be successful in this unique repair application.

After cleaning up the fingerboard from the initial filling of the colour portion of the fret gaps, I then did the same process in black for the remaining portions of the fret gaps and inlays.

At this point, it might be important to say that I am performing this rescue in my tiny studio apartment with limited hand tools and sandpaper.

Cleaned up and sanded to ~1000 grit.

 I think.

I could then start cleaning up and polishing the body repairs while I began oiling and sealing the fingerboard.

Five coats of natural tung for colour and hydration, followed by 2 coats of polymerized tung for a seal and gloss finish.

Then in reassembly, we get some further modifications.

• Re-strung to be played right-handed, because I’m right-handed.

• Uses the top 4 strings from a 5-string set, making the tuning B-E-A-D.

• Uses tape-wound strings for a softer woody tone.

All of which required a new nut to be shaped and installed, and the bridge modified to accomodate the larger strings.

And since I changed so much with it, I decided to go ahead and scrape off the ‘Artist’ brand logo from the headstock, and add some colour up there as well.

After a quick set-up with the new strings and nut, it plays like a dream. The fingerboard is perfectly smooth, and the whole thing looks very sleek with the darker finish and bright accents. I would like to completely disassemble the body and do a full sand, smooth, and refinish. With the limitations of muscle power and elbow grease, I couldn’t quite get the repair sections fully flush and seamless. Still, it’s a fully functional, playable, instrument now with an optimistic outlook on its existence, instead of staring down the barrel of a dumpster.

In fact, it has already lent its voice to one of the soundtracks I produced for MOD. for their 2025 exhibition ‘Forever’, which has just launched! Link: https://mod.org.au/exhibitions/forever/