Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:41 am
Jim Glen asked me to give more details about the "Mink" bass, so I wrote back with the complete story, retold here. If you're not interested in the history, or reading about me (I understand, really!), just move on . . .
The first bass I bought was a no-brand Japanese Hofner copy for $89. A real one cost about $300 back in 1969. I always loved the shape. I bought this to sit-in with a band in Westwood Village (L.A. Cal.). I didn't get paid, and could only play basslines that I would learn from recordings. The act was a singer/guitarist, with a backup lead player, in a "Pizza Palace" on Friday nights, doing mostly covers, but with a few originals. His name was Jim Reeves -- no, not THAT Jim Reeves -- so he billed himself as James Lee Reeves. He became popular with the UCLA crowd, and later appeared in a short-lived TV series, "Nichols," with Jim Garner in 1971-72. Anyway, the other guitarist was Tom Wheeler, who went on to become the editor of "Guitar Player" magazine. Tom continues to write columns and author books on guitars (I think everyone has seen his books).
After college, I went into the USAF, and didn't do much with music for those four years. After that, I was then living outside of Boston, Mass., working as the director of an audio-visual service at a community college. In 1975, I started a band with a singer friend, and we went looking for a drummer and guitarist. The singer lined up two guitarists to try out. The first, Dennis McDonald, had moved there from Tulsa, OK. He had played with Dwight Twilley and Ruby Starr, and he could play the hell out of his gold-top Les Paul. Wow! We had our guitarist! We never tried out the second guy. His name was Tom Scholz who formed his own band, "Boston." Damn! If we had tried him first, we may have been "Boston"!
Anyway, we started working up tunes, and I realized that I needed a better bass. At that point in life, I was nuts on Chris Squire (well, I guess I still am), so I wanted to get a Rick. My fiance and I used to see a dance band in the area called "Northeast Expressway," and their bassist (name escapes me) had a blonde Rick. I talked with him between sets, and he told me he was selling the Rick to get a Gibson Ripper (he was into Greg Lake), so I bought the Rick from him. I think I paid $300 for it. It had large patches of the clearcoat worn off the back. There was a small humbucking pickup installed in the treble p/u cavity, but it didn't work. It was a '72, and I bought it in '75. Back then, it was just another Rick, not a desirable collectible as it is now.
I didn't know there were other colors. I think the only two Ricks I was aware of at the time were Squire's (which looked blonde) and McCartney's with that awful paint job.
Since I am a model airplane buff and know how to use an airbrush, I figured I could refinish the Rick. I really liked the color of the fretboard (which I thought was teak at the time) and wanted the body to be a burst of that color. So I bought me a can of Zip-Strip and proceeded to "refinish" the bass. It didn't take long for me to realize that the stripper was dissolving the plastic binding and the resin of the position markers. I quickly wiped off the stripper, and sanded off the rest of the finish. I planned on airbrushing cherry stain on the body, wiping off the excess, and then applying a polyurethane clear coat. Yeah, I can do this! Wish I knew then what I know now. Maple doesn't take "stain" well, so the burst job was more of a blotch job where maple takes or repels stain. Anyway, it looked OK from four feet or so. I airbrushed the polyurethane clear coat and let it dry. No finish sanding, no buffing; a few drips here and there, well, what the hell.
The band, "Fusillade," did well locally from 1975-77, but we never "made money." I got married and left the band to move to Fort Collins, Colorado, in '77 and rarely picked up the bass. I split from my first wife in '81, made a career move to Milwaukee in late '82 (magazine editor), and the bass slept under the guest bed for 26 years.
In fall of 2002, my company, Kalmbach Publishing, put on its annual profit-sharing party at which a pick-up band of employees entertains. They were short a bass player, and I thought, "Hmm. Maybe I can play." So I dusted off the old Rick, took it to a local Rick dealership (Wade's), replaced the flaking old tailpiece, put in a real Rick treble pickup, new Rotosound strings, and I was ready to go. We played with a Blues Brothers theme, so I dressed the part.
