Andyjr1515

Superb and utterly professional job I took the time to fully read through the thread rather than dip in and out and every aspect - starting with your own judgement, @rk7 , that playing this bass was more important to you than leaving it in its original form to the stunning quality of work - fills me with awe and admiration. Best modification job I've ever seen and, in my view, the only one I have seen that breaks the rule I always caution enquirers that "all mods reduce resale value". I have no doubt in my own mind that this has actually enhanced the value, not that this matters as it's clearly and rightly a keeper. Over coffee, I'm going to read the whole thing again, if not simply for the perfection of that heel recarve!

That is one of the funniest quotes I've read this year

Actually, great advice. The rough side of brown packing paper is also fantastic as a slightly rougher 'flour paper'.

You are all very kind In terms of yesterday's activities, first thing I did was drill the tuner holes. Matt was happy with the compromise of strings bending at the nut to retain a more traditional headstock shape. I always draw headstocks full-size and only when I physically have the tuners at hand! Been there, done that! I then started the treatment of the neck. I will be using the Tru-oil slurry-and-buff method - fabulous for necks - but recently I've started using Danish Oil rather than Tru-oil (although I still use Tru-oil for the bodies). Reason is that I've found that over extended playing, the tru-oil necks sometimes get a bit grain-furry where they are most regularly used. All it needs is a quick rub down with some micro-web or similar to sort it, but I've found that decent Danish Oil applied in the same way gives the same organic silky smooth result, but appears - certainly on the ones I've done this way - to be just a touch longer lasting before you need to re-buff. The main thing I have found with both, though, is that the wood needs to have absorbed a decent amount of oil before the slurry and buff starts. I usually apply at least two generous coats of oil to soak in and fully dry first: And this is how it is this morning, dry and ready for the slurry and buff process to begin - probably starting with 400 grit emery to be applying the Danish Oil with. This is broadly the colour it will now stay at: Again, the light stripe of the maple veneer is subtle but really adds to the look of the fretboard join. I think @Jabba_the_gut 's builds were the first ones I saw using such thin veneer for demarcation - my previous ones used to be much thicker - so a nod of thanks to letting me pilfer that little gem : I'm pleased with the heel - it is the great, great advantage of through-necks, particularly with slim bodies, in spite of some of the challenges of doing them. Matt should find this very nice to play. Oh - and even with the tuners fitted and no body hardware...it balances! Phew!

Yes - that was sort of my logic on Pete's piccolo bass, which has the vertical actually at the first fret! He'd never heard of multi-scale and I didn't tell him until quite well into the build that is WAS multi-scale I guessed that he would be less frightened by it so much if the bottom frets looked normal-ish. In the event, he took to it like a duck to water, even at the dusty end...

Me neither! I've done two multi-scales and they are both quite different to each other

Thanks for the comments and feedback, folks...however Covid-lockdown-cabin-fever-hallucinatory they sometimes get . I'm going to let this cure for another day or two before I make the final judgement on whether the next stage is to polish (which will be after a week or two of curing) or a final 2000 grit flattening and a couple of final, final coats. The reason for that judgement (and I have to make it every time I do gloss this way) is that you can't - in fact you mustn't - buff this type of poly varnished finish as you would with, say, nitro spray. The reason is that each application of nitro and similar, melt into the previous dry coats. This type of poly varnish doesn't. Each cured layer is a distinct layer. So if you buff - cutting through layers, you expose the under layers and you can get unsightly contour marks. But you can polish a poly varnish done this way. The polishing works on the final coat - it smooths minor lumps and bumps, dust buggies, light brush ridges. It needs to be rock hard before you do that otherwise even this risks cutting through to underneath layers. Either way, I can get on with finishing the rest of it, because if I do a final flattening and a couple of light top coats, it needs at least a week hardening first anyway. It's very close though and so this may not need anything more than the final polish. This is always a decent test: I never worry about the finish sinking into the grain - I think that actually enhances the organic feel - but there are a couple of non-grain lumps and bumps that - again - may polish out or might need flattening. But, whatever, this is going to end up as eyecatching as I had hoped at the beginning The obligatory mockups So while that's curing, next focus is oil and buffing the neck, levelling and crowning the frets and positioning and fitting the tuners

Second coat and the back is there. I know that if I put another coat on it will get worse and not better: The top...hmmm...close: There's a couple of small (and inconspicuous) areas where it will probably polish up when it's fully hardened. While I could do another coat, I don't actually want it to end up too thick. I'll have a look in the morning when it will be hard enough to handle properly so I can see where the light catches it and decide then

The first coat of Ronseal is on: With the way I do varnishing, it's sort of done when it's done. Might be next coat, might take 5 or 6!

Ah - got it. I hadn't picked up it was 2 basses They look good.

Looks great - but what are we looking at here ref the two wings in the previous pics?

Or to see if the ominously quiet audience is coming towards you...

That is MAGNIFICENT!

Superb.

Well, this probably looks exactly the same as the previous photo, but to the dedicated air-guitarist tester (me), it actually feels completely different You can see in the top photo, @Maude , how brown that stripe looks. By the morning it will be a deep purple. Going to leave it now until the morning. The one thing I might do for the aesthetics is bring the heel transition further into the body - although playing-wise it actually feels fine right up to the 24th fret on the bass strings. These things are best left to gestate a while.

Stays pretty vibrant for at least a few years, based on builds I've done in the past - although I am told that it eventually morphs to more a reddish-brown. Interestingly, when you first cut it, it is quite light brown and then the purple develops over a few hours as it is exposed to light.

Most builders will tell you that their favourite part of a build is carving the neck. It certainly is mine The first thing I usually do is rasp-file the corners off the volute: ...which lets me go the full length heel to headstock in continuous strokes of the spokeshave: You do have to be careful with the spokeshave, though. I've gone from rectangular to broad curve on this side in just over 1.5 minutes! It would be very, very easy to overdo it! In all cases, though, I am moving progressively round from fretboard edge to the edge of the purpleheart and so taking nothing off the thickness of the neck, just removing material from the haunches. In less than 10 minutes total, I move across to a fairly fine microplane. In use, I hold either end and draw it up the neck just like a spokeshave - but trying to show that would mean me dropping the camera! You can see how quickly the basic shape starts getting there. However, I do stop frequently, have a cup of tea, play a bit of air guitar on it and view the shape from afresh to work out where I need to spend some more time. Normally, I would move onto the cabinet scraper pretty quickly (again, drawn up the neck two-handed) but mahogany is quite soft and doesn't respond so well to a scraper used hard - so for mahogany I tend to stick with the micro-plane and then use the scraper just to 'kiss' the sides rather than bulk-remove material: This is about 1 1/2 hours in, including the tea breaks. I'll come back to it this afternoon and the carve should be complete by the end of the day:

No it's not anchored (there is an end stop effectively where the slot ends at the heel-end) other than the force of the bend of the rod itself. In fact, if you get your slot right and keep glue out of it (and you'd need to take the headstock plate off too) you can make it so that the trussrod can be pulled out for replacement. I think the earlier Warwicks were like that?

This is probably a bit clearer, @SpondonBassed This is how the truss rod is in its un tensioned state. The LHS would be at the heel and the RHS at the nut: And this is what the unrestrained rod is trying to do when it's tensioned: So it's trying to bend down and take the neck with it. But the string tension is trying to pull the neck in an opposite curve so the result is that the rod (and therefore neck) ends up straight. But the forces at the top and bottom of the slot are downwards at either end and upwards in the middle. The heel means that the left hand end is secure, but the danger is, as @Si600 says, if the glue joint isn't good for the fretboard, it can force the fretboard off from the middle, and if there isn't enough meat under the rod at the nut end, the rod can burst through the bottom of the neck.

Think straight rod sitting in a slot the exact same size, no glue but it can't go anywhere because there's the sides of the neck either side, there's the purple-heart neck splice underneath and there's the fretboard on top. It is the length of the neck from heel to nut. The strings are trying to pull the neck, and therefore the slot and rod into a U shape from the heel to the nut. Tensioning the trussrod arches the rod in the middle (12th fret ish) and by newton's law, applies equal and opposite force on the purpleheart strip at either end of the rod (at the heel and at the nut) as it forces the neck from U back to straight. And if you then loosened the strings, it would bend itself and the neck with it into a 'back bow' arch shape. Easier with a picture but that means I have to remember how to draw curves properly...

Because, happily, the neck bends

Clamps are off. Couldn't resist doing a quick mock-up One of the good things about lockdown is that you know exactly what you are doing the next few weeks. So I know that tomorrow, I'm going to be carving the neck

Not at all a dumb question. Some people do pop a few dollops of flexible sealer in to stop the possibility of a rod rattling. I myself used to wind plumbers PTFE tape loosely round the whole thing for much the same reason. But nowadays I don't bother. The way I do them, width-wise, they are a tight fit in the slot. Depthwise, I make sure that - when flat - the metal plate of the rod is either flush with the top of the neck or I use a packing strip on top. Either way, there is already pretty much zero gap between the rod and wood. Then, when it is in use at all, it is flexed against wood at both the middle and both ends - and my logic is that if it still rattles then there is something seriously wrong and a rattle from the rod is the least of your worries A trick - for where the neck is 'naturally' back bowed and therefore the trussrod is actually not needed and left basically loose, is to tweak the adjuster until a tiny bit of resistance is felt. That means the rod is now pressing lightly against the top and bottom of the slot and this should usually eliminate any possibility of rattle even though it isn't exerting enough pressure to impact on the neck relief.

Well yesterday, the truss-rod shipped on 24 hour service last week arrived (not a grumble - just a fact of life at the moment). But, actually, I'm pleased that I ordered a second one (which arrived today), because while the original purchase was very nicely made (the one with the fancy chrome end) it is no good for me on this build: And why is it no good for this build? Well, remembering that the rod is fitted the other way up, the fancy chrome cylinder (inside is probably exactly the same gauges of rod and tip as the one on the left) actually adds another 2mm to the depth of the neck channel - just at the point where the neck is at its thinnest. And if you add the fret height to the fretboard thickness and the rod & tip height (11mm) and take away the planned thickness of the neck at the 1st fret (22mm), it would leave 2mm under the rod at the nut end. And that's not, IMHO, enough. Same calculation with the left hand trussrod, gives me 4mm under the rod - and that is fine. So that's what I've used. Is that going to be a problem for everyone with that particular rod? No - not at all. If the fretboard had been thicknessed 1.5mm thinner and I hadn't wanted the 0.6mm demarcation veneer, then it would have been fine. But, ignoring all that, it means that the fretboard can go on No capping strip (again, this would reduce the meat under the rod), just a strip of masking tape to stop the glue filling the channel, a final check that the neck was flat and that the rod top plate was flush with or below the neck glue face: And...it's on:

The preamp unit itself looks a neat unit. Looks also like it suffers the strange trend, shared by many top end guitar and bass preamp makers, of positioning the connectors for the looms in the most inconvenient direction and then fitting the looms with massively overspec'd wires that come out vertically. Schaller do the same on their top end preamp. Maybe it's some sort of industry private running joke