Yamaha BBG5A Tone Demo - No Talking (well a little bit of talking)

Ernie Ball Compensated Nut:
https://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/parts...

Bass Strings:
https://www.basscentre.com.au/product...

Scarlet Rit Dye:
https://www.ritdye.com/products/scarlet/

Crimson guitars high Build Guitar oil:
https://www.crimsonguitars.com/produc...

Crimson Guitars stunning shots Black:
https://www.crimsonguitars.com/produc...

Dulux Metal Primer:
https://www.dulux.com.au/products/det...

White Knight Super Gold:
https://www.bunnings.com.au/white-kni...

Hi its Rob from Yamaha RGXTT guitar channel and today I’m going to go through the restoration, specs and demo of the Yamaha bbg5a bass.

I am a sucker for Yamaha guitars but I occasionally play bass in various projects. One night I was looking on my favourite Japanese auction website and a 5 string bass came up looking a little worse for wear.
First thing I noticed was the headstock veneer, which seemed to be peeling. As well as various parts of the body. It had double humbuckers, last bass I had was a Sterling Music Man Bass 5 string so I’m a sucker for bass humbuckers. Next was the 24 fret neck and I thought this sounded like a cool bass and a cool project.
Reading the description the seller said it was a junk which is their way of saying please don’t return it or expect anything good. Second was the painted part missing and paint had come off, I had never seen a guitar do this so I was really intrigued. A decrease in the frets, this meant it had a few dents in the frets but I would find out later. It also said it was active, I have had active basses before so I didn’t think this was an issue.
I stayed up till midnight and hammered that bid button until it was mine! I didn’t get any case or special packaging but it made it safe from Japan in a few days.
Mine is a build date of May 1997, originally a part of the import BB or Nathan east style basses.
It has a quilted maple top, 9V active electronics, Dual Yamaha Humbuckers, I found the manual online easy enough and found the front knob is the pickup blend knob. A really fast volume knob and bass and treble boosts. It is also a 34 inch scale and has a 20 inch radius fretboard. At the time 3 colours were available Amber Burst, Aqua Marine and translucent red which this one was.
Here is my first impressions.
Here’s a close up of each of the cracks on the front. The truss rod cover was also chewed up the pickups looked great, the gold had started peeling from the knobs and would need to be looked at. If you ever have gold knobs like this the coating will start to come off after years of playing and the more extreme the conditions, the worse they will look. More cracks again. There’s a look at the nut, the dimples in the frets and the condition of the headstock. Question, would you stop now? Or would you restore it? Leave your comments below. I can almost peel this off with my fingers. The back of the headstock was also strangely discoloured. Almost green. The neck is a solid piece of maple, I was almost scared to touch it at first, gave it a bath in hand sanitiser and cleaned with a paper towel.
The electronics and the cavity looked clean and factory. Whatever issue had caused the veneer to pop and the cracks had not made it into either the controls or the battery box. Interestingly the back of the control paint is shielded.
UThe higher end models didn’t have the quilt maple and just had the Alder one piece body and in some finishes I prefer that look. There is some shielding paint in the cavity.
I use Dunlop cleaning products and this is the buildup that was coming off the fretboard. Close to 25 years of playing probably!
You can also see the green or black look of wood on the front. On the back you can see black spots where there was maybe a bit of mildew or rotting, just on the surface which has discoloured.
I used black grainfiller to fill any gaps and then superglue to level the finish off.
Here is my first stain attempt on what was left of the veneer. As you can see the veneer is so thin and covered in glue etc it repels any stain. So I decided at this point to do a solid wood veneer. I sanded off the surface to be flat and stained it to see what it could look like? I took off the bridge to try and make that gold again too.
I proceeded to do some test stains. The first one was simply grain filler and Scarlet red Rit Dye, the second was crimsons guitars black, a stain I used on my last project and the Scarlet red Rit Dye. Afterwards I added some staining sealer. I then coated with some poly finish to see if I could get it close to a factory finish. I preferred the look of the crimson guitars stain. I decided to refinish the bridge which is solid brass.