Andyjr1515

[quote name='Manton Customs' timestamp='1401139399' post='2460560'] Looks great, congratulations to Andy and hope Chris has many happy hours rocking it . [/quote] Thanks, Manton Customs...means a lot Andy

I agree with the optimists. Assuming the neck joint is sound, it appears to be at the easy stage ( relatively speaking). Two-way truss rods are cheap and just drop in. You could even get a pre-slotted AAA ebony board for not much money. Fretting is straightforward and inlays too depending on how elaborate you are thinking. I'm sure Manton will do you proud.

Thanks for the kind words, folks, and thanks for the endorsement, Chris. Here are some shots of the finished article...lovely looking bass and sounds great with Chris's skills applied to playing it! This was the main job - getting rid of the furrows in the fretboard that were causing buzzing and dampening of the sound. It's a really nice piece of rosewood - looks fabulous and now sounds great too: The scratches on the pickups are gone too. It really is a very well made bass and must have looked cracking when it was new. Looks pretty cool with the occasional road dint!: This is the headstock. As Chris says, it looks OK head-on but with the full light reflected on it, I'm not entirely happy with it. I think my varnish is maybe getting a little tired. When Chris has a short spell not using it (although based on the big grin he had when he was playing it, that might be some time!), I'll just give it a final couple of coats of some fresh stuff and get it to how I would like it. Mind you, we are all agreed that, compared with how it was when he bought it, it is a great improvement Before: ...and after: As usual - thanks for looking Andy

[quote name='Chris Sharman' timestamp='1400970236' post='2458789'] Andy, That looks fantastic. On a day when I am suffering from seeing my beloved Derby County lose at Wembley, seeing my Westone in this state truly gladdens my heart. Feel free to take all the time to need, I am sure it will be worth the wait. C. [/quote] Hi, Chris - yes, a bummer ref Derby... Final coat of the headstock is a good one so no worries - it'll be done on time. It's a lovely looking bass. It's also one of the heaviest guitars of any sort I've ever worked on!!! Andy

[quote name='kodiakblair' timestamp='1400935625' post='2458315'] That has been a great job you've done there Andy. As for the old Concord. I was working on a house in March when the owner unearthed it in the loft to ask " what'd you think ? ". 2 A strings, broken nut held in with Blue Tac, Frets ripped out and never filled, tone pot missing, wiring soldered with Blue Tac and of course the Art work. Told him " No Much !" so he gave me it. Had to sand the paintwork out as I'd no stripper and the Stanely knife carving had to go, 5 hours with the sand paper did the trick. Replaced the nut,frets,bridge,strap loks and tuners then gave it a few coats of wax. Thought was to have a clear scratchplate so scanned the back and tried to match the grain Not too successful but idea was to print out just enough to cover control cavity and hope the Perspex distorted things to hide the contrast. But that's as far as I've got. the nut needs re-cut and the neck tweaked, action way too high. Then again I might sand again and spray it Yellow with white plate like in the Westone catalogue from 82. Thanks for asking Andy [/quote] Clever idea ref the photo image! You could also veneer it - this is my Squier VM Jaguar Bass...because I reshaped the fingerguard, there's all sorts of voids under the veneer:

At the final stages, I think. I used micro-mesh pads to get rid of the scratches left on the pickup covers by a previous owner who had removed the Westone 'W' logo with some pretty coarse stuff. You can still see the deep scratches on this shot: After a bit of elbow grease and progressing down to finer and finer micro-mesh pads, they have pretty much disappeared. The headstock is almost ready for its final coat of varnish...when it's dry, I will wet sand with 1000 grit wet and dry and then apply 'operating theatre standards' to make sure no dust buggies land on the final coat... Here it is with its (hopefully) penultimate coat: No doubt to the immense frustration of Chris, it will then need to sit for a week while the headstock varnish really dries hard before I can reassemble it, set it up and return it to him. It should be with you next weekend as promised, Chris Thanks for looking and for your encouraging comments, folks Andy

You're all very kind. It's nice doing this sort of thing - making an already good bass even better. Pity the day job gets in the way

[quote name='kodiakblair' timestamp='1400874478' post='2457865'] It is a great job Andy. Now how about this one? Joking of course. It's looking like this at the mo. [/quote] Now that's what I CALL mojo You've made a nice job of stripping it - what are you planning next? Andy

Back to the Westone, I've added a couple more coats of varnish to the headstock, sanding with 1000 grit in between. When it's dry tomorrow, I'll see if it needs a couple more. While I'm waiting, I've started a quick repair on the side of the fretboard where some lacquer had been knocked off. Chris didn't ask specifically for this but it catches your thumb as you run up and down the fretboard and is easy enough to fix with a few dabs of varnish applied with a cotton bud. By the time the headstock is ready for the final polish, this will be hard enough to smooth out with a bit of wet and dry and polish up with a micro-mesh pad and should make the neck feel a lot smoother Tomorrow I'll see of I can get rid of the sandpaper scratches on the pickup covers. Andy

[quote name='fleabag' timestamp='1400799411' post='2457206'] Also, do maple fingerboard always get the acrylic or epoxy gloss finish for the hardness factor - keeping string wear to a minimum ? [/quote] Must admit I haven't seen many maple fretlesses. Maple wouldn't need any help with the hardness - it is a VERY hard wood. The coating you tend to get on six strings is usually more to show off the flame or simply keep the dirt off. On a fretless, I think a gloss would tend to drag on the fingers. If I was doing one for myself, I would seal it with a coat of matt varnish and then very fine sand it (1000 to 2000 grit) to a silky smooth finish... Any maple fretless players out there?

[quote name='funkle' timestamp='1400751441' post='2456569'] Hello all (and Andy) Just wanted to give props to Andy for getting back in touch with me. Our mutual schedules may not work out for getting the work done in a timely fashion, so I am electing to go with someone else, but Andy's email response to me was very generous/professional and it looks to me like he'd be a good guy to go to for future work. The photos of his stuff look stunning and he nice to deal with. His quote was reasonable too. This time around though, it's going to Sims. Like I said, I'll try and get some before and after pics up at some point. Pete [/quote] Good choice, Pete - I think you'll be very pleased with Sims work. Let us know how it goes Andy

The dip where the previous owner had tried to sand off the logo was almost down to the veneer and at first I was concerned that, in trying to sand it flat, that I might end up sanding the decal itself. However, I am beginning to think that is is, in fact a white-filler filled routered logo! I used a flat sanding block. First 120 grit to get rid of the bulk. You can see the dip as the darker line across the logo: Here it is with the dip fully flattened: Then it was progressively finer paper down to 1000 grit to remove any visible scratch marks. I put masking tape around the edges and gave it the first coat of Ronseal Hardglaze, thinned by around 15% with white spirits and wiped on with a micro-fibre cloth. This is it after coat 1: Thanks for looking Andy

First job was to take off the nut so I could get a clear sweep for the sanding block and the leveling beam. I carefully scored the join line of the nut as it appears that the nut had been epoxied in and there was a subsequent risk of tear of the fingerboard or headstock veneer. With a sharp tap of a hammer and drift, it came off cleanly with no damage to it or the neck. There were signs of sanding scratches on the fretboard so presumably the previous owner had had a bash at doing this before! I checked that the neck was dead flat and started with even and long strokes (with the grain) of the radius sanding block with 120 grit paper, cleaning frequently using an old toothbrush get rid of the build up of old finish that can, if you don't get it off as it forms, put grooves into the surface you are sanding. Every now and again, I ran the leveling beam over the whole fretboard length to ensure there weren't any curves or dips being formed by uneven pressure. Better this way round otherwise you can end up with irregular flats down the board. This is it in progress: Note that the body is all wrapped up to protect against knocks or scratches and to keep the VERY fine dust out of the workings. You can see why my wife insists that she does the Christmas wrapping In little over half an hour, the last of the depressions were gone: I repeated with the radius block with 400 grit, 600 grit, 1000 grit and finally with microweb until it was silky smooth and then popped on a light coating of lemon oil: Bootiful! I also made some decent progress with the headstock - I'll post that in a few minutes Andy

Met Chris again last night and took possession of his precious bass. I resisted the temptation to jump in the car, drive off and find a quiet corner of Scotland to play contentedly to myself for the rest of my days... Instead, I thought I'd do a short blog of the progress on this lovely but short-lived make and model. I had a largely free day today and was able to make decent progress. First I checked it over, checking also the string heights and relief for a datum on reassembly. As Chris and I had discussed, there are a few body dings we agreed to leave alone, but there are around 10 quite deep string wear grooves on various strings at the 3rd, 5th 7th and 9th 'fret' positions (my primary job). A previous owner had tried to sand off the headstock logo, leaving a deep depression in the poly (my secondary job): The previous owner has also had sanded off the logos on the pickup covers leaving nasty scratches in the plastic (which we agreed I would try to polish out): I took a good look at an ominous-looking lacquer crack at the back of the neck but concluded it is just that - I suspect it has been dropped in its past and the headstock flexed enough to crack the lacquer but not enough to split the wood (moral - laminate necks like this one are strong!): Other than a missing screw and broken switch toggle, it seemed to be pretty shipshape. I measured the fretboard radius and it was a surprisingly tight 12". I build 6-strings at 12" so happily had a 12" radius sanding block. I'll post the rest of the progress today shortly. Andy

Hi, funkle Basschat member Chris Sharman has just alerted me that you have been trying to contact me. For some crazy reason (probably me!) neither my ipad or iphone are picking up my ajrguitarmods mails. I HATE it when people don't answer emails so please accept my profuse apologies. I have PM'd you and attached my personal email and phone number if you want to contact me, even just to talk though what you are trying to do. I hear only good things about Martin Sims and Rich Lewis (ou7shined) and I am flattered to be on the same list as those guys. In reality, I think they are both probably better equipped than me to give you what you are looking for and would heartily endorse either. Having therefore stepped back from the contenders, if you want an unbiased chat through what it is involved in what you are trying to achieve, feel free to give me a call on the PM'd phone number. Andy

This is looking a really nice build!

It's a stunning looking bass. Premier league!

We run the whole band through the PA (albeit it's our PA with the EQs set to suit each instrument) In reality, we don't even run DI's as such...the 6 strings do go through pedals that do the same thing, but the bass plugs straight into a pre-amped channel. We do have short cable runs, however, which helps. It is a lot lot easier to get a good sound to the front of house this way, but as JamesXP says, the monitors need to be pretty good. We use two wedge monitors plus 'semi' individual mix earphones. We are consistently told that our sound balance is better than most of the other bands and you can hear all the instruments and the vocalist, rather than the usual ever-increasing backline volume competition. I think it's a bit all or nothing, though - if the 6 strings have a back line, the bass needs to be similar. If the 6 strings are also going through the PA, it can work very well. Also, obviously, your PA speakers need to be hefty enough to take the bass without distorting the treble and vocals. Depends what you're playing, how you're playing and where you're playing... I can already hear some readers going 'Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!'

So, the postscript of this is:[list] [*]Yes - we do live 3 miles away from each other (small world) [*]Yes - I did meet Chris and his lovely wife for a pint at the Pattenmakers Arms last night [*]Yes - the Westone Thunder 3 is a beauoooootiful bass [*]Yes - my freedom from the b****y wedding coincides with Chris's availability of the Thunder for the fixes [*]Yes - the one crazy man is trusting his precious bass with the other crazy man [/list] We'll keep you posted in a few weeks time By the way - follow Chris's band's website link above - some great and original music. Trip Hazard is sublime... Andy

It's a small world...I've PM'd you, Chris. The things we blokes have to do to get out for a pint....best excuse yet, though. I normally have to tell my wife 'I've just got to go and see a man about a dog....' The 'I've just got to go and see a man about a Westone' just has so much more cachet about it Andy

In fact, based on your band's address, we probably live about 3 miles from each other I'm in Duffield - you're near Belper? If you want, you can pop round this evening for me to have a look and for you to see if I know what I'm doing Being so close, I can probably do it a bit quicker, too. PM me and I'm sure we can sort something out

Hi, Chris Where in the East Midlands are you and how soon do you want this sorting? I'm just north of Derby and, if late May is OK for you, happy to do it for the cost of the materials (if there are any, which there probably won't be). Have a look at my website www.ajrguitarmods.co.uk in terms of the stuff I've done in the past. This was a scratch built fretless I did for our band's bassist: ...and this was a veneer job and refurb (including getting rid of the old round-wound indentations!) on an old Yamaha fretless: As I say, no charge but couldn't do it until the end of May (eldest daughter's wedding is taking over the family's life!) PM me if you are close by and interested. No problem if not Andy

+1 for hipshots. They are excellent.

If it disappears with water I would think it will also disappear with tru oil. Try a little in a non obvious place...you can always sand it off again.

[quote name='Dolando' timestamp='1393747927' post='2383859'] Thanks Andy, and thanks for sending that mahogany. Its really finished it off nicely. [/quote] No problem. I actually used some of the same eventually to do a control chamber cover on my yew/ mahogany home built. As you say, finishes it off nicely .