Hofner 5148 Verithin Bass

Carrying the serial number 682, this is the last known 5148 Verithin Bass produced. Despite leading a busy life, and slightly less than optimal storage conditions for such an instrument, it is adored by its owner. The initial brief was fairly simple - reset the neck and try and make it playable at the lower end of the fretboard. That brief soon expanded...

Disassembling the guitar for checking and cleaning soon produced a seemingly never-ending list of "do while we're there", and as a result, nothing on this wonderful bass hasn't been refurbished, rebuilt or sensitively replaced.

The pick-ups were intermittent in their behaviour. The windings had all but perished. The new replacements for these pick-ups are significantly hotter than the originals and so these originals were re-wound to exact specification. Now we have the original tones, and they are so characterful. The selector switch had thrown a leaf and so was replaced by a modern equivalent albeit identical on the outside.

The potentiometers were in poor shape, but we rescued them (they don't build them like this anymore). Via this exercise, I can reliably assure a skeptical world that there is a noticeable change in tone when running these pick-ups through CTS pots, although renewing capacitors made no difference at all with the original pots. I think we'd need to find a Tupolev TU-104 cockpit on Ebay to find a suitable replacement for these.

The obvious issue with this at the outset was of course the neck.

Half in half out of its pocket, major surgery was required to release it fully, and get it back where it should be in order to compensate for the bowed neck (way beyond truss-rod correction).

A second round of work may take place in the future that removes the fretboard and deals with the ski-slope at the upper frets, but for now, the guitar plays perfectly well between the 1st and 13th fret. Until this work takes place, a Viola style bridge saddle replaces the original item due to having more adjustment potential therefore allowing an appropriate action working together with the revised neck angle, and getting over the ski-jump.

This Verithin is now back in service, looking and sounding glorious, playing comfortably and most of all reliably.

(Photo credit to Andrew V., owner of the Verithin Bass)