Andyjr1515

Sorry...it's one of J's requirements. A firebird type with steinberger 'modern banjo' tuners

I'll be using my battle-worn home-made 15 foot radius dish to form the back curve of the walnut. I positioned the mould and made a couple of mahogany side pieces that will become the ends of the hollow wings and also the mating faces with the through-neck. The side pieces clearly also need curved bottoms (no, @SpondonBassed. Just no. ) These will also be used to press the thin walnut sheet down into the radius dish: They will sit here, either side of the through-neck, glued to the walnut sheet backs with bent sides ( back and sides acoustic-guitar style) and flat-bottomed ebony panels on top: I will be adding some acoustic-like cross braces to hold the shape of each wing's back. I also measured the depth of the intended chamber to ensure enough room for the jack and pots and then cut the tops of the two bearers to final size. The dotted blue line on the mould sides represents where the tops of the sides will sit, with the flat ebony sitting on top of the bearers and sides, either side of the visible through neck: This isn't the neck (or planned lamination), but gives an idea of what the top will look like:

It may well end up as one

The basic construction (although I'm designing this a bit on the hoof, so it might change) is going to be a full length and visible multi-laminate neck and then an ebony-topped semi-acoustic wing stuck on either side. The back and sides will be walnut, dished and bent as in an acoustic and topped by the ebony. What I haven't decided yet is whether the open-box construction would be strong enough to resist any warp tendencies that might come from the ebony - which will be by far the most significant strength element in each wing. So what is inside might change. But, whatever, a mould is going to be needed. Yes - I could make one, but buying one from radiusdish uk is a lot easier! This is a 335 mould and so I will need to cut a block to be able to form the florentines. It'll be something like this: The back walnut panels will be positioned again either side of the visible through-neck: And, at last, a piece of mahogany offcut that's been clogging up my bits box has found a use!

Actually, creepy and secret I've realised that this shot is of the back. The proper bookmatch side has a ripple line but not the eye looking deep into your audiences souls. It'll be staring forever at the dusty interior of a dubiously built semi acoustic

Hi All I know this should be posted in "Guitarchat" but, in spite of the recent upgrade, my virus checker still throws the most severe warnings it possesses when I try to log in to it. So apologies to those who aren't fussed at following a guitar build thread, but I'll do a summary progress thread for those who might also delve from time to time into the dark side. And for all...this is REALLY one I can't be sure of success. So those who like watching car crash movies in (very) slow motion, I'm sure there'll be much to see along the way It's a build I've been discussing with J for months. It's a Trini Lopez deluxe semi - but with a difference. The trini lopez deluxe that Gibson used to do was a florentine-horned and firebird headstocked variant of the ES335 semi acoustic. Here's an example: And it's MASSIVE. To scale, this is the size compared with a Les Paul: J isn't after a clone. He wants this kind of shape but is happy for me to experiment with the construction method (the original 335's are hollow-bodied with a solid through block to tame the feedback) Oh...but he does want the top to be in ebony. Let alone the weight, I wasn't sure you could GET ebony wide enough. And you can't, quite - because this is an exceptionally wide guitar. But...hmmm...if I have an exposed multi-laminate neck (think Aria basses)...hmmm...this might work... And yes - that is indeed some actual ebony, complete with an interesting sandy stripe. Because I said 'yes' and bought it. Now just got to work out how to make it!

You'll find that it's generally more projects

Hi @benh I tend to use first4magnets They let you buy 20 magnets for a number of the sizes and there are various pull strengths for many of them. I vary depending on the need but for hatches, I tend to use 5mm dia .26kg pull for the body and 4mm .25kg for the hatch. For trussrod covers I use 3mm for the headstock and 2mm for the hatch itself

It doesn’t really matter with a bitsa where you are unlikely to be swopping the neck often, but generally (not always) the necks tend to be the more accurate and so it is the pocket that is generally sanded. That said, it is slightly more difficult. I us a fairly coarse paper and wrap it round a flat bottomed pencil or similar to allow me to apply pressure but keep the surface straight. It takes patience but you do get there eventually If you do go for the neck, use a cork block or similar, again to allow pressure to be applied but keeping the surface flat. Brush or vac the paper regularly to stop the paper getting clogged.

Mine too

Yes - like it @ped

You mean with my weak necks and all the holes that I drill in the wrong place and cover with veneer? Fair point...

