Andyjr1515

Nope There's no way of doing that except to simply unplug the battery (which is only there for the LEDs). The LEDs are all controlled from within the SimS switches themselves.

No - that would mean making my own doohickeys and doohickey machining is way past my capabilities

No, no prize. @Jus Lukin is happy with the chrome washers

Thanks, @eude ! Hope all well with you and yours

You say the nicest things Thanks. I have to say, it's one of my favourites.

Good point - I forgot to mention that. There will be a label on the back of the cover. But that's not the change

There is actually one small tweak I'm going to make, apart from the above jobs, before I declare it properly finished. I'll let you all guess what that might be. Usual prize - one cheesy grin emoji

Before I run out of my quota of 'thanks' emojis, many thanks for the very encouraging comments and feedback, folks

I'll leave that to the owner I think @Jus Lukin has already twigged that his services might be required once we can get this to him

OK - good progress this morning. Martin at SimS sent me the new switches at super-quick time - and they're in - and they all work I still have to pop the front strap button on, put the fixing screws on the back hatch (yup - magnets aren't going to cut the mustard ) and do the final pickup height adjustment but, basically, it's done This is why it will need screws - the hatch actually stays shut (see below) but it would only want the wires to 'relax' a smidgen and it would pop a magnet hatch right off: Here are some shots to be getting on with: Here, the hatch is just pushed on and stays there fine even without magnets...but after, say, changing the battery, it only needs one of the 47 wires to shift a bit and even with magnets, it would be off By the way - although the LEDs light up as soon as the jack is plugged in (there is no option with the SimS switches for them to be turned off) the pickups don't actually need the battery to work. So if you wanted to me a little less colourful, you can just take the battery out and it will still play just as well. As always, thanks for the tremendous support along the way, folks. I always means a lot

No - I think @Fishman has already sounded them out although I believe there were some smaller things they were happy to help with.

That's some nice timber Looks great.

Great info, @TrevorR - thank you very much

OK. Bridge not fitted yet - I won't do that until the neck is bolted in place - but basically the body is finished with the scratchplate fitted and the pickup working as it should: @Fishman had asked me if I could do anything with the pick/nail scratches on the pickguard, so the above is after I've given that a bit of attention. You can see them clearly here on a 'before' shot: It's quite a delicate operation, because the surface is textured and slightly shiny, so you want to remove the main visual edges of the scratches without taking that bobbly surface or shine away. I did another 'wet & dry' approach but this time where the sanding medium was some pretty fine micro-web and the wet was good old beeswax balsam (this will be used for the final clean and polish up of the finished bass) and even so applied very, very lightly in stages of wipe off, buff up, look at the result, repeat. If you look very closely, you can see the lines, but they are very faint now and - as you can see in the photo - pretty invisible from normal distance So this is going to a safe storage place until those pesky unf bolts and cupped washers arrive

I'm told that it was also put to Mythbusters to see if licking a Scalextric track would prevent you tasting sherbert for a number of years. It was apparently rejected because the show's producers considered it "ridiculous that anyone would be that stupid."

Happily, of the two experiments on my list of 'cool things to try', the licking the Scalextric track was first on the list...

You were there! Honestly, that is how it felt. Absolute shocker in all respects....

See above. Advice duly gratefully received and firmly rejected

When I was but a lad, we used to lick the terminals of batteries for the magic of being able to 'taste' the electricity. The 9v cells were always the best because they gave the best tingle. So - the 11 year-old Andyjr1515 thought - the 12v Scalextric track runs should taste even better. Let's just say that sherbert didn't taste the same for about 5 years...

Yes! I did the continuity check as suggested by @Hellzero , I took the 'you can't do any damage' approach as muted by @Rich , plugged it in and tested it and then saw @Jabba_the_gut 's photo link and that is exactly where I'd plugged it Great team work And we have taps, folks So I can now fully assemble the body and then just have to wait for the neck bolts to start the set-up process Many thanks, folks, much appreciated

A quick call to @Rich ; @MoonBassAlpha or anyone else wot knows. I'm just about to do a 'tap' test of the pickup now that everything is grounded, etc.. The circuit board has two outputs to the jack connector: I'm assuming that they are both the same and I can choose either one?

