......and a friend gave me a '60's MIJ short scale neck (30"), so I decided to upgrade a bass I made for my oldest son way back around 1998.
It had a '60's MIJ super short-scale (25") neck on it, but the neck had a broken truss rod. I bought a 1"x6" plank of pine for the body, and used a highly sophisticated system of piecing it together, using a jigsaw, Elmer's glue, and, instead of clamping it together, I used drywall screws. I found some kind of textured paint at my local K-Mart, and that covered up most of the flaws. My kid was only 5 or 6, so I tuned it really low so he'd have no problem fretting it. Naturally, the favorite thing for all my kids to do on it was 'tune' the bass, and they always tightened the strings when they did that
Originally, I didn't put a pickup in it, but my son said it was a 'fake bass', so I added a Jazz neck pickup and the pick guard.
Anyway, all my kids are older now, and they all have a guitar or bass of their own, so this bass just sits around in my living room, and I'm the only one who's played it in the last 5 or so years. A few months back, I went to my local music store and noticed a Montoya neck with a section of the binding missing in their parts/pedals bin. I asked Paul (the store manager) what he wanted for it and he said I could have it. So I widened the neck pocket on my old body, slid the bridge down 3 inches, and that was it until the weekend before last, when I decided to spruce it up.
I had a can of dark green hammertone paint lying around, so I repainted the bass. I had to add a knob when I added the bridge pickup, which was easy enough, but I put those Vol. & Tone knobs on the bass years ago, and forgot where I got them from. Turns out they're Fender reissue '74 Telecaster Custom knobs, and I had no problem finding another Vol. knob to match them. I had a 2 saddle bridge on it originally, but recently upgraded my friend's Squier bridge, so I upgraded my bass with his discarded Squier bridge.
My headstock redesign is an obvious homage to Leo's Stingray.
I replaced the missing binding with a piece of plastic I cut from cookie dough lid. There were no side dots on either side of the neck, so I drilled into the binding with my Dremel, and colored it with a Sharpie. I might put real dots in later.
It plays and sounds good; it could use a new nut, or at least a superglue repair to raise the G string a bit. It is fun to play, and about half the weight of my 'real' basses. I think my middle son is using the old neck as a wall decoration (he has a kickass Ibanez SR500 to play!).