Andyjr1515

Added the wenge constructional veneer (2mm) to the back of the Amboyna: And then got the fretboard radiusing jig out for its second blooding: It's not perfect, but nevertheless did get me to this stage in an hour or so rather than a day or so! : You can't really see it in this photo, but there's some lovely birdseye on this piece that will pop out when it's had the finish applied I'm sure I'll hit some sort of brick wall soon but, at the moment, it's buzzing along

Outstanding! Beautiful, beautiful job

Love the light demarcation stripes, @Bastav. Very classy.

Well that certainly makes more sense....

I agree with @Bassalarky that usually, the bridge pickup would be higher resistance than the neck. Interestingly, looking at the Fender website, for their modern 'Vintage Noiseless' Jazz sets, the bridge is, indeed, the higher value. But the 'Pure Vintage '74' has the neck higher than the bridge. I get the impression from the decriptions on their marketing blurb, that the Pure Vintage is specifically trying to get warm low end and high mid range, whereas the Vintage Noiseless is trying to tame that mid end a bit. All of the Seymour Duncan sets seem to have the bridge higher so, unless you are pitching for a very specific effect, then I would have thought the resistances you quote are very much in the 'normal' ranges and should sound fine.

Well, I've joined the same club with making a body out of oak in the present build. In luthier circles, that puts me into the category of plagues of locusts and generations of social exclusion Tom's African Build (there's a tortuously long thread in the archives) taught me that the body can pretty much be made out of anything, providing you've got a decent neck and anchorage We all look forward to seeing this one finished and the next one revealed

You'd see a great big hole. It's a Squier VM Jaguar under the veneer and originally had a full sized scratch plate. As such, the control chamber route carries onto a swimming pool for the P pickups. This was in the days before I started taking loads of in progress shots so I don't think I've got any shots of what's underneath it. Apologies @soopercrip for the thread de-rail. Let's get back to your project

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about. First - the reason I think Tru-oil is an excellent way of starting off on your first finishing project: Don't be confused with the term 'oil' It is the consistency of oil when you apply it, but it hardens to a hard, dry lacquer finish. It is NOT as tough by any stretch as a modern 'bullet-proof' poly finish but it is fit for purpose for normal guitar and bass wear and tear It is cheap - a small bottle is all you need for at least one bass or guitar and, other than is does start going off over a few months if it's in an opened bottle, often two or three It is very easy to apply. You basically wipe it on with a lint-free cloth or you can use a fine lacquer brush It is quick. You can do at least a couple of coats a day. The final hardening takes a little longer - a week or so for fully hard (but that's still a lot quicker than nitro!) It is very unreactive. It goes onto most things quite successfully - bare wood, spirit-based stained wood, water-based stained wood It is very easy to re-do You can buff it to satin or build it up to gloss It is very easy to repair - both at the time of application or even after years of use I have done a lot of projects using stain and tru-oil. Stains can be spirit stains (Chestnut do a good range of wood-coloured and a smaller 'poster colour' range - and you can get a couple of sample pack of the whole range of each where each small bottle is plenty for a bass) Crimson do a range of decent stains, although the quantity in each bottle would probably be enough for 20 basses! I use ink but you do have to choose carefully because some specific colours and types do fade. Anyway - two or three examples. This is what I mean about the grain showing through. This one has no grain fill, just stain, then a number of coats of tru-oil, wiped on: But with Tru-oil, you can also go for a sheen rather than a gloss. This one (same guitar - I was experimenting with different techniques) is stained, then the tru-oil applied, but wiped off and buffed with a cloth before it's dried: You can see on the cloth, some of the stain in the initial buffs does come off but, if you are gentle, it leaves enough not to show a light patch. Once each coat has dried, the subsequent coats of apply and buff fix the stain into the finish and you don't get this problem or any of the stain coming off on the players hands (I use this approach for most of my stained necks, even if the rest of the bass is gloss, and I haven't had anyone finish a gig with red hands, yet ) This one below is a crazily bobbly veneer (it's a type of Finnish birch) but, again, just stained and then multiple coats of Tru-oil (all from one small bottle) : This one is just Tru-oil applied to unstained wood: Here's the veneered front: ...and here's the sanded and tru-oiled basswood back (no grain fill): This one above is my own fretted bass, pics taken just after it was done and - other than it's dropped to a high sheen rather than true gloss - it still looks the same today, 7 years later. This is today (and to my knowledge, it's never been polished - just played): There are other products around - and some are excellent - but Tru-oil is by far the most forgiving I've ever used at the same time as producing a variety of excellent results that I'm still more than happy to use where appropriate on even high-value commissions. Hope this helps. If you do go that route, let us all know and we can give you no end of hints and tips of how to use it to get these types of results.

Sorry - I'm a bit late on this despite @Spondonbassed 's flattering words! I'll post a bit more tomorrow with some examples, but I wouldn't worry too much about 'traditional' grain fillers - they can be much more trouble than they are worth. If you are going for a trans dye finish, I would suggest that Tru-oil is the easiest way of obtaining a potentially excellent result. It is very un-reactive to dyes, easy to apply, easy to reapply, relatively quick to dry and can be used to produce a relatively glossy finish or a matt finish. Ref the grain fill, assuming that you are not aiming for hiding the wood grain, then you can use none at all - just seal it and fill with progressive coats of the Tru-oil, or you can use their own 'Sealer Filler' - this is smellier than truoil itself but seals quicker than just the oil and fills voids and porosity with a fully transparent fill. The two products are both completely compatible with each other. I'll post a few examples and threads in the morning that might help the decision.

With the two halves of amboyna fitted and glued, I ran it through the scroll saw this morning. So, definitely time for the first mock-up!

I'm sure not I think with my builds, fate has ample opportunity to do its worst whatever

Happily not

Soon time to draw the first blood and start cutting wood. I've sorted the join line of the amboyna and tweaked the shape a little - actually, this will probably be tweaked 0.5cm wider either side of the centre line and bring the upper waist down a bit steeper round the lower bout, but this is the kind of shape: This evening I will glue the two halves together and tomorrow, cut out the shape. Some of you will know that I use the fancy top as the routing template - absolutely not recommended by most builders so I don't encourage you to do likewise.

Never seen this before and can't quite get my head around how it's been done. Remarkable achievement, actually.

Oh - I will be chambering...and some...too

Yes - that will look lovely when it's all finished

I got round to having a look at the oak shelf and cut it into body-sized lengths: It's a bit cupped, so I ran it through the thicknesser first to take the hump off, and then reversed to take the wings off. Once it was flat and straight, I thicknessed it down to the nominal 25mm starting point: It will be cut into two wings, either side of the neck and is presently around 30mm wider than needed - as such, I will take off the excess from the rhs in this shot, bringing the feature figuring pretty much into the middle. While the neck will break that feature up - and the back will be scooped - hopefully there will still be a continuity of figuring showing either side of the neck. For oak, it doesn't feel too heavy. When I cut the excess off, I'll thickness a length of the offcut and compare the weight with a similar blank of the sapele. The other good news is - do you remember I made a wrong cut on Tim's Alembicesque and had to re-make the neck (below is the remade one)? Well - I've still got the original neck. It's here: It only couldn't be used because I'd already cut the top for Tim's. And I haven't cut the top yet for Jane's . So I can use it! It even has the correct neck angle, etc, etc, already done

Excellent. I love the lines - and that walnut is just beautiful

Yes - I looked very closely at the B207D and, for full band situations, that's probably the better bet - but it is twice the weight. Because we were looking at this for open mics as well as medium duo gigs, we plumbed for the smaller, lighter one. As they say, it's horses for courses

Very good indeed. Hard to believe it's only a 4.5" (or thereabouts) speaker. Because I don't have a proper bass rig at home, I used to practice on my little Vox valve guitar amp. Now I use this because it doesn't have the high freq treble jangle about it . You could never gig with it, but as a personal monitor it works just as well as with the other feeds.

Or put another way....terrifying!

No - the truss rod is in its normal position. If you think about it, mine is no different to a bolt-on neck, but with no extra depth of the body underneath the bolt-on neck heel. The bending moment of the truss rod is pushing up in the middle of the fretboard and down either end so if you think of a bolt-on neck, unless the truss rod ends push their way through the slot floor, the neck will bend, whether it is bolted on or not. With neck-throughs, I think you can get issues if the body end of the rod extends too far, because the rod itself is trying to bend but the length that is held rigid by the body will not move at all. It took me a while to work out how this all interacted together, greatly aided by Tom's African build, if you remember that most unlikely of scenarios, where Tom's was basically a neck doing ALL of the functional stuff and the body just somewhere to fix one of the strap buttons onto ...and that's still going strong I understand

