neepheid

Totally feel your stress with the wet sanding thing - I had a hand painted design underneath my clearcoat - no pressure then! Glad it went well, it's looking boss!

I highly doubt you'll find one ready made off the shelf - I would just get the original copied. Either Brian Pillans (earlpilanz on ebay) or Tinytone will do this for you.

Sax player in the 'Spoons doesn't drive (but bless him, he's learning) - I just give him a lift to rehearsals, I'm going anyway. He gets the biscuits in, it's all good.

Thanks! Anything beyond "intentional" is a bonus

According to my callipers, the hex key I have is 0.061" or 1.55mm across the flats, or 0.0675" or 1.71mm at its widest. In a pinch, a T6 Torx might also get in the corners of that hex and turn it, being that it is 0.066"/1.68.mm point to point. We're talking tiny differences here - might work, might not depending on how well made your T6 is.

Or maybe he got fed up of the earache he was getting.

That is a Hipshot A-style bridge. To adjust the string spacing, loosen the grub screw which sits alone on the right hand side of the saddle underneath the two saddle height adjustment screws, then move the saddle side to side by hand as you require, then tighten the single grub screw back down to lock it in place. The screw will likely be in freedom/imperial units. My A-style came with a key which I guard with my life. I could get the callipers out and measure it when I get home, if that helps?

Slow down, talking in terms of whole turns is making me nervous! What are you trying to do - straighten the neck, or allow more relief? Because that's all the truss rod does - adjust neck relief. It has an effect on it but it is not the primary means of adjusting the string action (ie. height).

I wouldn't like to use tape to make up a 2mm discrepancy, tape for wee wobbles only for me. I'd want something a bit more substantial than layers of tape in there making up that kind of difference.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapshot

You have indeed stumbled upon the correct pronunciation. It is simply "neep" as in swede/turnip/rutabaga and "heid" as in head. A silly person, basically. I came up with it as my internet nom de guerre/plume because I was wanting a Hotmail address (in the pre Microsoft days, so around 1996?) with no numbers in it and I wondered what no American would think of.

Girl, I'm just a Neepster for your love? I'll get my coat. PM incoming.

Ha, Annie Lennox is going to be so annoyed at that.

These knobs. I think they tie things together nicely with their half black, half shiny nature.

An alternative solution... https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/514065-it-came-from-the-black-lagoon/#findComment-5523942

Both bands, equal say on everything.

Duh, it was in a rehearsal studio?

You've been unlucky.

Not last night, but Friday night, played a rare live outing with The Inevitable Teaspoons at Krakatoa in Aberdeen. We played last ("headlining") and were treated to some fine acts first - Kaleidoscope and then Autohuman. No pics, it was a bit of a rushed changeover because as usual things ran on a bit. We played pretty well and went down favourably, heard someone describe us as "entertaining", and was speaking to the guitarist from Autohuman after and he was keen to do gigs with us again. It wasn't super busy, but there was an enthusiastic gathering of about 20 folk up front and probably 10-20 more skulking at the back, so eh, as long as it wasn't empty! Gear was the Greco LGB-700 three pickup bass into my pedalboard then out into Krakatoa's FOH, using a Markbass Little Mark Black Line 250W into an Ampeg fridge for monitoring. Because why not?

We're gonna need a bigger venue reinforced floor!

Well, a quick update - I've sorted the touch buzz on the Warman pickup. My mistake, I bunched together the main pickup ground with the ground of one of the coil ends instead of it going to "chassis" ground. Separated them then soldered the braid to the copper shield and that sorted it. Weirdly enough, there's touch buzz on the bridge pickup, but only when it's out of circuit (well, it's not truly out of circuit because it's still connected to the blend pot), which is pretty odd. No matter, I don't ever rest my thumb there so I'm not super concerned about that.

It will be fun to have a play about with these minor things, but I'm mostly looking forward to road testing it with the bands later this week! Sounding good in the cans, but it's not the same as having a thrash at war volume with a full band. I did fix the little gap in the logo, ultra fine Sharpie and a ruler, then more clearcoat on top. The rotten part is super low priority, but because it'll be nigh on impossible to fix it invisibly, you're right - I might as well make a feature of it instead. Cool ideas, had a few others, will mull it over.

Thinking black and chrome will tie it all in nicely with the large pole piece pickups and the chrome hardware. Anyway, they're ordered, so we'll see if I was right later in the week!

Left it for a few days, then did a proper flatten and polish - 1500 > 2000 > 2500 grit wet sanding followed by Meguiars Ultimate Compound for the final polish. First time using Meguiars and wow, I'm sold. The compound plus a microfibre cloth and job's a good 'un! Not quite the "sheet of glass", but for a first go by an absolute beginner amateur who has never done anything like this before in his life, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. It looks... intentional? Looks better than this IRL. The camera does lie! So, as you can gather, it's all back together again. Gave the fretboard a drink of lemon oil which it greedily accepted. I can happily proclaim the outcome of my first ever full fret level and crowning to be a success - no high frets, no buzzes, very happy with that! It's playing pretty damn well, took a setup like a champ. Truss rod on this super cheap neck is working great - obviously it was pretty slack from when I was doing the fret level, so when I put a fresh set of D'addario XLs on it it bent like a banana. No matter, a full turn on the truss rod and it was back to straight - actually too straight for my liking so I loosened it about an 1/8 of a turn and then there was a sliver of relief - just how I like it. Nut height feels OK to me - I'm no expert but I'm whizzing around the low frets no bother so I guess it's good. There are only some minor things to sort out now. The rotten bit at the bottom/back of the body. I'm not wedded to these amber speed knobs. I get quite a bit of touch buzz off the pole pieces of the Warman pickup and because it's fully epoxy potted, there's no way to earth them from the back, so unless I've done something wrong in the wiring, I'll have to do the old "lacquer/nail varnish on the pole pieces" trick. And because some of you care about these things, it weighs 3.7kg/8.15lbs on the bathroom scales. It's not a heavy bass by any means, but it has enough heft to keep me happy.

I'm pretty sure you will considered a true 50:50 partner in this mission of madness...