Samick Bass guitar restoration!

This is an electric bass guitar made by Samick. It was made in Korea in the 1990's and it's a decent low cost bass guitar. This one was in a pretty bad shape when it came in. It was time for a restoration!

The issues:
This bass guitar has a lot of issues that had to be addressed. The main issue was the bass was pretty much unplayable. The strings were all rusty and worn out, the setup was awful, the electronics were all over the place and the neck pickup didn't work...

Restoration process:
At first, I removed the old strings and cleaned the bass. There was plenty of dust and some parts were a bit rusty. Rusty parts (e.g. its bolts) were soaked in vinegar. The next step was to clean up the fretboard and frets. I used various types of micro-fiber cloths to remove all the dirt. Then, I polished the frets using a Dunlop metal fretboard-guard and some ultra high-grit sandpapers.The neck was finally cleaned with alcohol based cleaner fluid and the fretboard was oiled with lemon-oil.
The body had its own issues. I removed the plastic pickguard just to find out that the body is made of plywood. This is not uncommon for old entry level Korean instruments. Despite the fact that plywood is not solid wood, it's pretty durable and the tone is sometimes interesting (e.g. bright).


Nevertheless, the electronics is was bothered me the most. The neck pickup did not produce any sound so I checked it for continuity and resistance with a digital multimeter. Everything seemed okay so I poked the neck volume control and two solder joints snapped right off. There's your problem! I removed the old wires and soldered some new ones in place. I checked the electronics and the neck pickup worked! The I redid all the wiring just to be sure. The old Alpha pots were sprayed with contact cleaner and work like a charm. The output jack was readjusted and re soldered.



Setup and go!
Once the electronics were fixed, it was time to place some new strings on this bass and set it up. I used a fresh set of Australian Ashton round-wound coated 45-105 strings that last much longer than uncoated ones. The action was set much lower, the neck relied came back to normal and the intonation is now spot-on. The playability is definitely improved and the tone is better than ever before. There's plenty of punchy bass and treble.



This 20 year old affordable bass guitar cost about 80-90 Euros (including its restoration) and it's a pretty decent practice bass guitar that will serve the owner for another 10-20 years a long as it's properly used and maintained.

Here are a few pictures of it:

Cheers,
Thanos
guitardreamer.gr@gmail.com