[Micahb]

Back to business!
I finished with the filling of the fretboard and I sanded it down.
Decided to not use the radius block after all. I talked to two local repair dudes and they said go for it, just be careful.

I bought the wrong epoxy so I couldn't do that yet, so now I'm stuck a day or two... I decided to string it up and plug it in - I'm using tape wounds, I don't think it should do any damage to play for a few minutes.
But my problem is that it sounds way better then I thought it would, and now I want to just play it...

[Micahb]

Project update:

Ditched the epoxy idea. I am only going to play it with flats, and after talking to people I was told if I'm not using rounds I don't need epoxy.
I put a tung oil finish on the neck and have been playing it for a week and a bit now. I gave it two coats a day for three or four days with some very light sanding in between, let it sit for a day, then gave it a final sand.
Then I had to replace the bridge. The old bridge was very high mass, and the saddles were huge. I had them down all the way and the action was still very high. Also, I had them pulled all the way back and they wouldn't intonate.
I've had some jazz bass bridge laying around my house for about two years now - not sure american or what, somebody gave it to me for an old project and I never ended up using it - so I threw that on... the bass is now slightly uglier. I found out that the bridge on there wasn't the original one, and there are a bunch of holes from the original bridge. The last one on covered them, but now they are slightly sticking out. Oh well. You wouldn't notice it when I'm on stage, it just looks a little funny sitting beside me right now.

So that was done, then I went and bought some chromes, strung it up aaand... I am loving this thing to death. The first show was very rough. I talked to some people and they said it sounded great, and I was playing fine but I felt so awkward because I was staring at my hands the entire time. Our weekend show was already better and I'm expecting to feel much more natural at our gig tonight.

At first I wasn't digging the pickups too much, but they have kind of grown on me. Plus, I want a really heavy distortion with a couple parts or some songs we do and with the high output from the pickup it is really just a monster.
I was planning on ditching the EMG for a passive Fralin P/J set , but after figuring out how to EQ this thing, and deciding I really like the heavy sound, I'm sticking with EMGs. I picked up a used but fairly new jazz bass bridge pickup from the guitar tech at my work today for $50 and now I have to make some decisions...
Do I want to pay him to rout the body, or do I want to do it myself? I also need to decide how close to the bridge I want it... it's my understanding that there are a couple different places to put it, depending on the era of tone you're going for, but seeing as I'm not going to be getting any classic fender tone out of it anyway I'm not quite sure.

I think for controls I'm going to go volume/volume/tone on the front and move the jack to the side. Perhaps I'll go concentric pots, though... I kind of want to have two tone knobs. We'll see.
If I'm getting him to do it I'll have to wait until January probably as I'm fairly strapped for cash. I'm going to grab a router and some 2x4s and see what I can do before I decide.

Heres a pic. The upper frets are pretty gross because I will never play them and don't care. Next time I put some more tung oil on the fretboard I'll fix it up.