Andyjr1515

I'm still on with the final settling down and tweaking of the fretless and the Wal save but I have another live project on the drawing board - a single cut shortscale (30") for our very own @Matt P I get the impression that this has been gestating in Matt's mind for some time and, to be honest, Matt has done a lot of the hard work - which is great - that is, designing the concept and broad shape in the first place. This is my rough cobble together of Matt's sketches ( there should be round bits where my rubbish Inkscape attempt has given me sharp corners) with a broadly scale neck (albeit this shows a 4 string width rather than the correct 5 string width). This will have a headstock - this is just a quick full-scale view mainly of the body length and positioning for me to check out one of the critical design criteria...that is must fit into this: ..which is a 6-string electric Fender Jaguar guitar case. It will be a - through necked - single 5-string SimS Super-Quaded - Hipshot bridge and tunered - Ebony fretboarded - Mahogany backed - Laminated necked - top to back demarcated - sucked lozenged carved - 7lbs beauty - with this top: And I'm VERY excited

Final set up and tweaking always takes longer than you think but my target is that by the end of this weekend, this can go safely in the 'finished instruments' cupboard waiting for when Covid allows @Fishman and I to do the hand over. Most of the past few days has been related to one of @Fishman 's ideal that we can achieve a very low action. First step was to sort the shim to be able to keep the saddles nice and low. I got some 1/64" ply and sanded the required angle by attaching it to a piece of thicker, flat ply and sanding it over a piece of glass (old glass shelves and similar are great things to have around for using as the base for sharpening plane blades, etc and for this kind of job. You can see how the sanding has gone through a number of layers of the ply: This got me to the point that the saddles flat at the bottom put the strings onto the frets and the maximum I should have to lift the saddles will be c. 3mm And that has got me close. I have a very playable action at 1.7mm to 1.5mm (I would normally set for starters with a bass at around 2.6mm to 2.2mm) but if I dig in hard, do get a bit of buzz at the lower strings. So I have set my challenge to try to get to 1.5mm to 1.3mm (we are talking gap of the bottom E & the top G measured from the bottom of the string to the top of the 12th fret - with the string fretted at the 1st to eliminate nut effect) with no buzz. Which is lower than I would even set a 6-string electric... I checked the relief. The neck is actually dead flat - so, while there is no back bow, there is also no measurable relief. And this is a single-action rod so I can't introduce relief by screwing it anticlockwise. And the neck is as stiff as a board. But I could do with a gnat's whisker of relief (although we are talking 'just perceptible' )... So the answer is to take the neck off, tighten the truss rod a teeny bit and then level off the hump in the middle of the fretboard. It looks more than it is - we are generally talking tenths of a mm: So the theory is that when I take the tension back off the truss rod, I have a neck that now has a smidgen of relief in it. I will know when I reassemble, but while it's off I'll take the opportunity to finish off all of the other stuff on the 'still to do' list.

It's all absolutely beautiful. Excellent build

Looks nice!

A few of the ones I've fixed up for @wwcringe have been wired up direct to the jack - no capacitors or resistors, just hard wired. They have all sounded superb...

Wow! I love that. The contrast in colours in the body coordinates with the contrasts in neck colours beautifully. Great result @HazBeen.

Yes - I think for flat surfaces, then the washer tip is a great one. With the curve there, the main thing was to make sure that the insert wasn't protruding at all and so I found it easier to use the second insert as it wouldn't matter if it was inserted just a touch deeper than the neck surface.

Thanks folks! Yes - I'm really pleased. And yes, let's shed any pretence of false modesty, it's my 5th Kert, of this parish, started it all off by submitting the Camphor Single Cut I built for him. I'm sure that No Treble must think I have some small industrial unit somewhere churning these things out...let's hope they don't ever do a "Builder's Workshop" feature "And as we go down the stone steps to the dark small cellar space, taking up most of the available space pushed up against the wall is a single, small workbench. When asked whether this was all there was, Rogers replied that it was, in the words of Monty Python, 'LUXURY!' compared to the rickety Workmate sited at the bottom of the pond using nought but the brick he used to use!" Anyway, must rush - I have to stop strangers in the street to shout to them over the masked social distance to 'cop a look at the No Treble website.'

Well blow me! I had submitted it, but hadn't heard anything Well how cool is that Well chuffed

That body is going to look fabulous once all of the shaping is done and the finish put on - NA Walnut is a beautiful wood

The new Wal string tree came with standard small wood screws. I always think that, assuming they are fitted properly, set screws and inserts are better. They don't really do the large-threaded inserts in such small size, but the type you see on the right - I think more designed for metal - work fine as long as the drill hole is accurate: I've experimented with inserting them into much softer woods than the maple neck and then trying to lever out the screw and it holds fast. Now, I used to think that the slot went in the top - I assumed this was a screwdriver slot. It emphatically doesn't and isn't That's the bit that cuts the thread and I'm pretty sure that it was a wise sage on this forum that put me straight! So for insertion, you use a screw and nuts, or in my case, a screw and another insert, to 'lock-nut' with the one you are inserting. This is what I've done with the one on the left in the photo above. This keeps it all straight and inserting is a breeze. In this shot, the insert I'm fitting is almost fully in and you can see the 'driver' insert and set screw locked into it and driving it round and in. Like a locknut, a quick reverse direction of the screwdriver and the screw and driver just loosen to come apart: I've positioned the new string tree in the best place for the strings rather than exactly where the old one was but - unless you look really really closely, it pretty much covers the marks and holes from the original: And this is at full pitch with, so far, no embarrassing 'ping' sound of the string tree flying off like a rock from a medieval trebuchet!

