Andyjr1515

Came back from Scotland with a stinker of a cold. Good news is that it gives me the perfect excuse to sit in the spare room tinkering with stuff. The reconditioned body came without screw inserts so I tapped them out of the donor body and cleaned them up with some dampened micro-mesh cloth. In spite of the cold, I could still smell strong nicotine off these tiny bits of metal. Makes you remember what pubs and clubs used to be like! This afternoon I will probably transfer the electrics. Using a tap test, I've checked it all works and it seems OK. There are quite a few wires you have to unsolder and so one of the most essential things is to take a photo and a note of which wires go where. No matter how confident you are of remembering...

The neck is drying after its penultimate light-slurry-and-buff. In the meantime, I have copper shielded the control chamber ahead of transferring the electronics: The electronics and cover are planned to come from the donor body. And there was a little surprise waiting: Pity in a way because this one has the SGC Nanyo stuff on it but, I have a number of wood plates in my bag of bits that I can thickness and cut to shape. I'll consult with Mick what wood he wants - including maybe this nice piece of (I think) cocobolo that would explode with colour depth once it was sanded and buffed up:

Back from a week in the Scottish Highlands. 7 hour drive back but the first thing that I saw, despite being completely kn******d, when I opened the door was @TheGreek 's bass and it made me smile Today, I've been stripping back the test stain and doing the full stain on the neck, followed by a couple of coats of Danish Oil. It'll take a couple more to fully seal the wood and the stain and then I will 'satin' it with a very light slurry-and-buff. Then it should be just a case of transferring the electrics, polishing up the frets and reassemble. The plan was to stain the neck to a similar depth of colour of the unstained wood body with a colour tone different but complimentary to the top and back. In that the final finishing will soften everything a touch and the neck will end up the same satin look as the body, I'm quite chuffed with this. What I'm particularly pleased with is that - certainly in real life - it looks more like a well cared-for original rather than a full blown contemporary makeover. Excepting last minute surprises, ETA is that it should be all sorted before the end of this coming week.

Beautiful job. I have a soft spot for all things Westone Thunder

If you want to see the lines clearly, then it probably does want to be either white plastic as @Manton Customs suggests or a very light veneer such as maple. Standard veneer is generally 0.6mm and should either slot in straight away or after a very light sanding. How I personally do it is: - Cut the pieces oversize, with the grain parallel to the slot - When the glue is fully set, trim down, still leaving a little oversize, with a single edge razor or very sharp scalpel / modelling knife, starting at the middle and cutting towards each edge so that any grain splits lead the blade away from the fretboard. - Sand flush along the direction of the slot with fine paper c 240 grit using a sanding block - Once the inserts are flush, then sand along the length of the fretboard with the same grade to remove any crossgrain sanding marks before progressing down the grades of paper fineness, again using a sanding block and always along the length of the fretboard

If the pickups have the normal high-density foam under them, two things can happen: - the foam can lose its spring - the foam can stick a bit to the bottom of the chamber or pickup or sometimes the chamber is a touch tight Either way, take all the screws out, then rock the cover back and forwards or side to side. Then do the same while trying to lift. It should gradually ease free. I've also used the windscreen sucker off my old sat nav holder in the past...

Beautiful bass. Top drawer!

Hi Ewan Great - all present and correct I like all of those clips very much. The wedding quintet is sublime...

Hi Ewan. Not working for me either. Looking forward to hearing it

Again - one of @TheGreek 's suggestions. He has good taste, that guy

Definitely enough for another body A couple more bits of progress prior to the temporary halt. I found a reasonably matching piece of offcut to veneer the neck end: And then found a reasonable stain for the maple neck to coordinate with the natural body wood. When the anniversary shenanigans are done, I'll re-sand and get this a bit less blotchy but I think the colour tone is about right:

I fully copper shield/ shield cables all of my basses and guitars and NOTHING can stop the buzz from our kitchen dimmer switch for a number of them (despite the dimmer being downstairs and I play upstairs and across the landing!). Anything with a pre-amp seems particularly susceptible. I've come across a couple of venues which do have weird buzz sources, but most of the time even the susceptible ones don't seem to suffer. Maybe it's possible that commercial-property dimmers are a different spec to household ones? Oh - and I've found fluorescent lights can be a devil, too - although, happily, most venues don't like the ambience of their stark white light

You beat me to it!

