Kiwi

Well, my Alembic Elan 6 had ebony facings and ebony laminates and still managed to sound dark despite having a maple core!! There's so much to be said for maple as a neck material in terms of its tonal characteristics but it can't be swamped with other woods. Don't get me wrong, I love graphite to bits and it will beat maple hands down in terms of attack and sustain but in terms of matching it to a suitable body wood, its a finer balance to achieve. I would LOVE for someone to make a graphite necked bass with a bubinga or wenge body, I reckon it would be an awesome instrument.

[quote name='bassbluestew' post='5302' date='May 23 2007, 07:56 PM']As the current owner of Peds old 400 +[/quote] He bought it from me and I bought it from Basszilla Lemme know if you want to sell it BTW.

[quote name='paul, the' post='4769' date='May 22 2007, 11:58 PM']Wow, that sounds like a great place to be; modern, creative. Evidently all kinds of rewarding too.[/quote] Its kind of rewarding in the sense of having incredibly complicated problems to solve because I'm dealing with time and politics as well as the usual 3 dimensions.

He definitely started with a stain. I think the second coat might have been stain as well because of the consistency problems, but I'm not sure. I think the more successful route would've been to have a consistent sprayed clear tint over the top, but it might be worth just experimenting with an offcut perhaps? I don't know how much the wood would affect the results.

[quote name='skelf' post='4944' date='May 23 2007, 09:23 AM']I would be interested in how your bass was done. what I intend to do is to stain the bass with purple first and sand most of it back out just leaving it where it has went in the deepest. Then either stain with a blue until we reach the colour we are looking for or add the blue to the lacquer and spray it on. The first method I think gives more depth to the finish but can be difficult to get a consistent colour through out the whole bass especially with 3 different woods being coloured. The second method is certainly more consistent and easier to remove if it does not go to plan but does I feel not quiet have the depth I mentioned above. Your experience with your bass would be appreciated. Cheers Alan[/quote] John did exactly the same as you were proposing and encountered exactly the same issues you identified. I think he started with red and encountered major problems with porosity on the front facing when it came to the blue. The maple was sponging up vast amounts of stain with little increase in terms of colour depth. The result was a very patchy and inconsistent finish on the front of the bass. I don't know if the wood needed sealing first but the back facing (denser grain?) was absolutely fine when treated in the same way. I asked John to incorporate a pearlescent tint because I liked the Modulus red over blue tint and wanted it to shift in colour when held up to the light. I'm no expert but it seemed to me that the finish was more successful on less porous and brighter coloured (ie white or pale) wood.

Alan (AGC) does a fantastic maple/wenge combination for his necks. I'm not a fan of the sound of wenge necks by themselves but in moderate amounts they do wonders for maple! I like the idea of a stiff, absolutely rigid neck being dampened by softer body woods.

An alternative, if you have access to a SG bass body. Could be get a 3d scan made of a real SG body by a 3D Bureau. They will be able to convert it to a 3D model suitable for sending to a milling machine.

Hi Trev - good to see you here, thanks for signing up!

[quote name='john_the_bass' post='4877' date='May 23 2007, 01:51 AM']a hat and a t shirt? I might as well hang a sign around my neck that says, "i am a complete bass geek". that's what my mrs thinks anyway!!!![/quote] Vearing of ze rrrrrrritualised uniform vill be rrrrrrequired at all future bassbashes! Ve vill create un overly elaborate initiation ceremony inwolwing ze vigorous application of a [url="http://www.dima.unipa.it/~petrucci/varie_file/image014.jpg"]Steinberger XL2[/url] in a humiliating manner und zen "Mr Funkypants" vill descend from ze skies und distribute free novelty earplugs to all ze happy kiddies. Finally ve vill all join together und ensuziastically sing ze bassbash song to ze tune of "Tiptoe Through Ze Tulips"

Looks like you've got a very similar finish to that on the custom Jaydee Jazz I used to own How is Alan going to do this? I know how John did it and I wasn't really happy with the results at the end of the day.

Hey guys we really appreciate your enthusiasm and support but from what we can see, the membership is a little divided over this and we see no value in forcing the issue onto people if its not wholly welcome - particularly after the recent turmoil. We're also concerned that subscriptions might encourage a divisive us-and-them type culture which we've seen on Talkbass a bit. Now I understand Talkbass costs "several thousands of dollars" to run per year, and they've regularly got a thousand members online at once. I imagine its hard for Paul to otherwise cover those costs out of a gigging musicians wages so I'm not criticising him for the subscription thing at all. However, if some of you are enjoying and appreciating the forums so much, thats really cool! Why not make an annual voluntary donation and think of it as a subscription? If you'd like that formally recognised, I'm sure we can put together a list of supporters accessed from a link on the home page. This way you get to show your appreciation and we don't feel like others have their enjoyment of the forums reduced in any way. How does that sound? Maybe at some point when we've got the logo sorted out, we can get some T-shirts and caps organised as well!

Yeah - these are mine : Level 42, Live at Wembley: [url="http://www.youtube.com/v/TCv-5EonBuo"]http://www.youtube.com/v/TCv-5EonBuo[/url] John Pattitucci, during his Smith days on this clip: [url="http://www.youtube.com/v/Am61TgFB8qI"]http://www.youtube.com/v/Am61TgFB8qI[/url] Louis Johnson on this tuition video (which sounds the same as my 'ray!): [url="http://www.youtube.com/v/pr3EwkdrtBk"]http://www.youtube.com/v/pr3EwkdrtBk[/url] Meshell Ndegeocello has an monster vintage jazz vibe going here: [url="http://www.youtube.com/v/uE3Y380Nv8Y"]http://www.youtube.com/v/uE3Y380Nv8Y[/url] and the most gorgeous fretless sounds ever: [url="http://www.youtube.com/v/4S2chCFBcaA"]http://www.youtube.com/v/4S2chCFBcaA[/url] [url="http://www.youtube.com/v/zc4cg-w-92M"]http://www.youtube.com/v/zc4cg-w-92M[/url] (Oh nooooooooooooo!!! Its sampled and sequenced!!!)

At risk of being in the minority, I wasn't that impressed with it. It sounds fine with a jazz bass but with my Smiths it sounds rubber bandy. Not dissing anyone who likes it though, it was just too coloured for my needs. BTW: Very impressive playing there Sir!

The simple one is check all the earth connections. Ideally you'd want to check the earth leads are properly connected to the pot casings (or sometimes collars), the jack socket, the pickups and there's nothing live touching the shielding on the control cavity. Are there any crackles when you shake the bass? That might indicate a broken or dry solder joint somewhere.

[quote name='ped' post='4735' date='May 22 2007, 11:27 PM']if you do go there make sure you ask for sum yak meat.[/quote] Mate there's none left - it was so damn good.

Gallien Krueger solid state combos Burman Pro all valve heads

[quote name='ped' post='4675' date='May 22 2007, 09:59 PM']Bugger I want it back now lol[/quote] No you don't, I think she's the Naomi Campbell of the bass world - nice looking but she's demanding, there are dark aspects to her character and everyone's had a go on her. Here are some more photos: and another sound clip of me playing really boring scales but there's a combination of all the different pickup settings with the Q filter turned on and off. [attachment=235:Alembic_samples.mp3] Now get those donations in son, and sort the sponsorship out.

I'm sure any competent luthier would tell us that cracks and splits aren't the end of the world. Knot holes can be filled too.

Lovely piece of walnut - is it English or Claro? Sometimes good value redwood and maple can be bought direct from land owners on Ebay -some of them have old logs they've salvaged from deep rivers on their land, after the trees were cut down at the turn of the century and lost in rapids. However they don't tend to stay on Ebay for very long. The other thing is that Ebay is used as a clearing house for stuff that otherwise wouldn't make it past a lumber yard or broker inspection. Dry wood costs a load less to ship too!

The same question was asked and answered here: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=231"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=231[/url]

[quote name='Alpha-Dave' post='4293' date='May 22 2007, 01:18 PM']I thought you sold that piece of redwood you had?[/quote] I sold ONE of the pieces I have two others which were much nicer. One bit has a very coarse quilt figure, and its very dry and light. The other bit was sopping wet when I bought it and was very heavy so I've been letting it dry out for the last 2 years. It has a very distinctive birdseye/burl/quilted figure to it. I showed it to Rob Green last year - since then he only remembers me when he remembers the wood. [quote name='Alpha-Dave' post='4293' date='May 22 2007, 01:18 PM']he's going to pore fill with a hard coating as deep as possible.[/quote] That nord finish looks like a great combination of lustre and its still got an organic quality to the sheen. Lovely.

[quote name='Johngh' post='4044' date='May 22 2007, 12:02 AM']6 string headless Quilted maple top in high gloss finish ( Jon says the finish will be that good it will seem you can put your hand in it ! ) 5 piece maple thru neck with maple birdeye fingerboard. White ash body. Black veneer between top and body and neck and body sides. Black AMB Headless system with monorail tuners. EMG 45P and 45 TW Pups Shuker 3 band board Red Side LEDS As for the scale, I'm taking in my Status Eclipse Graphite neck six string for John to base the neck on that, don't ask me the scale as I havent got a clue, I only play it ![/quote] Bloody hell! Thats very, very sexy. The original body shape left me feeling a little uninspired but this one... ...in headless... ...phwoaaaaaarrrrrr!

[quote name='Alpha-Dave' post='4232' date='May 22 2007, 11:43 AM']CK: I hope so! I've only seen a couple of quilt red wood tops, but I think they look better than red-dyed maple because of the extra vertical grain pattern [/quote] I have some lovely quilted and burl redwood I've been keeping at home which ended up being loads cheaper than maple to buy too. Its a very soft wood so it might need a tough finish to stop nail marks and the like from showing. The Fodera AJ basses and MTD basses sometimes have quilted redwood tops. Your selected neck laminates are very similar to Smith's so I'm really looking forward to hearing how it compares!

Thats a bit different innit? Not a lot of exposed wood though, which is a good thing. Probably best thing to do is gently sand it off and put some black automotive touch-up paint on it. You can get touch-up pots on Ebay for a few quid.

I get the feeling this is going to be the nicest bass yet! What a stunning fingerboard!