d-basser

Gorgeous, pointy basses and gold hardware don't normally float my boat but that's lovely

Jobs a good un Firstly, you do not get a lot of Luminlay for your buck I would also caution that its hard to cut without pinging it across the room, risking what little you get so take care. I cut it by scoring round with a Stanley then snapping with pliers. Drilling out the side dots wasn't as bad as I expected. I drilled a central guide with a narrow gauge PCB bit in a pin vice, then worked up to a 3mm brad point to leave a flat-ish bottom hole. I glued in the small cut sections (~4-5mm long) using epoxy with a black pigment to match the black outer on the material. Once set I trimmed them back with snips and a file, I would again caution anyone doing the same, using snips can cause them to chip, I wouldn't recommend trying to cut completely flush as you'd risk it chipping below the surface. Once close to the surface I used a small chisel and a Stanley blade to cut/scrape flush Once flush I sanded up to 2500 grit, then polished the whole neck back with T-Cut to blend out the work. Pretty chuffed with the results. As an aside, I was surprised to find a small shim in the neck pocket when doing the work. Not sure if I am more surprised that a new and presumably CNC cut bass needed a shim, or that a budget company went to the effort of shimming it.

I don't have any pre cut but I could probably look at laser cutting something at work. Does it have to be foam? I wonder if black acrylic would look better?

Happy to join the Lollipop fanclub with my Sire build (detailed in its own thread). Very happy with my choice

Ooh, I didn't realise that the Jive is just a SHO with clipping, adding that to my project list!

But what if the side dots glowed.... Luminlay rod ordered! We play in some harsh lighting conditions, mostly because I control the lights and have a taste for heavy strobes and sudden black outs. Luminlays are life savers

Nice, I have considered similar. With this bass there was a reasonable 'divot' in the finish where the wire had previously been compressed so I wasn't too concerned leaving it proud of the hole

Cheers. Hole isn't filled, just masked over during construction to allow me to draw on centre lines etc. Bridge is grounded, I used my standard approach which is to run a wire as per the norm and then splay the end out and tape it down with copper tape (making sure it has conductive adhesive). This has 2 benefits, in my mind at least: it holds the wire in place prior to bridge installation, it gives a larger contact point for the bridge ground.

Just after I've set up an ML5, typical

Cheers They are chrome yeah. Nickel is a slightly warmer colour and slightly less blue than chrome. Similar but if you put them both next to each other you can spot the difference. I have done builds with them both mixed when I had to but if you have the choice and all things are equal stick to one or other

And she truly lives! Pretty damn happy with the results. Plays nicely, pretty light, nice punchy sound (once I'd sorted the pickups being out of phase).

Gemini weren't much help. Suggested I tried a few things I already had (swapping live and ground, checking I hadn't wired the jack backwards) Got on to talking about how removing the braid connection fixed it, and suggested it could be a ground loop issue and he bowed out. I do think that could have been the issue though. I half remember an conversation at work regarding this when we were working with shielded coax and grounded sensors. Quick Google backs up the hypothesis Thanks again @PaulThePlug

As per my panicked thread in the repairs section. Looks like the hum has gone by removing the soldered ground for the pickup casings at the pot cases. The pickup cases are still showing as grounded so I wonder if grounding them at the pots was creating some sort of strange ground loop? Who knows, electronics is witchcraft