Norris

Oi! I'll have you for copyright!

A mate of mine used to own a guitar emporium. He told me the same thing about Gibson minimum orders. He simply couldn't justify stocking them.

It depends how flexible the neck is. The truss rod needs to cover the range of the neck that will flex under string tension. If the truss rod isn't long enough you could end up with a bit of a "ski ramp" at the dusty end

Fret wire comes in a large range of varying heights and widths. It's down to personal preference. A lot of people go for "jumbo" frets, although you'll struggle to find a fret wire described as such on sale. The action is the gap between the strings and frets, so the height of the frets doesn't really have a bearing. However it sounds like you might prefer a shorter fret, in which case it's probably best to keep them wide to avoid excessive wear, especially if you use roundwounds

It needs to be anchored in the thicker parts of the neck, so yes, within the heel

No orange basses then

Just bought a Mexican P from Lozz. Very smooth transaction, excellent communication and bass in fabulous condition. I'd happily recommend a shady deal in the motorway services with him. He was kind enough to meet up halfway. Thanks!

Brilliant!

Lovely work. Did you make two cuts on your scarf? The grain matches rather well - lovely attention to detail! I'm rather jealous of your cabinet making background - although I'm sure it would be much different doing it for a living rather than a hobby. I would love to have done more woodwork in the past, but the school timetable clashed with music, and I never really did any until the last few years. Now my eyes are about shot for close work these days, so I'm constantly switching between glasses, magnifying goggles and naked eye. It would have been so much easier back when I could see

I tend to avoid wet & dry paper altogether. Even the decent stuff leaves bits of abrasive embedded in the wood. I use 600 grit stearated aluminium oxide paper for final prep before finish and for flatting off between coats. Then I use micromesh pads (dry) for the final polishing - frequent wipes on a microfibre cloth avoids clogging Think of it this way: it's a constant learning process, and your bass will be really well prepared by the time you've done

Mine is an Indonesian Squier P-Bass Special. Pretty much the same spec though. Precision body, jazz neck and passive P/J pickups. I bought it second hand on here a few years ago. I think it had sat around unplayed for some time, so just needed a clean up and it was pretty much pristine. The SD QPs and Hipshot detuner I've upgraded it with cost more than the bass (£150 iirc). It's my regular gigging bass

First of all you could remove the brass plates. That would cut the eyesore rating by about 90%. After that you could maybe carefully sand the excess glue back to level with the body (600 grit sterated aluminium oxide paper followed by micromesh ideally) then polish out the scratches with T-cut (or even smoother polishing compound). After that, you'd need to fill the screw holes with dowels, dye them to match as close as possible, then drop fill with lacquer and sand/polish. I don't think you'll ever not be able to see the repairs, but they shouldn't be too noticeable from a small distance

When I built my telecaster it took longer to get the finish right than it did to build it from scratch. If you're a perfectionist (and not an experienced builder) it's never right. At some point it will become right enough. Just don't rush it at this point. Having said that, it'll probably pick up a dint first time out anyway

Ki0gon made my loom with mini-pots. He does those too. We had a bit of fun getting the switching pot to fit in such a tight area though, as it gets a bit narrow on the T of VVT on my Squier

If only there was somebody on here that was trying to sell one, and some sort of PM system that would allow you to chat in private...

I do like thumb planes. Very handy. I've never used a (?) thumb shave before - that looks useful too Nice work btw

Done 50 days left, still some way to go, you lovely folk...

+1 I think the emotional attachment makes far more difference than the finish

They vary. I recently replaced the loom on my Indonesian Squier. The routing was so tight I could only use Alpha mini pots. They fitted in the scratch plate fine, but I had to ream out the hole a little for a push/pull mini pot that acted as a series/parallel switch. It's not difficult to make a hole bigger. The problem is the other way round

There is a bit of synth chat in Other Instruments https://www.basschat.co.uk/forum/82-other-instruments/

I suppose it comes down to enthusiasm, time and disposable income. I played for years with one bass, one amp and a wire going between them. The bass got cleaned when I changed the strings. I'm still pretty much the same except I have a GT6B between the two for tuning, muting and the occasional effect I did put Quarter Pounders and a drop tuner on my Squier PJ. Oh, and there are a few more "backup" basses to hand...

If you keep adding dye eventually you get to the point where you obscure the grain of the wood more and more, without necessarily getting any darker. You reach full saturation of colour. It's almost like applying more and more coars of paint - the colour doesn't change. Darker, beyond a small range, can only be achieved using a different blend of pigments.

25 or 6 to 4 is one of my favourites that we do in out guitar/bass/drums trio. Our guitarist just nails covering so many parts Edit: I found a 'tube of us playing it. Guitarist isn't quite up his usual standard because he's playing an unfamiliar guitar - which I had just finished building https://youtu.be/2st3WcIo9gE

We do Brick as a trio and just miss out the keyboards. I can't say we miss them and sparse is good sometimes

If you're thinking of mixing black with red to darken it down, do try it on a test piece first. Black can be quite unforgiving. You might get better results with a very dark brown, or dark blue if you fancy dragging it slightly towards the purple patch of the spectrum