Given my capability with electronics, I think the reality is, in the unlikely event that it doesn't work, that it would need to be sent to someone who knows what they are doing. I know I don't really know what I'm doing with the building stuff...but I REALLY don't know what I'm doing with electronics

Starting to get ready for the assembly of the body components and electrics. I soldered the bridge earth wire so I didn't forget it and then turned my attention to the jack plate. First is the scarily large hole you have to bore to fit a standard-sized jack (the Wal is pre-wired with a connector and earth but it's still a standard switchcraft stereo jack): Then marked and drilled the screw fixing holes: Note the round nut. It isn't a rounded nut...it's a round nut with spanner flats machined - an 'everything is a going to be a bit different to the norm' step too far, perhaps? And this, of course, is how you would get your $8000 Les Paul Custom. But far, far too safe for Andyjr1515. So he's going to hit it with a chisel. 'Take that, you lump of wood!' : And then abuse it more with another couple of chisels: Still got to sand, stain and tru-oil the edges, but that's going to be better... Over the weekend, the plan is to get the scratchplate on and see if the 30+ year-old circuit still works

One of the jobs today was sorting the earth on the bridge. Nowadays, I use the shielding copper foil and use the drill-hole to hide the solder joint with the earth cable. I find this a much more certain way of getting a good earth contact without the danger of the bridge being lifted off the body by the splayed wires of the more traditional way of doing it. I solder the earth wire to a strip of sticky-backed copper first: I then just feed the wire through the drilled hole, peel off the backing paper and stick it in place: Lastly, after sanding the paint off the back of the bridge block, fix that and then do the all-important electrical continuity check: As I outlined in a previous post, the head block connects the other three strings to earth via this string saddle. I heard from Martin and have a set of switches on the way - I've ordered all three as they will have been overstressed the same amount as the one that failed (and, actually, while I was plugging and unplugging cables, a second one did the same thing). I gave him a call on a couple of things I wanted to check and came away wiser on two other things: - I'm an engineer (by qualification though, clearly, not by skill ). But I hadn't thought through "If you pop a nut on the switch shaft before you put the spring washer and switch in, then the outside nut is tightening up against the inside nut and so there's no stress on the shaft to switch joint and you can tighten up as much as you like". I think the fact that I hadn't thought that through confirms that you should never walk over a bridge that I've designed... - For many two pickup sets, the bridge is more powerful than the neck. For a guitar 3-pickup arrangement, the middle pickup is usually the same lower power than the neck. But it is also reverse polarity and reverse wound so that it humbucks with both the bridge and the neck pickup. So one of my question marks was how was this going to work with the Superquads, where I have a bridge and two identical neck pickups. Martin clarified - the Superquad bridge pickup is exactly the same power as the neck pickup. Therefore, to get the 'reverse polarity reverse wound' effect, then to put the bridge in the middle. So the bridge, middle, neck pickups will actually be neck, bridge, neck Superquads Finally, he confirmed that this - to his knowledge - is the first triple Superquad bass in the world Might be worth entering it into the US-based NoTreble ezine's 'Bass of the Week' comp - it would be pleasing to win that for the fifth time (he says with all due modesty )

No word yet from Martin at SimS about the replacement switch (I'll ring them later) but it actually won't hold anything up at the moment - I can still do most of the remaining stuff up to and including finishing the wiring, fitting the Status strings and doing the set up. So I'm expecting full LED gloriousness later today for the neck and bridge pickups which can be tested fully. For the middle pickup, I will just need to fit the new switch when it arrives and solder the three wires to it (ground, hot out and battery). I'll leave the hatch fixing decision until the replacement switch is in, but that should be pretty much the last thing on the build list