Andyjr1515

Great minds alike

I'm a bit out of date ref today's offerings relating to piezo bridges but, generally, for the piezos themselves I would generally start with Graphtec - their products are generally well made and they have a decent range of most related stuff. Oh - and ordering from them is generally pretty painless. But, personally, I would only use them for the piezo hardware itself - I would generally look elsewhere for pre-amps/etc. Are you planning to continue with magnetic pickups too? If so, you will need a blending pre-amp to cope with the huge difference in impedance and output of piezo vs magnetic. For this, I would generally go John East but. as @kodiakblair says, Artec do have some stuff that is great band-for-the-buck.

Yes - as above The red ones: loosen them to slide the whole block backwards or forwards to set your intonation. Re-tighten when you're happy with the position The green ones: loosen to allow the saddles to move up or down (see blue below) and, again, re-tighten once you are happy with the heights. The blue ones: to raise or lower the saddles once you've loosened the locking stud, circled green above.

The shape of the body is predominately about personal preference, so no, if you are happy with it, then it isn't an issue.

In what way different?

Hi @honza992 Yes - Fiebings Black Leather die is available on the Italian Amazon site (and probably elsewhere). It is very black and pretty much the standard go-to for staining fretboards, etc. No stain penetrates particularly deeply and so the usual method is to apply the stain, let dry, sand a few times to fully raise and flatten the grain, and then apply a couple of coats before adding your final finish. What are you using for that final finish? I use a variation of the Tru-oil slurry and buff method for stained finishes, either as a final finish or as a silky smooth undercoat for compatible gloss finishes (polyurethane varnish covers this very well) but most other finishes will work with the stained wood.

Likewise, I used a velcro cable tie when this started happening in a gig. Around 4 years later, I got round to sorting it properly

A superb video @funkle and a superb result. Top quality stuff all round

Oooooh.... lovely!

Hi, @paulo m I have a block of ebony waiting patiently for @fretmeister 's next bass purchase ( ) but it is certainly a deep enough piece for two or three ramps assuming the overall length and width that you need is no larger. So yes, I could probably make you one. I'm tied up this evening but I'll drop you a PM tomorrow. Andy

Go for it! The J-only and the P-J blended sounds will be tangibly different to the P-only sound. The J will produce a different tone not only because it is closer to the bridge, but also because the sonics of a single-coil J is very different to those of a P design. I would strongly urge you to consider a blend rather than an on-off three way switch, but, either way, you will find that those different tones at your disposal give you options in different venues and genres that can be very useful. Do be aware, of course, that any non-reversible mod to a guitar or bass will reduce its resale value, regardless of how well it's done.

Great to see you on here again, John!! And very pleased that you were able to make the Italy move in spite of all the challenges! Hope all well with you and yours. Your levels of quality always did put mine to shame, but that looks the bees knees. Lovely job

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is to get someone competent to undo whatever was done at the last set-up! But it may not be as simple as that Do you know if the trussrod is working normally? And if you hold the G down to the fretboard near the nut at the same time as holding it down at the 19th fret position - what kind of gap have you got in the middle of those two points (round about the 8th fret position) between the bottom of the string and the fretboard. Is it hard down? Or a gap close to the thickness of a business card? Or a gap of a few mm or more? To answer your original question, having done a bit of searching, yes, it probably is possible to remove and reset the neck...but, looking at the design of the neck pocket and joint, it is not easy and not without risk. But it is very unlikely, if if was fine before that last set up, that the neck does need resetting. What is maybe more of a possibility is that the truss rod is massively away from a correct setting/ or inoperative/or broken. The above test will give us a clue which of those it is.

What bass model is it? Was the action OK before the last set up?

Also, what problem are you trying to solve? There are many ways to skin a cat (although, admittedly, most of them feel the same to the cat )

As the saying goes...'it depends' It ranges from difficult but doable, to difficult and risky, to nigh impossible. What bass is it? And is it a set neck or through neck?

Yes - that's looking really special

If it's a two way switch (on-off) it is usually a Dual-Pole-Dual-Throw switch as @Rich says above. Something like this: https://northwestguitars.co.uk/products/dpdt-on-on-mini-toggle-guitar-switch-for-coil-tapping-phase-switching

This is going to be lovely!

...and yes, there is a relationship between action height and intonation. When you press the string down to the fret, you are, in fact, bending the string and the pitch rises, exactly the way you can raise the pitch in, say, a vibrato by bending the string sideways. The higher up the fretboard you are, the bigger is the gap between the bottom of the string and top of the fret and the more the string is bending (vertically) and the more the pitch rises. And the higher the action, the more the string will bend vertically. So yes, if you have changed the action height, it's worth rechecking your intonation and giving it a tweak if necessary.

Yes - as above. The action height you need depends on the strings you use, the way you play and how level your frets are. Basically, it simply makes sure that the string's vibration isn't buzzing against the top of (usually) the next fret up. So, actually, one of the simplest and best ways of doing it is to play normally (including the hardest you would regularly pluck or pick) and, for each string, lower saddle a 1/4 of a turn at a time until it does buzz. Then raise the saddle back up a 1/4 turn, check the buzz has gone and job's done. Move to the next string and repeat the process.

That is, assuming that the pickup chambers haven't been routed yet. The whole neck/pickup/bridge design just shifts back a few cm's: The thing that will need to be looked at is whether you will need to create a deeper lower horn cutaway to give yourself access to the upper frets that may then be unreachable.

No problem, but the distance from the bridge to the neck isn't going to change. As such, the pickups, in relation to both/either, will also be unchanged.

Yes - exactly that. Just make sure that you know the dimensions of the bridge plate and bridge position to make sure you can get the saddles and their intonation range covered.

Looking at your drawing, you probably have enough room to move the whole bridge/neck assembly back to give yourself an adequately long neck pocket in the unaffected area. Functionally, the bridge body can be set even at the very back, as long it's not actually overhanging - the Cort Curbow uses that to great effect to get a full scale bass feeling and balancing like a short scale. They are GREAT to play as a result: