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SlapbassSteve

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About SlapbassSteve

  • Birthday 06/10/1991

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    Manchester

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  1. +1 for the Dimarzios, very 80's! (would have to be the cream cover option, of course)
  2. Definitely sounds like more of a bridge issue... Jazzmaster and Jaguar guitars for example are notoriously bad for the bridge height adjuster screws coming loose over time and the action sinking. Threadlock is usually the magic bullet, worth using whether it needs it or not on certain hardware... what's odd here is this only started after changing to flats. My guess would be some grime that had been holding the grubscrews in place shook loose during the string change..!
  3. Thanks guys! Did a bit of a mini-photoshoot for it last night, here are a few more shots without my mug spoiling the view; I think the biggest joy of this build is I've not set out to design something to market and sell- it's been more just a case of 'I think I'm ready to have a crack at this, now what would my ideal bass look/sound like?'
  4. Thanks so much guys! Not sure if I'll make another of these in a hurry as it's taken a while to get this far, but then on the other hand the idea of making a matching 6-string guitar version is mighty tempting...
  5. So here's the finished bass! Need to order some card to use as a background and do a proper photoshoot with it at some point, but you get the idea! Took it to my wedding gigs at the weekend and it sounded lovely, cut through the mix properly, settings were all useful too- the bridge pickup is as Jaydee-like as the one in my Vox Standard bass, the neck pickup has the growl of a Fender P, but put it in parallel for the sound of a Mustang, and put the bridge in parallel for a Jazz bass approximation, together in series they're a growly as heck, etc etc... but then I would say it sounded good wouldn't I..? 🤣 (the XLR is actually wired in now, though I don't think I'll ever need it) Overall though I'm pleased that it looks like it's from the era I based it on; even with my ukulele shape I think it carries the vibe of those mad old Matsumoku gems. The oil finish helps- as it's not even and has a bit of an open-pore thing going on it feels like an old bass already, which isn't bad considering I finished it last Thursday! Neck is very skinny and combined with the short scale it's very easy to shred all over it. Looking forward to getting some proper photos and demos sorted! Meantime here's a couple of clips I threw together for instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTFmS9jjmCo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CTDREcND4gb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Thanks for reading! -Steve
  6. Right then, it's been a while, and the bass is now finished! Have quite enjoyed writing out the build diary, so, here we are, the final installment: Routed out the pickups and hand-chiselled the corners to get them nice and square. Was working off the centreline rather than string lines, so in theory it would all line up in the end(luckily, it did) Next up was some oil! I ended up putting on six coats of Tru-Oil, flatsanding with wire wool between coats to bring up a modest gloss. (after the first coat above- note the massive change in colour) After a couple of coats I put the frets in. I'd used the wrong gauge saw to cut them, so ended up having to improvise and use a fretpress(we never normally use this on refrets so learning how to use it was a bit of a learning curve) plus loads of superglue to hold them all in properly- this is easily my biggest wrong turn on this bass as having to glue the frets in made the fretwork lift a bit under the heat of polishing, so it took a couple of dresses to get them properly flat and uniform. Routing the battery box: Brass nut carved by hand from a block of brass I had knocking around: Wiring installed- this is two DiMarzio Model Ps, a Bartolini NTMB+GF, 3band EQ, blend, vol, act/passive, then a series/parallel for each pickup. (photo taken before connecting the pickups) Then I had a logo made! It's not owned by anyone but known and used universally so I've been using it as a logo for my uke builds too. This was cut from more solid brass by the good folks at Manchester Rubber Stamp Company. Then finally there was a lot of screwing stuff onto/into it, and some setup work- luckily this bit was familiar territory for me. I've set the action nice and low- 2mm/1.5mm at 12th fret with Roto Swingbass 40-95s. Thought I'd finish off with my original design concept, lovingly thrown together in Microsoft Paint at about 3am last December...
  7. Beautiful job! I've been considering putting a bitsa together for a couple of years and this has been the nudge I needed to start properly speccing one up! Finish work is brutally hard to get anywhere close to right, so relic or not you've done a cracking job. Nice choice with the Toneriders too, we sell a lot of them in work and I've a set in one of my Jazzes- amazing they can put together a set of pickups that good for the prices they charge. Hoping they one day branch out and offer 60's and 70's voiced sets though... they have guitar pickups based on all major eras so would be nice if there was as much choice for the bass ones... 👀
  8. More progress today. Routed the lip for the backplate to sit on, and then made and drilled the backplate from gold-anodised aluminium sheet. Then I worked further on the carving of the body and made a start of sanding out some angle-grinder marks... Exciting to see it starting to look like one of my ukuleles at last. It's mostly sanding to do from here on in, though I'm not happy with the upper-fret thumb access as it is currently and that area will need some creative carving doing still. I've marked up the fretboard for the dot inlays, and will probably get those installed followed by the frets early next week- probably at a point where I'm sick of sandpaper and need a break..!
