TREASURED BASS

“Not a mod in its strictest sense, but this did involve modifying how a certain instrument played and looked. My great friend and bandmate of 35 years, Roger Newell, died recently. I wanted a musical keepsake so his widow, Gilly, sold me his stage Fender Precision; he’d used it with us on literally thousands of gigs. It’s actually an early JV Squier and I’ve played it many times when Rog and I swapped instruments to do the instrumental Diamonds. Rog liked his basses to fight back, so the action was scary and it had mighty hawsers for strings. It also hadn’t been cleaned or set up for decades, so that was last weekend’s task: new D’Addario 0.045 to 0.0105 nickel bass strings, a thorough clean of the rosewood ’board, a fret-dress and polish, and a general setup, which brought the action down so I could play it. It’s very important to me that I own it and can now actually play it. Thanks, Rog.”