HazBeen

And here!

Horrible news…. RIP

Horses for courses, but block inlay appears to be your best bet. In my experience pre-radiusing works, but you will almost certainly need to sand a little once in place. Not an issue if you do it carefully. It will be a challenge to route the block cavities with the frets on. If it were me, I would likely take frets out, do the inlays, radius and then refret. More work, but easier to get right. All part of the process, so hope you can forgive yourself and enjoy the journey. Mistakes are what drives progress.

Really if you mess up, first thing is to see if you can fix it and make it (near) invisible. Have you already taken the 2mm off? If so, can you reduce the other side with 2mm also? 5 strings, mean 4 string spacings or 1mm reduced spacing per string. That may still work, dependent on your starting point. Otherwise block inlays may work, but that is another challenge to get right then…

Much appreciated! I suspected it was a water based lacquer, I will finish my current bass project body (which will be stained black) with Colron if I can find it. Otherwise I have a local alternative in mind.

@spacecowboy what finish did you use on this bass? I simply have to try it on my next bass.

Lovely

Happy client! Initial feedback was that it plays well, sounds really open and certainly hit the brief. Great!

If you are buying new, and want good but not too expensive. I would get the PBD40 Bosch drill press, it is light and compact but has a very decent light and digital depth gauge. It is accurate enough for building and just really convenient. Band saw, depends on money you want to spend. I have a Scheppach Basa 1 that I really like, not the biggest table but enough for my builds, but I would probably suggest getting a Basa 2 or a Record Power BS250. Triton does a great thicknesser, but I would actually recommend getting a jointer/thicknesser. An 8” version would suit most situations and would not cost an arm and leg. I have an Einhell TC-SP204 (many clones of these available all from same OEM)

The good news is that I will be doing just the bass again soon 😂

Just soldering, intonation, setup and usual tinkering needed…

Glorious result!

Much to love about this bass, well done!

Coming together….. slowly

5 screws, so Fender Jazz replacement bridge. Gotoh 201B I think.

Clever! Love it.

4 coats…

Slowly starting to put effort into the bass again, rough body carve done.

The thing that really won me over was the octaver (which sounds like an OC2), the build and sound quality and the 2 loops. To me it sounds marginally better than my Stomp (now sold) and I could take another pedal off the board (ie the octaver). This was enough to accept a slightly steeper learning curve and slightly more cumbersome UI.

I have no idea to be honest, I built all my patches from scratch.

Whilst I am not going to elaborate like some undoubtedly will want me to do. My small board is now a Core, with an FI in loop one, a Source Audio Aftershock in loop 2 (no Y cables needed), with an external TRS 2 button switch and a Morningstar MC3. Full midi controlled. Fewer bells and whistles than my Line6 LT, the UI is not as good as the Line6, but it sounds fantastic and is bulletproof. Not what I would class the Stomp it replaced.

Hardly adequate (dark, flash from phone), but I snapped this just after wiping down the body after 2nd coat. A little darker and deeper red, with the grain still nicely visible. It will not get much darker than this from the 4 additional coats I will add, so pretty close to end colour I think.