The CORRECT McCartney Conversion...

[Grey]

Is that a drawing of a shark attacking someone on your door.

[jps]

I should've brushed out my beard...

Are you that good with Photoshop?

[teeder]

Looks great, but I thought I clicked on the Duck Dynasty forum.

(Just kidding. I'm jealous because I can't grow a beard)

[lucky]

Can you flip the picture for the full McCartney look, the bass looks great by the way .

[scotty]

Looks great Rick are you and Mark happy with the outcome ?

[bobbolux]

those better not be "high tension" flatwounds, or the neck might fall off.

looks great!

[deaconblues]

Great job! Why didn't these come from the factory looking like that? Much more accurate.

[congerz83]

those better not be "high tension" flatwounds, or the neck might fall off.

looks great!

I painted some thick fishing line... I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

[congerz83]

Looks great Rick are you and Mark happy with the outcome ?

I am VERY satisfied with the results. Neck feels a lot better too. (Probably because I've been playing my 4003 too much )

[congerz83]

Looks great, but I thought I clicked on the Duck Dynasty forum.

(Just kidding. I'm jealous because I can't grow a beard)

Da Beard IS a legend... Happy to have him in my life...

[teeder]

Digging the Steeler gear too!

[walker]

Can you flip the picture for the full McCartney look, the bass looks great by the way .

Here's the opposite of that - Rick's bass in the normal perspective, and McCartney's reversed:

[johnallg]

Very nice and I'm really glad it is playable. But you guys missed the mark with the grain. Rich's has much nicer maple. I am amazed Macca's has such plain wood. Most all early Ricks have nicely figured maple.

[walker]

Great job! Why didn't these come from the factory looking like that? Much more accurate.

Thanks, Dan. Some additional notes on what I did in this last phase - stripping off the RIC factory finish and redoing it in a more vintage color; I sanded down both horns to a narrower shape, obviously; I moved the top horn strap pin up by about 3/16" (but looking at the photos, it probably could have gone up an additional 1/8"). I also shortened the bottom horn by about 1/4". On both McCartney's bass and Rick's C64, the bottom horn tip extended approximately to the midpoint between the 18th & 19th fret, but the point where the bottom horn meets the neck was cut in way too deep on Rick's bass. I don't know if all the C64 basses are cut this same way. It's almost in up to the edge of the fretboard, but McCartney's bottom horn comes up just behind the last fret. Not much I could do about that outside of cutting an entirely new bottom piece and replacing the old one, but then that gets into putting time & money into the bass that may have gotten into the "excessive" range. Plus, the initial goal was to just give a facelift to the whole bass as it was. So I opted to recreate the same line that runs down McCartney's bottom horn, which puts the tip of Rick's horn at about the 19th fret. Hard to tell from the before & after photos of Rick's bass, but there was a lot of "acreage" removed from the bottom horn. I also shaved down the top two corners of the pickguard to match Macca's.

Before:


After:


The bridge is set pretty high at this point. The neck now has a nice slight back-angle to it, (not to be confused with back-bow). Before the neck angle & cavity damage was corrected, the bridge was set all the way flat and the string height was still in the "tightrope walking" range.

[walker]

Is that a drawing of a shark attacking someone on your door?

Thanks for noticing that, Erik. That could be the most important piece of detail in this whole thread. Here's a close study: