Andyjr1515

Bit more progress. The body top is joined: ..and after gluing the rosewood centre splice onto one half of the neck blank last night, the other half is being glued as I type. Remember the mantra...."you can never have too many clamps!". The two workbench clamps can put on a huge pressure too Over the weekend, I'll slim and true-up the glued blank and start sketching some thoughts of headstock shape to bounce off Nic.

Thanks, Paul A nice project on a very nice bass. And the trip to Northampton Services always gives me an excuse to 'just pop in to' Axminster Tools Andy

[quote name='Paul S' timestamp='1479545444' post='3177319'] Just to top this off - I picked up the bass on Wednesday and it looks amazing - just like it had come out of the factory. Cosmetically perfect. Used it a last night's gig and the sound has blown me away! The Aguilar P pickup is also perfect - mellow and old school exactly as I had hoped. Interestingly (or maybe not? I don't know enough) the MM pickup has been tamed by making it passive - nowhere near as aggressive as it is with the preamp driving it along and thus, for me, more useable. The blend will get some welly, too - it adds a bit of bite to the P in a very interesting and useable way. Different to a PJ, as you would expect. I really couldn't be happier. [/quote] Great to hear, Paul It's also worth experimenting with tweaking the bridge volume a tad when you're in the P-J middle position. Although it is still very sensitive even with linear volume pots, changing the bridge volume knob across the range of 8.5 to 10 produces a whole spread of quite different sounds. I'm not entirely sure what is going on with the interaction of the two circuits but I think it's akin to the old 50's wiring of a Les Paul single pickup junior where you can get from deep jazz to acoustic clean to roaring overdrive just with subtle tweaks of the guitar volume and tone without going anywhere near the amp...

[quote name='Paul S' timestamp='1479545444' post='3177319'] Just to top this off - I picked up the bass on Wednesday and it looks amazing - just like it had come out of the factory. Cosmetically perfect. Used it a last night's gig and the sound has blown me away! The Aguilar P pickup is also perfect - mellow and old school exactly as I had hoped. Interestingly (or maybe not? I don't know enough) the MM pickup has been tamed by making it passive - nowhere near as aggressive as it is with the preamp driving it along and thus, for me, more useable. The blend will get some welly, too - it adds a bit of bite to the P in a very interesting and useable way. Different to a PJ, as you would expect. I really couldn't be happier. [/quote] Phew!

[quote name='allighatt0r' timestamp='1479483256' post='3176930'] The body shape somehow suggests slanted soapbars to me... a bit like the Gibson Victory basses? [/quote] Some of them did - and if you look at the upper half of Nic's, that does too. But for this one, we're going for good old rectangular muscle. I think Nic and I have firmed up on the spec...perhaps we'll need to forewarn the National Geological Society so their seismometers don't record the event as an earthquake going on in S Wales!!!

(I think gelfin's happy) ^ Top successfully cut out (phew!) I'll be joining this together and assembling the sections of neck before cutting the back panels so that I can use the whole assembly as the cutting template. In the meantime, Nic and I are starting to firm up on pickups, etc., including discussing my recent dalliances with both Music Man pickups and the DiMarzio Model One - otherwise known as 'chalk and cheese' .

[quote name='allighatt0r' timestamp='1479467162' post='3176749'] Cool! It will be fine for anything other than close inspection :-) Are you leaving the broken screw in there? [/quote] Hi, Bryan Yes - absolutely. It's actually just covered by the trussrod cover

With the Schaller spacers due on Monday, I got the frets levelled, crowned and polished and scraped and oiled the fretboard: I also had a look at that crack in the headstock plate. One thing I love about working on old guitars and basses is that you can see the history. E.g., way back when, the then owner loses little screw holding the trussrod cover on, finds a screw in his toolbox, screws it into the rockhard maple, said screw is bigger than the old one and snaps, in the process, the larger diameter has forced the headstock plate apart, taking some of the logo with it. Just a guess, of course... : The whole logo, even the 'mother of pearl' BC Rich logo is actually a decal. This is why the bit of the H is missing above. Having established that the crack is only in the top veneer, I suggested we just tidied the headstack up rather than go for full filling and levelling, which would risk all of the decal being lost. What I have tried to do, therefore, is just deceive the eye. I.e.:[list] [*]darken the crack where it's on rosewood [*]paint some lighter fill where the crack is over the mock MOP [*]Stipple some light fill to trick the eye that the H is actually still complete [*]Fill the crack with clear sealer [*]wipe of tru-oil over the top to smooth out the irregularities without losing the mojo [/list] Here's the bit of stippling: Here's how it looks. It's far from perfect but, once the tuners and strings are on, it should cease to become the attention-seeking magnet it once was :

I like the rig, Kert! It's infinitely better than mine...I don't have the garage bit I'm not sure what others do, but I don't worry too much about taping the holes. Any that get too clogged up, I just run through with the right sized drill and things like pickguard holes, I just let the screws re-cut their threads in the paint. Can't wait to see the glitter bit

I've been racking my brains as to who it was who first put me onto Melamine - and I've just remembered...it was our very own scojack . [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/282086-2016-build-season-fretlessfretted-5/page__st__30"]I've just found the thread here where he mentions it[/url] - and got SUCH a great result Thanks for the lead, Ian. I may be PM'ing you soon to find out just how many coats....and just how much sanding....and just how much buffing It's tough old stuff!!!!

I don't know if the other builders are the same, but I agonise over decisions of expensive tools and bits of equipment. None more so than when I was trying to decide whether to buy a decent thicknesser. In the end, I did - I bought the superb Makita 2012nb. What a good gamble. Not only has a job that used to take me hours and hours of frustration turned into a 30 minute job (plus 10 mins to empty the shavings out of my extractor/vacuum), but these pieces are accurate in thickness to within 0.3mm of each other. They are nice pieces of mahogany :

Thanks, folks This has had about 6 thin coats of wiped on clear. You can see the difference already. I reckon it will end up with about twenty coats, sanded down from time to time. Quilt maple is remarkable stuff...

Hurrah! First piece of wood cut! These are the two mahogany blanks I have cut lengthways from an extra-wide mahogany plank. The saw is just a prop - I'm not fit enough or mad enough to cut that by hand I used an old circular saw...and that struggled! It's good dense stuff The marks you can see are just a couple of surface stains which will disappear when I put them through the thicknesser later today. Also today, I will rout the mating faces - essential before cutting out the shapes and, if all that goes well, cut out the basic blanks

[quote name='niceguyhomer' timestamp='1479364222' post='3175925'] I don't understand this truss rod but I think it works OK. I've ignored the fact that it tightens as you turn it counter clockwise and after about half a turn, I've now got more relief in the neck which is what I was trying to achieve. I guess you live and learn. Thanks for your help fellas. [/quote] Great stuff I think the string pull probably wasn't enough to bow the neck enough for you when the truss rod was at its loose mid point, and as you carried on turning, the truss rod is now simply giving the string pull a helping hand, albeit in the opposite direction to "normal". Whatever, it's working

If it's a dual action, it's probably just at the middle point. If you carry on turning clockwise, does it then start getting tighter again? If so, then what is happening when it feels tight on the anti-clockwise is that the truss rod will be starting to form a back bow in the neck.

[quote name='3below' timestamp='1479334958' post='3175825'] Lovely looking wood Surely pre-slotted is cheating. As BC builds develop I would be expecting tree felling at the least, and following the example of [url="https://paulsellers.com/"]Paul Sellers[/url] (who I find inspirational about hand tools) filing your own saw blades. [/quote] It's OK....I'll be finish sanding it with the stubble of my chin

OK - I haven't actually started cutting any [i]wood [/i]yet....but I have cut some paper These are the paper templates for cutting the mahogany over the next couple of days. I will be cutting it oversize by a few mm and then file and sand down to final size by hand. The other thing that has arrived is the neck and fretboard wood: Not a great photo but David Dyke has once more supplied some excellent timber. Matched maple outers, rosewood inner splice and a lighter toned AAA rosewood fretboard. I got David to slot it too...just £10 to remove all the worry of c*****g it up. Bargain! By the end of the weekend, we should have a joined neck blank and the body sections thicknessed, flattened and cut out.

If you buy DPDT switch, dual pole dual throw, you basically have two switches in one. Each humbu ker will use one side of the switch wher the middle pole is where the joined leads from the humbu ker goes and the top or bottom goes to earth depending whether you want up to split the coil or down. These switches are on-on, though rather than on-off- on

Thanks folks All this means a huge amount...

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1479247642' post='3175115'] Doesn't it look posh in the write up! Gorgeous [/quote] My first reaction was, "Is that really the one I built??? Surely there must be some mistake!"

[quote name='FuNkShUi' timestamp='1479208029' post='3174710'] Annnnnnnd finally we have worldwide recognition [url="http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2016/06/20/bass-of-the-week-ajr-guitars-singlecut-bass/"]http://www.notreble....singlecut-bass/[/url] [/quote] This came as a complete surprise. Still haven't wiped the silly grin off my face! Many, many thanks to Kert for putting this forward

I'm trying a different finish...with the environmentally-led formulation change, the Ronseal polyurethane varnish gave me some issues last time. Having seen someone's fabulous build (was it here? Can't remember who...) who used Chestnut Melamine, I thought I'd give it a whirl. This CANNOT be used in my cellar workshop, even with mask and extraction, but is very quick and so far very impressive. This is after one sanding sealer coat and one top coat:

[quote name='martthebass' timestamp='1479149062' post='3174360'] Now that's just taunting! The bass is currently in Advanced Guitar Solutions in Sheffield having phase one of its beautification treatment....the horrible black gunky varnish is being stripped and the headstock sprayed over. The rear of the neck is having a vintage gloss tint applied. Not cheap, hopefully it will be worth it. Phase 2 will be removal of the 'cinnamon artex' that passes for paint on the body. I expect final cost will be more than if I'd bought a full fat Sterling but the sub is basically a 3 band stingray with the pup in series - a much better sound (to my ears) that the stock US Sterling. [/quote] Interesting stuff . Did you see my Sterling 5 thread for Paul_S? Just fitted a P pickup and put that to passive with a standard 3 way switch. Interestingly, to balance the volumes of the two p/ups, I rewired that also to series. To my ears it sounds great.

[quote name='martthebass' timestamp='1479144399' post='3174303'] Watching with interest Andy. I Think you could really help turn my ugly duckling MM usa Sterling sub into a swan. [/quote] Sounds interesting

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1479140221' post='3174252'] How about a thread dedicated to Andy's work? [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/295232-andyjr1515s-custom-builds/page__pid__3174264#entry3174264"]http://basschat.co.u...64#entry3174264[/url] [/quote] You do know that flattery will get you absolutely anywhere, don't you