Mikro goodness

Had some gear time yesterday (because I did not watch the National Day parade) as it was a public holiday. It was bass day. 

I'm still overwhelmed by standard-sized basses so my basses are essentially short-scaled models or a travel version of a popular model. The person who gave me this bass used to sell me his guitar pickups not too long ago. He switched to drums for good so he decided to hand this over to me as a gift. I was obliged to pay him for this but he refused. Before we parted, I gave his son some school pocket money instead which he accepted on his son's behalf.

Folks, a reminder that porous wood dries over time. Here's how a dry & treated (final 2 frets) wood surfaces look like. I will usually let the treated area absorb as much oil as possible & in most cases, it's left overnight. The residue would be wiped away before proceeding to re-string the instrument.

The hardware was thoroughly cleaned but the strap buttons were replaced. One of them was dislodged & it remained inside the bag without the previous owner realizing it. So it dented the body on some areas when the bag was moved around. The other strap button turned green & they both made way for  GOTOH replacements.

Last but not least, a fresh set of strings. Yes, a short scale set was used as indicated on the top right corner of the package but that doesn't look too obvious. Of course, regular bass string sets would work but these strings were made longer to accommodate standard sized basses. The issue would be the tapered length at the string tip; this would occur later on the string length which means you require more winding at the post & that's not a good thing for short scaled basses as the winding would require some overlapping. By the way, this string set was left unopened for more than a year & there's absolutely no tarnish / rust so top marks for D'Addario for doing it right in terms of shelf life preservation.