Hi I've recently posted this in TheFretboard forum but it might be of interest to a few of you here. For monitor and practice purposes, the comments pretty much apply to basses too Also, bear in mind that below are personal experiences based on my own band and other playing needs - so please preface everything with 'for our particular needs and facilities' and 'IMHO' Like many of us, I and my various band / other colleagues have varied needs for monitoring and have always ended up up a blind alley with one or more of the following stumbling blocks : Inflexible for the various scenarios Ineffective Impractical Unaffordable While it's not yet proven to be the holy grail, this below is nevertheless the closest that I've personally - after years of trying different things - found to something that: Can be configured (including, admittedly, some cheats) to be used from a full gig to an open mic Is affordable Is highly portable Works Yes - I know, being Behringer, this is probably a copy of someone elses concept (Mackie, etc, etc), but personally I'm a fan of Behringer products. Their products have never yet let me down and pretty much everyone elses have. And this is it (the Xbox controller is just for scale! : It cost me £130 new and it weighs just 7lb. It comes with a mic stand adapter and comfortably sits on that at just the right angle for its intended use as personal monitor. I won't go through all the features - there are plenty of ads and clips around - but will show these two shots to refer to in terms of the configurations we've been able to successfully use in our particular live scenarios, and thoughts for more in the future. Before I cover the scenarios tried so far, the key aspects that have given us the flexibility are: It has, effectively, four volume-adjustable inputs - one at the back (master volume controlled only - and this will, therefore adjust the overall volume of any other individual inputs) and three at the front (common EQ; individual volumes; one of the inputs has a switchable impedance corrector for instruments) It has two outputs - the speaker (remarkably good for its size); the 'THRU' XLR output at the back. They both output the same mix and are both controlled by the 'Main Level' master volume It is clear enough and controllable enough to have right in front of you as a personal monitor It is loud enough, in some scenarios, to use it as your practice PA or even to turn it round and play to an audience in a small venue You can use this as the mixer to the FOH, or as the receiver from your mixer and thru to FOH, or as the receiver from a mixer or any other sound source, and then add extra inputs to that mix and then to the FOH There is one more factor that has been used in some of the scenarios we've tried. For some of the scenarios, basically those where we are creating an individual 'more me and less of him, him and her!' mix, we have used various send feeds from the mixer. Some of those, because one of our mixers is small basic, have needed a bit of thinking and ingenuity. Scenario One The dreaded 'Open Mic Night' OK - maybe all your venues are well equipped with someone who cares about the challenges of the performers as well as the audience, providing balanced monitors and tweaking the mix during the performance. Yeah, right Tried solution 1: Vocalist, Electric Guitarist - mic into the B205; electric guitar into B205; B205 on stand between vocalist and guitarist with mix and master volume fully audible to, in control of, performers. Resulting mix sent from Thru at back to venue's PA Tried solution 2: Vocalist, Electric Guitarist, Backing track on Jamman pedal - mic into B205; Jamman output into phono input on B205, guitar into B205; B205 on stand between vocalist and guitarist with mix and master volume fully audible to, in control of, performers. Resulting mix sent from Thru at back to venue's PA. Both duo bands I am in had given up doing open mic nights. We now do them again - and enjoy them! Oh...and isn't it a lot of extra gear to take? Other than the optional mic stand (a cupboard, bar counter or bar stool would do), it all fits into this - including cables, power leads, extension cable, Jamman and mic! : Scenario Two Small Band; small to large venue Equipment: band's mixer; own or venue's FOH PA When Pete and I play or blues electric / sax stuff, we use this cheapo mixer (below) and send it to a small but adequate band PA, good enough for medium venues: The mixer above is cheapo but carefully chosen because, unusually for a cheapo mixer, it has a couple of 'Send' channels as well as Mon Send and FX Send adjustment on each channel. First time round, we tried my B205 instead of our normal wired in-ear buds. Just sent the 'Phones' output from the mixer to the B205 and it worked a treat. MUCH better than the poor-man's earphone set up we had been using. So much so that Pete went out and immediately bought his own B205D. And that gave us HUGE opportunities. Because: I, as the holder of the mixer, needed to hear the mix that the FOH was hearing Pete, wanted to hear the backing track and his own guitar more and not be blasted by my not-so-dulcet vocal or sax tones! So, set up was: Pete Guitar to mixer; my Mic to mixer; my sax condenser mic to mixer; Jamman backing track to mixer - all panned central From Mixer - Main Out Right - to my B205, giving me full mix personal monitor; Main Out Left to FOH PA. Additionally, I made up a small three cable snake - two of them with the 'stereo jack shorted across ring and tip' mod to allow me to use the Send/IO as outputs without cutting the signal to the main mix. So into Pete's B205 is: Mic send (jack); Electric send (jack); mon send turned on at the mixer for the Jamman channel and Mon Send output to a couple of phono plugs and into Pete's B205 Result: My 205 gives me the full FOH mix at any volume I need to hear myself and other inputs; Pete has individual volume control of the backing track, his guitar and my vocals, also with full master volume of that mix. Trust me - he can hear the sax without a channel feed needed! So - for us - live playing has been transformed. Further thoughts - we are going to try it with the full 5 piece band next time we practice. Every channel we use on the big mixer has a send / IO on it, plus two Mon Send outputs - and with a bit of ingenuity.......

That neck looks fantastic. I've always been a great admirer of Warmoth components and this reminds me why....

I cheated a bit - I managed to get the crops (or should I say 'clip's ) working fine, but the above is then more a series of clips pasted on top of each other - I have no doubt there is a better way of doing it