LukeFRC

Next rear cavity - which I then forgot to take photos off when finished

Pet hates time #2 : crappy screws and fixings. If you ask me about what push bike you should buy, the reason I'm not going to suggest some cheap halfords brand (or worse) isn't because 'they are great spec for the money' or 'you're paying for the brandname' - it's because they often seem to save the money by buying screws that are made of cheese. And when you are miles from home in he freezing cold the last thing you want to do is try and adjust something that has no thread. The same is true in the bass world with cheap bass stuff. Actually it's worse in bass world cos metric screwdrivers and hex keys aren't the same as imperial screw drivers and hex keys... And one of the worst things about the pink bass was the alright bridge from Retrovibe that came with utterly useless screws... so for this build descent screws are a must! So I was looking for the afore mentioned neck bolts and found Grainger guitar parts selling the insets, bolts and circle bits for the neck. They seemed to be fairly decent quality. And at the last moment I switched from the Furrells for the string through bridge to this British made string block. Very nice bit of kit, I doubt it will have any audio benefits but it means everything is straight which is what I'm interested in at the moment! After 2 days practice making a guide for this I cut the two different width holes it needs and test pushed it in. Pretty spot on!

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1500365486' post='3337173'] I was also particularly impressed with your pickup routings - that separating piece between them is mighty thin. Great job [/quote] 5.5mm - should have been 5mm but I chickened out. What could possibly go wrong?

[quote name='SH73' timestamp='1500919961' post='3341108'] I see you're working with Bosh 1400 ace router. I'm thinking of getting one. How do you find it? [/quote] Erm - it works! I'm not really an expert on routers - this one has done everything I've asked it to though. I think especaillay using the brushing guide you need bits with longish shanks - but that might be a common problem/issue I think that the depth lock sometimes vibrates slightly loose. I've no complaints.... except if I were in a position to ask again I would ask folk who know more if I would be better with something that does a 1/2inch shank cos it was a question I was asking when I was looking for bits.

[quote name='alittlebitrobot' timestamp='1500885682' post='3340741'] Great stuff! Interesting that you used watercolour to stain. I made a bass a couple of years ago that I used oil paint on. My thinking was that I wanted to avoid adding water to dry wood, but I suppose the amount is so small that it makes no difference. Either way, I was very happy with the results. I thinned some paint a little bit with turps (fine art bg here too ) and rubbed it in with a rag, then let it dry and then rubbed in a heavier coat. By the way, since it seems nobody else has brought it up, well done on getting a bottle of Lagavulin 16 yr old for 20 notes [/quote] thanks it's tasty. Water is fine I think - it will raise the grain but if you think how many finishes are water based these days. Oil paint would be good I suppose but there would be the question of how long it would take to dry! (and more seriously what you would put ontop of it and how compatible it would be) It could all end in tears for me - we shall see! There's been a few times though when going through pages of people talking about guitar finishing, and high specialised and costly tools when I've sat and thought 'wait that sounds like this generic art product I used to use'.

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1500793644' post='3340148'] Many thanks for the great name suggestions and for your feedback and encouragement along the long journey Following a 21 page thread is no mean feat - I think you should all give yourselves a pat on the back Declaration of the name winner will be announced early afternoon Andy [/quote] it's the reason I was inspired to make my wee build - though my estimate was you would have finished two basses before I had finished mine still stands. How is Mick's matching fretless going? 😂

Name: The average white bass (Obviously ironic as it's not average, but I liked the reference)

Minim model Artemis model (playing on Micks username on here with a Greek reference, and a hint that's making it is a work of skill) Model M - for minimalist, for mick and most of all following the minimal nature of the bass Bassy McBassface - cos I made a few good suggestions so thought I would be the first to get this in there!

You made him take off his ring I see

The bedroom window sill is complete! Actually ended up using a lot of the same techniques it's a lump of wood , cut to shape, sanded lots stained then varnished - really it's the same thing. Except a window sill is a lot cheaper - oh and the router depth lock has been playing up almost catastrophically In the case of the cill - but hey builders caulk fixes everything right?

Holographic colour flip flake over black

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1500306105' post='3336806'] [center] [/center] [center][/center] [/quote] hold up - he's got to do another month hand building a custom case for it first, including getting Adrian Newey to teach him how to mouldy carbon fibre... ... then he will post it to you

What Walbassist said. Then try this - get an active bass (or a preamp of some kind something else with more gain to it than a passive bass) - Plug it in the the effect return, this bypasses the front end totally. Does it still distort? If not (and I suspect you've worked this out already) its the preamp stage. the good news is the preamps in these aren't totally complex - and my old puma was all sensibly designed PCBs - so an electronics expert in the UK should be able to fix it.

search "pingray" on here for an alternative solution....

I've had that on a japans squier - it was kinda this awful mess of bad basswood, coated in a plastic type outer that made it hard. I picked the body up secondhand and someone had taken a chunk of the plastic type layer off already - I ended up buying a cheap replacement body. My 2p if you haven't already taken it off - leave it and use the existing base to put your paint on - there's no need to take it back to the wood

the article is common sense, it's annoying not everyone understands why loud stage noise is bad. Drummers I can kind of forgive as it's just poor technique but guitarists is one knob... and don't witter on at me about 'tone' as you point your mono directional speaker at your ankles. ... IEM are a different kettle of fish - and with a decent setup and sound team can be great. Often not though- again not so good musicians can very easily not listen to what they need to and zone out into their own wee world. [quote name='gjones' timestamp='1499892352' post='3334413'] The guitarist in my band has a 15 watt valve amp. He's very well trained. [/quote] Sensible I think. I never forget lugging my old guitarists 2x12 fender valve amp up and down stairs with him - took two of us to lift it. We then supported this irish band who had a very very similar guitar sound... by sticking a mic in front of wee a blues jr

I contacted Alan (?) Armstrong over something and he was great - didn't end up ordering in the end but wouldn't have a problem with using them. I wonder if your existing pickup is fixable.