With my new-found Internet resources, I started looking at basses over the winter of 02-03. I always wanted a "real" Hofner Beatle bass, and since I now had money, I bought one, a Deluxe 5000/1 (blonde) from Northcoast Music (local for me). Wow! I started looking at my old Rick as sort of the ugly duckling. After discovering the Forum and the Dudepit, I bought a used Rick 4004C Cheyenne because I liked the wood. Now I had three basses. Then I bought a couple more Ricks, and a couple more Hofners. Still, my old '72 was the underappreciated twisted sister of the family. When I met Ted Staberow in the spring of '05, he showed me his basement workshop and the work he was doing on several old Ricks. I asked if he could help me restore my old '72. He said he would be "honored" and I gave him the carcass. He couldn't get to it until early spring of '06, but he sanded off the old, poorly applied finish, rebound the body and neck, leveled and refretted the fingerboard, and at my request, manufactured and installed real walnut headwings.
Ted has no provision to apply finishes, so I engaged Paul Wilczynski for that stage. Paul W. wasn't satisfied with the body binding. Ted did his best trying to salvage what was there originally, but Paul felt it would be better if all the binding was replaced, including the checker strip. I agreed, and Paul worked his magic. The color is an approximation of a finish I recall seeing on a custom Les Paul in Colorado in 1978. It was a burst of a slightly purplish brown that the owner said was "Mink." After describing it to Paul W., he sent me test strips of colors, and the finish you see was pretty close. It's not really brown enough to be described as "mink," but now the name is stuck. In hindsight, "Merlotglo" would be more apt, but, too late.
Paul W. delivered the bass to me at the 75th Anniversary celebration last August in Santa Ana, California, where it wowed the crowd. Joey Vasco was kind enough to ship it to me after the event, since I didn't want to risk it with the airline baggage handlers. I am totally satisfied with the job, and the old gal is new once again. In fact, she's my main player now. She's set up with the original Toaster, a replacement High-Gain in the treble position, original flat-key, closed-back Grover tuners, and TI Jazz Flat strings. Sounds great, too.
You've seen the "after" shots, here are a couple of "before" pix:
You can see the blotchiness caused by the uneven acceptance of the cherry stain on the maple.
So, if you're considering a restoration, look to Paul W. or Dale Fortune. It ain't cheap, but worth every penny.
The first bass I bought was a no-brand Japanese Hofner copy for $89. A real one cost about $300 back in 1969. I always loved the shape. I bought this to sit-in with a band in Westwood Village (L.A. Cal.). I didn't get paid, and could only play basslines that I would learn from recordings. The act was a singer/guitarist, with a backup lead player, in a "Pizza Palace" on Friday nights, doing mostly covers, but with a few originals. His name was Jim Reeves -- no, not THAT Jim Reeves -- so he billed himself as James Lee Reeves. He became popular with the UCLA crowd, and later appeared in a short-lived TV series, "Nichols," with Jim Garner in 1971-72. Anyway, the other guitarist was Tom Wheeler, who went on to become the editor of "Guitar Player" magazine. Tom continues to write columns and author books on guitars (I think everyone has seen his books).
After college, I went into the USAF, and didn't do much with music for those four years. After that, I was then living outside of Boston, Mass., working as the director of an audio-visual service at a community college. In 1975, I started a band with a singer friend, and we went looking for a drummer and guitarist. The singer lined up two guitarists to try out. The first, Dennis McDonald, had moved there from Tulsa, OK. He had played with Dwight Twilley and Ruby Starr, and he could play the hell out of his gold-top Les Paul. Wow! We had our guitarist! We never tried out the second guy. His name was Tom Scholz who formed his own band, "Boston." Damn! If we had tried him first, we may have been "Boston"!
Anyway, we started working up tunes, and I realized that I needed a better bass. At that point in life, I was nuts on Chris Squire (well, I guess I still am), so I wanted to get a Rick. My fiance and I used to see a dance band in the area called "Northeast Expressway," and their bassist (name escapes me) had a blonde Rick. I talked with him between sets, and he told me he was selling the Rick to get a Gibson Ripper (he was into Greg Lake), so I bought the Rick from him. I think I paid $300 for it. It had large patches of the clearcoat worn off the back. There was a small humbucking pickup installed in the treble p/u cavity, but it didn't work. It was a '72, and I bought it in '75. Back then, it was just another Rick, not a desirable collectible as it is now.