  9. Thank you! It sounds like we have similar tastes! Routed the control cavity yesterday and made a start on the wiring today to check I'd have enough space for everything. All seems good! Planning on routing the ledge for the anodised gold backplate to rest on next, then I can finish shaping the body once I know where my limits will be. The XLR might be a bit of a squeeze but I'll make it fit... I had bought a Gotoh 18v battery box for this, but the more I think about it the more I'm leaning towards either a single 9v in the control cavity or a separately routed battery compartment with another anodised gold cover, too keep the 80's pedigree. I'm a little dubious over whether 18v is worth the extra fuss- I can't see 6dB of extra headroom making much odds, and apparently this isn't a preamp where 9v vs 18v makes any difference to the tone... in short, if I bother making this 18v it'll be because the extra 9v battery has less mass than the wenge it displaces. It's still very heavy even with a massive amount of wood routed out for the cavity, so I'm likely to be a bit more aggressive when shaping it then previously planned, even if just to give it a bigger belly cutaway.
  10. More progress today. Planed the top flat- Discovered I could save days of work by using my angle-grinder as a sander and put a big dent in the neck heel and edge carving. I'll be carving everything quite a bit more, particularly to sculpt the top to one side of the fretboard like my ukes, but first I'll need to work out my control layout and rout the cavities, so I know which zones to steer clear of. It's currently VERY heavy, so removing a load of material this way will help me work out how much to remove from the edges to keep weight down. ('very heavy'... not sure I expected really, making a bass with so much solid wenge involved..!) Here's the latest mock-up of how the front will look. Looking at how tight it's getting, I'm starting to understand why the original JayDee basses had such enormous bodies. Knobs will be Vol, Blend, Treble, Mid, Bass. Switches will be Active/Passive, and then a separate series/parallel switch for each pickup. I'm toying with a mid frequency select but unless it sounds bad when I first plug it in I'll be happy to let the good folks at Bartolini decide what will sound better- they've been making preamps much longer than I've been choosing them! The XLR will only be functional when something is plugged into the regular jack socket, but I'll probably never use it so that's ok. Leaning towards off-white dots for fretboard inlays, and an engraved brass logo inset into the headstock. Taking a few days' break to make sure I don't rush it... more progress next week hopefully. Very pleased with how this is shaping up though... the 80's vibes are strong with this one.
  11. Productive week so far! I've shaped just over half the neck, thicknessed and shaped the headstock(I went for a 13 degree tiltback), drilled the machinehead holes, and carved the volute. I'll refine this a little when I finalise the neck profile, but for now I'm pleased with how it's looking. Next was time to glue on lots of wenge stuff- first the headstock face veneer, then the wings; I've glued the wings on at an angle to form the neck tiltback angle- rather than try and plane the front of the neck to a hyperspecific angle before attaching the fretboard, I just put my bridge on the top of the body, worked out how much lower it needed to be, and glued on the wings at the correct angle so that I can simply plane the top of the body flat, rather than have to do anything protractor-related. Aiming to do some carving to the back of the bass before work tomorrow... looking at the last picture above it's fair to say upper-fret access leaves a little to be desired at the moment. Then it's just a bit of shaping, a bit of sanding, some oil, and some hardware! Sounds so easy when I put it like that...
  12. I'll be honest I absolutely adore all those mad 80's designs so I've definitely borrowed ideas from both of those! I particularly love how imaginative all those designs were, even the Westone Quantum, basically a Steinberger knock-off, was designed with some lovely interesting angles that set it apart a bit... and that's before we even get started on the Rail...👀
  13. Realised I've neglected this thread for over six months so time for an update..! I got massively sidetracked in February waiting for a fret slotting template to arrive from GuitarsAndWoods in Portugal, and around the same time it arrived in March I got an order for one of my tahitian ukuleles via Etsy from a chap in Australia- this proved an extremely steep learning curve as it was my first time making an instrument to order, and then I had to ship it halfway around the world and hope it arrived ok! Luckily it arrived safe and sound and I got a lovely review off the buyer, so all was well in the end. Here's the finished project: (Note the stealth strap pin and output jack- this was my first uke with a pickup and inlaid strap buttons) Anyway, once that was sorted I cracked back on with the bass. I borrowed a fret slotting jig and trussrod routing kit from my work colleague Adam (of Dolan Custom Guitars fame) and cracked on with the fretboard, getting it slotted for 30" scale. Then the trussrod slot... (I just chiselled out the adjuster notch by hand as I was feeling too lazy to make a router jig for it) Then glued on the fretboard and radiussed it to 12 inches. And on Friday I finally started shaping the back of the neck. Next up... finish shaping the neck/headstock, roughly shape and then glue on the wings(setting neck tiltback angle in the process). Hoping it doesn't take me six months to get through that lot!
  14. I agree with the above- a pickup should in theory generate a magnetic field rather than a magnetic beam, so as long as the strings are in the general vicinity of the pickups they should induct signal fine, especially if all strings are a consistent distance from each polepiece. ...with that said, I've worked on some basses, particularly ones with '51 P pickups, where the pickups are ridiculously directional... I'd love to understand a little more on the ins and outs of magnets, inductance, etc to know why! In the realms of conjecture I'd imagine a lower output pickup with magnetic polepieces would be more directional than a higher output pickup with a bar magnet underneath, or a blade style design, for example... Short answer- depends what pickups you have, but it's probably fine!
  15. Apologies for resurecting an old thread but did anyone else manage to get hold of one of these in the end? I'm trying really hard to stop myself buying the surf green one at the moment as I've always fancied a mustang and these are just beautiful... so if anyone has any more experiences to share I'd be all ears!
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