Basically it had dried out in a number of different ways meaning some TLC was required.
First of all the bridge was lifting off of the body and pulling on the nuts that held it in place. The relatively cheap construction showed that the bridge had been fixed directly to the finish (oops). So I have removed it, cleaned up the body and ensured the base of the bridge was exactly flat before borrowing some sound hole clamps and reattaching it...
In addition to that little job, as you can probably see from the first photo I started attacking the fingerboard. It was made to look more exotic than it is , by dyeing a cheap wood and then putting lacquer over the top. The lacquer was starting to flake off and some cracks were appearing in the wood. So time to scrape and sand, fill the cracks and sort that out too!...
To be honest I probably over sanded the frets at the bridge end - not very clever. They are now flat-ish, but I've really taken them a bit too low. As I don;t tend to play all the way up there, I'm just going to make sure this looks presentable now rather then replacing the fingerboard altogether. For the remaining frets I'm carefully removing the existing finish with a 4" scraper blade, then P80 and P1200 lightly sanding.
I've also decided that on this guitar the fingerboard probably does look better dark, so I've got a small pot of dark oak coloured Ronseal wood dye intended for exterior woods, that should help prevent any future drying out and cracks. Then I will probably use 0000 gauge wire wool to clean the frets themselves. lemon oil it all and leave it at that. So still a bit of work to do on it before I return to the bass. Still, that's not going anywhere :)
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