So here was the plan. The three integrated pcb pots were only going to fit in one orientation, but happily with just enough room for the hatch-fixed pot to sit in the middle of them all: But this was ignoring the substantial wiring looms and connectors. It took some judicious 'under the cover' chisel work to get this to fit without any boards or components shorting or fouling What the eye don't see... : ...the heart don't grieve over : What - no zip ties? Actually, no. There is so little room between the bottom of the hatch and the top of the units, that I have to spread the connecting wires around the area for the hatch to fully seat If this becomes a permanent fixture - which given my first impressions, it might! - I will simply drill the fourth hole in the camphor top and have the blend front-mounted, which would give me the ability to put in some much neater cable routing but, at the moment, it is function over form

And so the plan is for me to take out the 2-channel Seymour Duncan EQ and fit @mhoss32 's system and get Matt to do a video with it fitted Two initial challenges were: Challenge 1 Getting it back from Matt Achieved! More than that, before passing it back across, Matt did me a video of the same piece that he will play when the new system's been fitted, as a reference. And here it is back at chez Andyjr1515: Challenge 2 Fitting the 4 knob system into the existing 3 knob control chamber and making it reversible This took a bit of thinking through, some measuring and a fair bit of PM to-and-froing between the two of us. Solution was: - Go V/T/T - Add a blend pot - Fit the above blend pot in a false control cover at the back of the bass Well, got half a chance! That decided, @mhoss32 made up a blend pot loom for me and sent the blend loom, battery loom, volume unit and two tone units on to me while I got on with stripping out the SD EQ from the bass and cutting a temporary control cover:

Hi Anyone who has been following @mhoss32 's stunning build... ...will have been as awe-struck as I was with the sheer depth and breadth of inventiveness in the building and equipping of that amazing instrument. It's worth a full re-read of the thread, whether it is for the immensely impressive wood-working, the top-drawer finishing, the designing and making of his own pickups or for the design and manufacture of his own EQ system!!! So you can imagine how happy was I when @mhoss32 approached me to try out his EQ in one of my basses Hmmm...which bass... ....hmmm....all of my own basses are still with Matt Marriott... Why are they with Matt? Well, he has been doing some videos of a number of my builds - electric, acoustic and bass - and what with Covid, etc, still has them. And it includes 'Kert's Camphor Singlecut': ....hmmm...now there's an idea

Anything in between the pickup and the jack has the potential to change the sound so yes, an extra pot in the chain will have an impact, as does the volume pot itself. Ref the tone pot, as far as I understand these things, the capacitor's job is to bleed off the treble frequencies from the signal. Without the capacitor, the whole signal spectrum is bleeding off through the pot coil and so yes, the tone will be affected, although in a different way than if a capacitor was in the chain. A number of the basses I've done for Tom have had no volume pot or tone pot - the pickup is wired direct to the jack. It makes an interesting comparison to if you add just a volume pot or a volume and tone pot.

Hi @ped Thanks for all your input (and any others involved in the process) in keeping the Basschat site up to date Ref Guitarchat - no, Norton still blocks the site. Andy

Beauuuuuuuuuuutiful....

Good call

That is absolutely gorgeous!

Beautiful

With that stain, this is worth waiting for

From a neck strength point of view or sound, @SteveXFR ? 5 string necks have proportionally much more timber either side of the truss rod slot (assuming one rod) and so I think one semitone either side is unlikely to cause a problem other than maybe the need to tweak the truss rod a touch. Tone-wise, I would have thought that a gauge thickness difference would have more impact than a semitone tension change on the existing gauges, so I personally I would stick with the present strings.

Oh - and worth double checking that the black/white join for both of the two pickups is a good one and that the join is insulated. The black/white join connects the two coils in each pickup and, if the join is poor or is shorting to earth, it will cut out one of the two coils and halve the output.

When you say 'all is smooth' for each individually on max - are they around about the same volume as each other on max? As @Hellzero says, the two pickups need to be balanced volume-wise (done by adjusting the pickup heights) otherwise when you feed in the two together, the volume will tend to drop as the higher output p/u is impacted by the lower one. Usually, the gap between the top of the slugs to the bottom of the strings would be 2mm or more greater for the neck pickup than the bridge p/u (because the string vibration is greater at the neck position). As a starting point, I usually set the bridge at around 3mm and the neck at around 5mm gap and then raise or lower the bridge p/u for optimum sound and finally balance the height of the neck p/u to balance the volume. If the above is OK then there is probably something slightly wrong with the wiring (BTW, your bridge earth position will be fine). It is USUALLY a missing or duff earth - but I find it is worth printing the wiring diagram and then following each wire from the diagram, ticking off each connection point at either end of each wire to check there is not a connection point missing or an obvious dry joint. Oh - and don't worry too much - I've wired dozens of guitars and basses and it's STILL a surprise and joy when it all works as it should first time