I also started playing with the ink/paint I'm going to use. Now start looking at wood dye and wood stain and different forums and sooner or later you'll find AndyJr1515 syndicating himself across different forums expousing the beauty of using ink for wood dye. He gets some amazing finishes - go and look. But for anyone trying to follow him there is a bit of ambiguity in what 'ink' actually is, and from my fine art background I know not everything is the same... So: Dye based inks use a colour fully desolved and suspended in a carrier. They will penetrate the wood well but from an art POV tend not to be as lightfast. So your lovely build will fade over time. Pigment inks use a pigment suspended in the carrier - they will tend to be more lightfast. Simple yeah? Well not really as you can get different types of pigment ink - indian ink will dry perminatly and waterproofly as it has shellac in it, other inks are acrylic based (this is what Andyjr1515 has used before) and there are a few different types I've forgotten about... they all will do different things, and will have different levels of lightfastness. And you can't really argue with some of the finishes that Andyjr1515 has been getting with them! For me, and as this bass is going towards the transparent black colour range I wanted something water based, transparent and wouldn't affect whatever finish went onto of it. I knew from my art days that a concentrated water colour paint should give a lot of the benefits of using ink, be chemically simpler as it won't have been designed to be fast drying, give me less of the uncertainty of finish mixing and also be designed for archival levels of lightfastness. So off I went to town to buy two wee bottles or Dr PH Martin's Hydrus fine art watercolour. I went for Payne's Grey (and blue black) and carbon black (a very black black) I hate the images of guitars with a transparent black with the grain filled darker and they just look grey and meh - if the grain gets filled darker then I want the lighter bits to have a bit more richness to them. In my day job as a graphic designer you call that rich black. You could either do that taking it down the yellow/brown tonal range, or you could take it down the deep blue blacks range and see how that works. I started wiping the ink on like so many videos on youtube do - but it didn't really work - probably as it's pigment based rather than dye based? Any way wiping it seemed to lift it off as well as lay it down. A brush seemed to work better Top bit of this image is a wipe of Payne's grey, bottom half is the carbon black - I've then used a water colour brush to add more payne's grey ontop of the carbon back - it's not a good image at all but gets the idea across - work more layers of that up... PS it's a scrap of pine with a test cut from one of the templates that wasn't good enough

and to finish this eve.... Lets start making a template for the cavity. It's getting there!

and sawdust! After cutting all that MDF it was nice to be cutting something real. Look if it all goes wrong I'll just cover it with a pick guard! If I was a pro, and had more gear to get the tight radii in the corners that could be better - but I can live with what i've got. The edge is straighter than this photo makes it look - it's not been wiped down from all the fluffy sawdust the router kicked up. wait a mo! what's this??? and boom - done it once - done it again! I was so so careful routing that wee bit between the pickups - but it looks to have worked! I drilled the the string thru body holes tonight too... not 100% perfect... but I planned ahead to work out a way to work around the almost inevitable slight wonkiness ... that will come up later.

now I got really fed up of trying to saw straight lines inside a hole with a coping saw for the edges of a neckpocket/pickup - so I ended up just nailing a bit of straight wood to the template and using the guided bit to rout it stright. A bit ghetto cos I had to root around in my scraps to find bits with a straight edge on it but it works and as the story goes... if the pickup fits... close enough for me. Measure, measure again, measure a third time. Think about it a bit and then measure again. Then draw loads of lines, and measure to check they are in the right place... tape then clamp in place....

So I'm supposed to be building a window cill. Or should it be Sill, I'm not sure. But I got bored, and took photos. First job is the er holes (?) to put the pickups in. I made about 4 templates that didn't work until I made one that did. Then for some reason the 6mm MDF that I was copying onto the 12mm MDF decided to destroy itself and I was back to square one. This time I was a bit more organised/methodical. first the radius of the screw lugs I can work out and then use a hole in a bit of wood to rout out with the brushing. two down - one to go! and then the corner radii - one corner (top left) wasn't quite bang on which is the problem when using a crappy almost pillar drill rather than a real pillar drill.

I'm willing to bet that the Eich t1000 amp isn't to much different to the tecamp puma 1000 I used to have - in which case the we and compressor are just perfect

1) strings sound different. 2) rough rule of thumb as you wind the pickup away from the strings you get more bass and less mids. Also less volume. So on a two pickup bass you can balance both volume and tone with pickup height. Rereading: Obviously you're taking about low output AND low low end... so ignore me and check your wiring like's been said

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1499594738' post='3332364'] Gig went well (phew) I really like this Osmo Polyx. Just got to do the final tidying up in one or two places, but the finish is pretty much all on and sorted. It's held the colour of the sanded wood to a remarkable degree: [/quote] I really like the way it's highlighted the difference between the neck wood and the body wood - I think it's kept the lightness you wanted but really really emphasised the beauty of the wood compared to the unfinished photos you stuck up