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Hi All,

I'm on here to get advice on restoring a messed up Celebrity Bass. I got this thing on Ebay for peanuts, but it'll take Alot to get it happening again. It's one of the early 2 bolt necks.

I've got to remove the neck, which appears to have been glued-in by some idiot, and fix the neck joint. The zero fret has been removed, along with the end of the fingerboard and original chrome string-spacer. I need the string spacer, which will be hard to find, but i can make a temporary replacement out of brass for now.

It has 2 of the original Duckfoot bass tuning pegs, but I'll need 2 more, left and right. I've got one broken peg, it's the key-screw itself that's busted while the shaft, cover and base are all good.

I also need the bridge cover, unless I can find the old one I used to have. I've got a Japanese bridge that looks very close, but rattles alot.

Any help on finding parts would be most appreciated, especially those Hen's Teeth tuning pegs.

I'm restoring this thing to give as a gift to my first girlfriend. I haven't seen her in 25 years, but she used to love my old Mosrite Gospel bass, which was basically a blonde thick-body Celebrity bass. She kept it at her house and played it, while I gigged with my Rickenbacker 4001. I ended up needing a new piece of gear and sold the Gospel to pay for it (bad move!) and she was very disappointed.

When we got back in touch 2 years ago she reminded ne how much she liked the bass. . . .and I felt guilty all over again. When I found this trashed Celebrity on Ebay I figured it would be great to get it up and running and send it to her for a surprise gift.

Hey sycamoregrove, Welcome to the forum.

That's a cool story and hope it has a happy ending. Finding the 'duck's feet' tuner's is going to be difficult. They are scarce as hen's teeth. One good thing, if you ever do find one (or two) they can be changed to work for either side, so don't discard any that you find. Nobody makes a modern reproduction, but if they did, it would be a lucrative venture. I had a line on one but it has fallen through the slats. If I ever get the opportunity to buy one or more, I will jump on them.

Yep, that's what I feared. If I can't find the right pegs I may replace them with the Cloverleaf ones available at tymguitars and sell the Duckfoot ones I've got on Ebay to put toward the cost of the restoration. She won't care if it's got the right pegs or not I imagine.

Thanks for the reply. ~ Lee

Seriously, if you really wanted to I'm sure you could get some fabricated by an engineering company somewhere, they cant be that difficult to make then get chromed. Arent there any macnining/engineering places near you? When I was a toolmaker we used to knock up things like this all the time...!

The fact that nobody has done it probably means it's not that easy or lucrative to do. If I had someone make a custom repro set from scratch I'll bet it would cost a fortune. Semie's designs were very 'stylised' making copies hard to pull off well. The bass tuning pegs were very 'stylised' themselves. They were molded rather than machined. They'd have to be re-cast from an original, which wouldn't be as sharp as an original casting I'm guessing. With modern tech magic I'm certain it could be done easily enough, but it would only be worth the trouble if there was a large enough market for the parts.

Those Cloverleaf pegs are looking more attractive all the time, as are the bucks from putting these 2 Duckfoot pegs on Ebay. The money sure would help defray the refinishing costs.