Andyjr1515

Just hiding

More still to do than perhaps it looks. In house builders terms, we are at the 'First Fix Snagging List' stage The pickups are in, with sparkly covers subtley dulled with some Tru-oil Conditioner (basically T-cut!) and gold adjustment screws working against bass pickup type foam buffers. The tuners are final-fitted. Snag list, so far not too bad. It includes: A couple of high spots on the frets Bridge is sitting a tiny bit too high (about 1mm). I don't want to slot the saddles so, instead, I will score round the whole unit and carefully chisel the required drop - only needed in the black saddle area as they individually flex a few degrees up and down from the gold base fixing base Number one fretmarker is off. Bugger. Teeny, tiny amount but it would bug me so has got to be sorted! Luckily, with an ebony fretboard it's an easy and invisible fix The fret ends (spherical) are too prominent. The fret ends are now well clear of the strings so I'll go for a more standard chamfer. The nut (still loose fit) is a bit high and, once I've reduced that, the truss-rod cover will need slimming a tad. Easy job. Other than the remaining jobs of magnetic catches, electrics installation, volute tidy up, strap locks and final polish that were already on my list, that should be it.

Yes - lovely Can't wait...

And found the sapele that I was sure I had in the shed. And it's wider than I had remembered so we have a one-piece back I will add the wenge demarcation veneer to the sapele before I cut out the shape. Should be able to do that later today....

I can see the picture now I'm back on the desktop - it looks great!

My ipad isn't picking up the picture for some odd reason so I'll have a proper look when I'm on the desktop, but the spec sounds great

I'm glad yours is...mine disengaged a decade ago and hasn't re-engaged since

As you say, you are planning paint finish therefore no real issue. Having said that, if you did want to veneer the top, it is only adding 0.6mm and therefore you wouldn't need to do anything to the neck pocket at all...

Yes - the first time I saw the thread, the photos were side by side I prefer the smaller pickguard and splash of chrome on the control plate....

Onto the final tasks while the gloss varnish hardens enough to polish it up (about 2 weeks from last coat) The main one was levelling, recrowning and polishing the frets. Done I'm pleased the subtle figuring in the ebony still shows after the final treatment

This double posted so this is just my way of deleting the duplicate!

And...admittedly to my surprise...it seems to have worked. Once this is sanded flush and stuck round the edges with thin 2-sided tape, I'm pretty sure it's going to look fine. The 2-sided tape will only to keep the edges secure - the plate itself will be secured by the tuner bushes and the string tree It certainly balances the look of the bass a bit better: Next job is to find the sapele that I'm sure I've got somewhere in the shed for the back

Decent question but no, not at all The plate really does, as you say, weigh naff all - but the main thing is that the Lyte top horn is longer. This will place the strap button at about the 12.5th fret, as opposed to the Rascal which places it at the 14th fret. This makes a big difference. That is quite important, also, because the new body will be much lighter than the Rascal and this, if nothing else was done, would certainly give some issues. I suppose the only slight unknown is going to be the 'sit' of the bass on the strap. It is likely that it will sit further to the player's right than the Rascal - this will make it feel a very short scale indeed (although still longer than a 6 string electric). Time will tell on that one

Can't be absolutely sure yet, but at the moment I'm planning to be there, Mike

OK - so maybe we've got the chances of success a whisker ahead of evens... It's bent. Next test is will it stay bent once it's dried... I knew the scraper burnishing rod would come in useful one day....

So what are the thoughts I have about hiding the Rascal colour of the headstock and still making it a reversible mod? Well....this may not work but: I've managed to cut a 1.5mm sliver of the walnut offcut which will scrape down to 1mm: The idea is to try to stick this on with very thin double sided tape. But what about the bend?? OK ... this is why it might not work but - an acoustic guitar side is around 1.5mm thick. And I have built a couple of acoustics and have a bending iron. So I'm going to try to bend the walnut to shape. I told you it might not work!

While I've been waiting for Tim's Alembicesque's gloss finish to dry, I've done a little more on this. Pickup chambers cut out, back trimmed, carve started, edges rough-rounded and first tru-oil slurry fill done: Next big job is probably fret-slotting the snakewood board... I'l do that when I've made a bit more progress on @scrumpymike 's Rascal conversion

The one on the right for my money

And this is probably the final gloss coat on the top. It is dust buggy free but there are still very fine brush lines from a slightly 'draggy' varnish in spite of it being warmed a touch and using a very fine fan brush. Having said that, I'm pretty sure they will polish out once the coating is fully hard:

Hi Well done to ped and all others involved on what was clearly a major upgrade. Great stuff and much appreciated folks Andy

Hi Well done ped and team It all seems to be working...including the easy fix to re-instate pictures So - I'm going to try to do a direct load of photos It's to show the neck pocket and pickup cuts: OK - that failed. So I'll try by adding the URL For the neck pocket, I used a scroll saw: For the pickup slots, I drilled either end and then used the scroll saw to cut the straights: And this is where I got to

[quote name='scrumpymike' timestamp='1510337797' post='3405792'] That's brilliant Andy! How nice to finally be able to visualise how the 'new' bass will look. Certainly makes the headstock look bigger, although that's emphasised by the current 'green-ness'. In any event, I've always liked chunky headstocks. Your comments about the original quirky design of the Rascal are spot on. Having said that, my problem was with the weight rather than the reach. If it had been a couple of pounds lighter we wouldn't be reading this build diary. Mind you, now that Merv's walnut is part of the project, I'm really pleased we are . [/quote] I'm going to have a go at cutting a headstock over-plate in the morning. I suspect that will make it look a lot less bulky

And there it is, all stripped: Fairly standard 'stratocaster' type pickup and electrics arrangements: The lipsticks have a standard single-coil type back plate, wider than the protruding part of the pickup, which the fixing and height adjustment screws screw into. While the lipstick itself appears to be bolted to that backplate, close inspection makes me think that to remove the backplate would leave a reasonable chance of knackering the pickup - so I won't be doing THAT I'll do some careful measuring and thinking of the best way of mounting them. In terms of the bridge, this is broadly where it will sit: Those of you who have followed some of my other builds will know that I break one of the taboo's of guitar building - I use the top as the routing template (please note - this is emphatically NOT recommended by the sensible and conventional wisdom!) My reasoning is, however, simple in a case such as this: The top here is, 'coincidentally', the same thickness as the neck pocket is deep I therefore just have to scribe the shape onto the walnut around the neck Then I can use the 'safe' tools (safe in terms of unwanted and irreversible gouges out of the wood) such as fret saw, chisels and files to cut the perfect neck pocket Then I will add the sapele back, cut slightly oversize, and use a bearing flush trimmer on the router, using the top as the template, to trim the back flush with the top. There are times when this approach can add issues - which is why I always emphasise that I describe how I do some of these things and most definitely NOT 'this is how you should do it'. However, in this particular instance, the approach will reduce some of the cock-up potential and not increase it

Well, the time has come to start pulling Mike's Rascal to pieces The interesting thing about a Rascal is that because of the offset body, visually it really doesn't look like a 30" scale. The Precision Lyte is 34" - and yet look how much longer the Rascal body is the longer-scale Lyte (my walnut Lyte top is 1:1 scale): The other difference is that the Lyte neck is 22 frets and the Rascal is 21. This affects where the neck pocket needs to be. This is basically how and where the neck will fit: The bridge will sit well back - in a similar position to the Lyte, although the top horn will be 1/2 fret further forward. The advantage of this is that it should help to avoid any tendency to head-heaviness in spite of this being a much lighter body than the original. Playing-wise, the new bass will sit differently to the Rascal and very much feel like a short-scale. The Rascal itself, with its quite heavy body and far rear strap button swings the whole bass to the player's left hand side, pushing the nut further away and making it feel more like the stretch of a long-scale. This will new one will sit more in the standard short-scale position. Should be interesting

With the slightly odd way I do gloss finishes, it's often a case of knowing when to stop. Sometimes trying to get from good to perfect actually makes it worse This isn't perfect - but in real life it looks pretty amazing: I've still got to do at least one more coat on the top and sometimes that means having to redo the back, but, failing that, this might be where I stop for this side