Grabber Bass Mods
Hi guys, I did some mods to my Epiphone Grabber bass and thought I'd share for anyone else who was considering doing something similar!
first off the stock tuners really bugged me how far they stuck out so I bought some shaller short shaft (actually for musicman basses) as individual units (2 left 2 right) to try and get closer to the original look.
next I wasnt really liking the standard pickup, i never used it in the humbucker mode as to me it sounded quite muddy and not what I needed for my tone, I always ran it single coil but it seemed to be quite noisy, anyway I discovered the Curtis Novak Grabber pickup which is suppose to be as close to the original as you can get.
I ordered a custom pickguard from pickguard.co.uk using a tracing of my stock guard to accommodate the new pickup and remove the toggle as its surplus to requirements for me.
I also flatted the body back so it isnt as glossy.
I had a nightmare trying to wire it properly as I had ordered new 250k CTS pots (not realising it already came with CTS pots) and a switchcraft jack. Anyway for some reason something was going wrong and I had no sound, so after running out of patience I wired the pickup directly to the jack to just be done with it as I use the bass for punk music and usually just have the volume and tone wide open anyway...
I've attached photos of the new pickup / pickguard, and the stock tuners vs new shorter ones.
so in closing im pleased with the tone and how its turned out!