I'm not certain...but would have thought it's Alder

That's an amazing looking piece of timber!

OK - body finished. I'll wax it once the tru-oil is fully hard, but this is now silky smooth: The neck is going to have to wait a week - some family stuff coming up this next week, linked to 40th wedding anniversary - and after 40 years, I know that when MrsAndyjr1515 says, "And all THAT STUFF OF YOURS has got to be cleared away too!" my answer has to be simply, "Yes, Dear."

Having different sounds could be more complicated, but you can certainly make a cigar-box stomp easily enough. Basically a hollow wooden box (wedge shaped for ease of use) fitted with one of those acoustic guitar button mics that stick to the back of an acoustic guitar soundboard makes for a very authentic sounding drum beat. I'm sure with a bit of electronic wizardy you could have a second one with a different tone... Andy

I've started the first sealing coats of tru-oil. Nowadays, I do a basic slurry-and-buff whatever the final finish. I find it an excellent grain-fill and preparatory surface. Having said that, this may well have the full silky slurry-and-buff treatment in any case as a final finish to preserve the feel of real wood - I'll see what Mick's preference is. The finish will smooth out, but this will basically be the final colour there or thereabouts: There's some nice figuring on the back. Again, the dark lines at the top of the main bout and across the upper horn aren't joins - they're natural stains in the grain itself.

That's lovely. Top class.

I can read minds

The other reason dampening the edge is a good thing to do is that it softens the PVA ever so slightly and the fine edge of sandpaper I use to remove it tends to grab and roll off the PVA rather than dig unwanted grooves in the wood. Here we are with most of the PVA sanded off. Takes a bit of patience... : The very, very edge is, of course the veneer and tissue backing feathering down to nothing...where nothing is actually PVA on top of body wood - so actually you can't completely eliminate this. But if I get it right, it should look like a very thin light demarcation line (which I think it's starting to do)

A couple of hints and tips for anyone considering stripping down and veneering: First is that all finishes darken the wood to some extent - some (and I'm talking 'clear' finishes) even additionally tint the wood against the freshly sanded. So how do you tell what colour it's going to end up before you commit before putting varnish or oil all over your masterpiece? Well I just wet it with a damp cloth. This will pretty much be the colour it's going to be with completely clear varnish or oil. You can see the difference on @TheGreek 's Nanyo body. I've just given this a single wipe of a wet but well squeezed out cloth: Some stains may change the colour...but all stains and tints are going to further darken the wood. So the trick to get particular colours and shades is knowing what parts of the colour spectrum to add to this base colour to change it. So, for example, if I wanted to make this classic amber, I would NOT use amber stain - that would turn the wood dark orange - I would probably, instead, add pure yellow. The added challenge is that it wholly depends on the wood. A maple neck, for example, doesn't darken nearly as much and has a naturally yellow tinge when clear finish is applied. So the golden rule is always do trials where it doesn't matter. So back to my earlier comment that the body wood may not need stain to meet Mick's desired look, this is the edge just dampened with water and is representative of a clear finish being applied: The other hint and tip also uses the wipe of a damp cloth... It is essential when veneering this particular way that any stray PVA or overlap is removed before you start staining or finishing. The PVA - invisible when dry - shows white when you apply the finish. So how do you find any missed bits? Same technique - just wipe with a damp cloth. Here's some of the bits still to sand off: Back to the project My own view is that the unstained tone of the body wood compliments the top nicely and is probably a similar depth of colour to some of Mick's examples above. But, as Mick says, we'll be kicking that around offline. The neck, however, will be a different matter and will definitely need staining...and for which I might have just the thing

Sublime....

What I will do, for starters, is dampen the body so everyone can see how dark and what shade the body will start at. The body will darken considerably when any finish is applied, although the neck - being white maple - will certainly need staining to match as that doesn't darken nearly as much....

So, using some already glued offcut from the body: ...I gave the headstock a coating of PVA, let it dry, then ironed it on. And THIS is why I love this hobby!