I am even more speechless than I was before!

Well, a lot of set up still to do and a few remaining jobs, but we actually have a playing bass! First job was cutting the new nut from the Graphtech Black Tusq XL blank: Then a look at the Wal shim. The neck angle is dependant on the bridge height and I suspect the original Wal bridge sits higher than the new Hipshot because the strings are far too low with not enough saddle adjustment to reach even the minimum action height. It's a funny old business but folks are often very sniffy about shims - 'a decent luthier doesn't need a shim' is an oft stated opinion. Well, you don't get much more decent luthier than Wal and every Wal neck I've ever seen has one of these... And anyway, for starters it had to go. With it planed and scrapered off, I could get to normal action heights, albeit with the saddles adjusted pretty high so I will probably add a slightly thinner one than this to the front edge of the heel so I can drop the adjusters on the saddles a touch...but with is as it is, it plays! And even through my not-a-proper-bass-rig it sounds pretty darned fine So, still to do: - A bit more work on the heel angle to get the action range of the saddles a touch better - final set-up work on the frets - final tidy up of the fretboard, edges rounding, etc - string tree - tidy up the neck bolt recesses - fit the strap buttons

Having just fitted the bridge to the Wal save, it's fresh in my mind. There are two things that have to be right - the left /right position and the forwards/backwards position For the left /right, my preferred method it to temporarily fit the top and bottom strings, tightened enough for them to be straight and then position the bridge so the strings are equidistant from the fretboard sides and/or in line with (or at least symmetrical to) the pickup poles: Then, for the forward/backward you need to position it with enough saddle movement available to intonate the strings. For this, I do the following: - I check how much adjustment the bridge has (they vary!) from the furthest usable forward position of the saddles to the furthest usable rearward position of the saddles. Ideally, this is at least 5mm. - Generally, the top G intonates at around 1mm longer than scale length and the bottom E (or B on a 5 string) 4 or 5mm longer than scale length. It will NEVER be shorter than scale length - So I wind the G saddle fully forward - I then position the bridge with the G saddle at exactly scale-length, make sure it's square to the centre-line (and double check the above alignment) and mark the screw positions - I then know that all of the other saddles are capable of being adjusted to positions longer than that scale length by up to 5mm and that therefore all strings will be capable of being intonated correctly. -

I agree

Makes sense...

I was posting at the same time you were. I probably have some thicker veneer around too. That is 2.5mm. But yes - there's a bit of work to do at the back of the heel to get that to fit better.

Yes - as @PaulThePlug suggests, a strip of veneer either side. Veneer is generally 0.6mm thick so should get pretty close. If you don't have any, PM me your address and I'll send you a couple of pieces from my bits stash.

And the neck is on! The edges of the holes will be tidied up, but everything fits and the neck is on nice and tight. So now I can position the bridge. This needs to be at the correct scale length and also line up with the neck and - preferably - the pickup poles. I threaded a couple of 'test strings' through the back and loosely over the tuners, then positioned at the 1st fret with a capo. This allowed me to position the bridge until it was all lined up and mark the hole positions: So bridge holes drilled and bridge fixed. It's not playable yet because I have to plane off Wal's original neck heel shim to reduce the neck angle a touch - but it all lines up Phew! So tomorrow is about adjusting the neck angle to get the right action range, fitting the string tree and cutting the graphtech nut blank. Then we can see if we can get any sounds from it And then, it's just the final action and intonation set up and strap buttons...and then, unless I've forgotten anything major, it's pretty much done

Excellent

If I charged £8k for a build, I'd feel obliged to give the new owner my car as well, which wouldn't please MrsAndyjr1515 a great deal....

The bridge is well back putting the front button almost in the goldilocks zone so it probably wou!d have been OK. But what would have been more a challenge with the body shape would have been playing over the knee. Because the waist is so far forward, you play with the large rear bout resting on your knee and, with the bass held head slightly high, it balances comfortably. With a headstock, this would have been more of a challenge.

Wow! Thanks indeed!

Great news! The UNF bolts and cup washers have been shipped In the meantime, amongst the final prep stuff for the body, the ferrules at the back have been put in: And the all important 'This is not a genuine Wal body' mark stamped in:

When you say strip down? All you need to do for electrical contact is sand some of the paint off the bottom of the bridge to make sure the earth is touching bare metal. For the wire itself, you can just splay it out (making sure there is no wire insulation above the hole. You separate and splay out the wire to make sure there is not a big lump of wire that would stop the bridge fully seating) and let the bridge clamp it down into the wood surface. The alternative I use is I pop a small square of copper foil near the hole, including a piece the presses into the hole and then solder the earth wire to the copper in the cavity. That way, the solder joint is out of the way but there is good electrical contact with minimal thickness: