Andyjr1515

What colours are the four wires you mention? If they are green, white, yellow and brown, then the Green is hot, the Yellow and White would normally be connected for full humbucking and the brown is to ground. Any help?

I've just recorded Ray Hatfield (played with one of the incarnations of Wishbone Ash for a number of years) gigging with one of my 6 string electrics. It used to be my gigging guitar and I can assure you it NEVER sounded like that when I played it!

That is crazy good...

By the way - it's all looking absolutely splendid

Great save! Consider that inspired design feature stolen

I can't think of one in terms of functionality for the Maruszczyk single rod type. The adjuster attached to the right hand thread end rather than the left hand thread end would have functionally an identical effect on the rod and relief . On a modern two-rod or rod-strip type, then yes - if there is an access issue to the adjuster, which is normally attached to the bottom rod and therefore sits at the bottom of the of the trussrod channel, then flipping it over brings the adjuster to the top of the trussrod channel and, for some designs, giving easier access for the allen key (but in the process reverses the direction it bends). Same goes if the adjuster is deeper than the rod...sometimes that gets the trussrod channel too close to breaking through the back of the neck. For home builds, it can also happen by accident...crazily, many adverts show modern trussrods upside down! This is a typical shot from a much-respected supplier (and it's not just the photographer - the accompanying technical drawing shows it upside down too!) : Put it in this way up, it will be reversed. In that no fitting instructions are supplied with the rods, it would be an easy mistake to make in a first build.

Excellent. Watching with interest Also, @Jabba_the_gut has some great experience at getting crazy short bass strings not feeling or sounding like a piece of wet spaghetti. Hopefully he'll drop by from time to time

If you look closely, you can see that sanding line is a slight bit lighter, but for most observers, well, I don't think they would see it. Just need to let the blend coat fully dry over the next few days and it can be shipped back to @evan47

I would PM Andre directly Don't worry that Nova are based in Brazil - mine arrived as quick as if they had come from Brighton

That looks alright

Nova Guitar Parts. Excellent quality and decent price. There are Chinese fakes about, so best to look them up on Facebook. The owner is @Andre_Passini who is a member here

Impressive stuff on many fronts. I read with interest the challenges with 3d printing...but that is a high quality result by any measure!

Well, as the saying goes, "There are many ways of skinning a cat!" (Although they all feel much the same to the cat...)

After sanding the headstock, it was time to cut the blank of maple constructional veneer (constructional veneer at around 2mm is quite a bit thicker than standard veneer, which is generally 0.6mm). Whereas the standard veneer will bend round the curve running up to the nut without any problem, this thicker variety needs to be pre-bent, especially as it is being bent across the grain. So out comes the bending iron I use for acoustic guitar sides: After a decent soaking, the nut end of the blank was carefully bent. It has a tendency to spring back when drying and so, while still damp, it is clamped to the curve (below) and will stay there until fully dry. I will be gluing on the plate when it is fully dry in the morning and by when that curve should be pretty much set.

At the moment, I just keep looking at it with a mix of satisfaction and relief I've said before that guitars and basses are made of a series of compromises held together with hope. None more so than when you have to do open-heart-surgery stuff like this! What that slot tells me at the moment is that, because it is now exactly the same width as when I cut it, the board must therefore be absolutely in the right place. And that isn't always easy to judge - naturally over time, but accelerated when you have to heat them up like this, the fretboards shrink a little bit (it's why often a new bass, after around a year or two, often starts getting sharp fret ends that need filing back flush). And so having such a precise datum like that slot is useful. When the tinted finish arrives, I will mix a little with some maple sanding dust (I keep dust from all the woods I use for this type of purpose) and fill the slot in the same way that the original fret slots were filled by the manufacturer.

@evan47 is - as it should be - slightly ahead of the rest of the forum on this He's asked me if I could do him some offset dots on the face of the fretboard. Here they are for the rest of you to see Just got to wait for the tinted finish to arrive and then I can blend the joint line to the original finish and have something that feels right and looks right.

Clamps are off! Most important first check - has that set-bow gone? Yup - it's straight: Next is using a cabinet scraper to take any remaining glue squeeze-out and edges off so we can see how tight the joint is before merging the finish: There's more to do to fully merge the original finish and the new joint, but the basic joint seen below is looking OK. I will be fine-sanding between the edge and the existing finish to make sure that your playing hand doesn't feel any irregularity and then use some tinted finish (probably the same stuff as used originally, based on how it behaved when I was removing it) so that also visibly it doesn't shout out : Oh - and I've just given the rod a 1/4 turn clockwise...the neck bends smoothly and in the 'conventional' direction

It was always part of the spec from when @funkle first asked about the neck. He's made me a decal to use with it - it will work fine

No problem In the meantime...all frets are in Next job - finding and fitting the maple veneer for the headstock (which is why there's no rush, @funkle )

Well, the fretwire arrived, so out of excuses Out with the bits and pieces I use. Ignore the radius block - I will be using the 12" one used for the fretboard. Tang nibbler, triangular file to take the sharp edge off the fretslots, an improvised depth gauge to ensure no tangs bottom out, clippers to clip to length, a radius block to keep the shape while the bead of woodglue is setting and a mallet to whack them in with : I run a teeny bead of woodglue along the tangs and then whack one side, then the other and then the middle - that last one spreads the barbs under the fretboard surface and locks the fret in. The glue squeeze-out is wiped away immediately with a damp cloth: And then I clamp them with the radius block while I prepare the next one and move everything down one: 15 still to go at time of typing

Yes - it's a conundrum. Main thing is, does the 'Care Guide' supplied with the new basses (?) point it out? If so, fair enough.

And so to the part that probably need the most care - gluing the fretboard back. First step, clearly, was to ensure that all traces of the original glue was removed from both faces. Then a couple of dry runs to make sure that when I started clamping, I knew where everything I was going to need was and where it would go. The board tends to float around on the glue layer and so positive location of its position is needed. One useful thing is that the original heel screw drill holes actually go into the fretboard a small amount - I will be able to use that with a drill shank as a locator! Note also the plywood strip running along the neck spline which will act as the clamping caul: The next way of locating checked in the dry run was a few spool clamps to clamp the side of the fretboard in line with the side of the neck. The main clamp cauls on this side is a variety of fretboard radius sanding blocks to give maximum pressure across the board and to the sides: And then, just before gluing, low-tack masking tape - I don't want to be having to scrape wood glue off the neck or fretboard any more than I have to! And, finally, glue, check all of the alignments, clamp, re-check: And it will stay clamped until tomorrow morning when I will see how much edge reparation will be needed.

Yes - a tonetech standard modern two-way I had a ponder and discussion with @evan47 and we agreed that this would be preferable. Yes - it's a bit weird that the Maurszczyk is reverse. If the adjuster was fitted in manufacture to the other side, it would work 'normally' (one end has a reverse thread, the other has a standard thread. The adjuster here was attached to the reverse thread end but could just as easily been fitted to the other end without any difference to how it works other than it would then adjust normally. It's bizarre). But my main concern was that even if it was turning the wrong way, it shouldn't have snapped with the small adjustments that @evan47 was making and the relatively small bow that he had created in the process! And being reverse is just stacking up the odds. I could understand it if they offered a ready and lucrative truss rod replacement service but, clearly, they don't And it's not unknown, of course, for the modern rods to fail (although I've never personally suffered or seen that). But if you scour the 'Repairs and Technical' here and on other bass and guitar forums, it seems to me to be almost always the case that truss rod difficulties - other than related to folks using the wrong allen key sizes - are with the older-style bent-rod systems.

The replacement trussrod arrived yesterday and so today was about prepping the fit and getting ready for re-gluing of the fretboard. First thing was to widen the slot a mm for the new rod to fit snugly in the slot: The original 'traditional' rod required a curved slot carved in the neck for it to work. The modern rod I am fitting is straight. So two more things needed to be done - deepening the slot either end by a few mm and filling the over deep length in the middle. Here I'm using the 'I don't use this often but by golly am I glad I have it for this kind of job' mini hand router to shave the shallow ends down to depth: Technically, the over-deep part of the slot could be left alone - the new rod will bow upwards against the fretboard centre, not downwards into the slot - but I always think that the fewer voids you have in a neck the better! So I am shaving down some spare maple edge binding to fill the over-deep area of the slot: Removing the old, still reverse-tensioned, rod allowed the set bow in the neck to flatten. I can reinforce that by lightly clamping the flat face of the neck to my levelling beam while the glue on those infill strips is drying: I'll let that fully set overnight and then tomorrow should be able to insert the rod and re-glue the fretboard to the neck. And while that's drying, start fretting @funkle's Wal-ish neck, whose fret wire arrived this afternoon

I'd taken a punt and ordered some fretwire based on looking closely at stock photos of various Wals but the timing of @NickA 's post was spot on. I can always use fretwire and so if what I'd ordered wasn't right, there was still time to order the right stuff. And so popped over to Nick's this afternoon and...what I've ordered is actually right! Many thanks to @NickA for stepping in