I didn't know there were other colors. I think the only two Ricks I was aware of at the time were Squire's (which looked blonde) and McCartney's with that awful paint job.
Since I am a model airplane buff and know how to use an airbrush, I figured I could refinish the Rick. I really liked the color of the fretboard (which I thought was teak at the time) and wanted the body to be a burst of that color. So I bought me a can of Zip-Strip and proceeded to "refinish" the bass. It didn't take long for me to realize that the stripper was dissolving the plastic binding and the resin of the position markers. I quickly wiped off the stripper, and sanded off the rest of the finish. I planned on airbrushing cherry stain on the body, wiping off the excess, and then applying a polyurethane clear coat. Yeah, I can do this! Wish I knew then what I know now. Maple doesn't take "stain" well, so the burst job was more of a blotch job where maple takes or repels stain. Anyway, it looked OK from four feet or so. I airbrushed the polyurethane clear coat and let it dry. No finish sanding, no buffing; a few drips here and there, well, what the hell.
The band, "Fusillade," did well locally from 1975-77, but we never "made money." I got married and left the band to move to Fort Collins, Colorado, in '77 and rarely picked up the bass. I split from my first wife in '81, made a career move to Milwaukee in late '82 (magazine editor), and the bass slept under the guest bed for 26 years.
In fall of 2002, my company, Kalmbach Publishing, put on its annual profit-sharing party at which a pick-up band of employees entertains. They were short a bass player, and I thought, "Hmm. Maybe I can play." So I dusted off the old Rick, took it to a local Rick dealership (Wade's), replaced the flaking old tailpiece, put in a real Rick treble pickup, new Rotosound strings, and I was ready to go. We played with a Blues Brothers theme, so I dressed the part.
With my new-found Internet resources, I started looking at basses over the winter of 02-03. I always wanted a "real" Hofner Beatle bass, and since I now had money, I bought one, a Deluxe 5000/1 (blonde) from Northcoast Music (local for me). Wow! I started looking at my old Rick as sort of the ugly duckling. After discovering the Forum and the Dudepit, I bought a used Rick 4004C Cheyenne because I liked the wood. Now I had three basses. Then I bought a couple more Ricks, and a couple more Hofners. Still, my old '72 was the underappreciated twisted sister of the family. When I met Ted Staberow in the spring of '05, he showed me his basement workshop and the work he was doing on several old Ricks. I asked if he could help me restore my old '72. He said he would be "honored" and I gave him the carcass. He couldn't get to it until early spring of '06, but he sanded off the old, poorly applied finish, rebound the body and neck, leveled and refretted the fingerboard, and at my request, manufactured and installed real walnut headwings.
Ted has no provision to apply finishes, so I engaged Paul Wilczynski for that stage. Paul W. wasn't satisfied with the body binding. Ted did his best trying to salvage what was there originally, but Paul felt it would be better if all the binding was replaced, including the checker strip. I agreed, and Paul worked his magic. The color is an approximation of a finish I recall seeing on a custom Les Paul in Colorado in 1978. It was a burst of a slightly purplish brown that the owner said was "Mink." After describing it to Paul W., he sent me test strips of colors, and the finish you see was pretty close. It's not really brown enough to be described as "mink," but now the name is stuck. In hindsight, "Merlotglo" would be more apt, but, too late.
Paul W. delivered the bass to me at the 75th Anniversary celebration last August in Santa Ana, California, where it wowed the crowd. Joey Vasco was kind enough to ship it to me after the event, since I didn't want to risk it with the airline baggage handlers. I am totally satisfied with the job, and the old gal is new once again. In fact, she's my main player now. She's set up with the original Toaster, a replacement High-Gain in the treble position, original flat-key, closed-back Grover tuners, and TI Jazz Flat strings. Sounds great, too.
You've seen the "after" shots, here are a couple of "before" pix:
You can see the blotchiness caused by the uneven acceptance of the cherry stain on the maple.
So, if you're considering a restoration, look to Paul W. or Dale Fortune. It ain't cheap, but worth every penny.
and maybe someday soon you'll come across one.