Norris

Try thinking of the Basschat collective like the spouse you'd normally grumble, rant and blow off steam to... but who actually give a toss about all things bass. There, it's not so bad now is it?

By the look of it quite a bit of lacquer has lifted too. I assume that it's nitrocellulouse. You can carefully use a small brush (i.e. artist's watercolour brush) to build up where the lacquer has flaked off. It will take many coats to do so. That might wick under the lifted lacquer and help to stabilise it. Nitrocellulouse will blend in with the existing lacquer - the solvents will slightly dissolve it. Obviously take necessary precautions if using nitrocellulouse - it's nasty stuff to breathe in! You'll also want some cellulose thinners for cleaning your brush. I had some lacquer chipped around the frets of the guitar I built and had to do similar. It's very time consuming. The lacquer needs to be built up slowly to allow the solvents to evaporate - 2 or 3 coats a day and then leave it for 24 hours. Scrape back any excess with a razor blade and repeat. I used rattle cans to lacquer my guitar, so sprayed a little into the cap so I could brush it on. Finally you'll need to sand it flat - I used micromesh pads then Meguillar's ultimate compound to polish it up. If worst comes to the worst and you end up with something resembling a dog's dinner, you can always strip it back, get a new decal (Rothcoe and Frost) and refinish it properly

I thought it was "good exposure" they played for (Tongue in cheek!)

They look more sophisticated knobs than mine. I thought I'd gone extravagant with flamed maple cap over grain-filled ash, but you've raised the bar now

Sounds like he's determined to nail that coffin lid down then

Yes, definitely by hand

I have used Meguillar's ultimate compound to finish-polish nitro. I think it may be a bit less aggressive than T-cut. Applied with an old cotton t-shirt then polished off with a microfibre cloth

I'd certainly steer clear of linseed oil if you're going to apply any other finish. The wood will be fine without being "nourished". Black grain filler can work nicely but is messy and requires a bit more preparation than you'd think. I've posted this before, but here's the back of my telecaster guitar that I built. It's ash, so needed grain filling anyway, using thixotropic filler that I think came from Rothcoe and Frost. The order of application was: grain filler > dye > sanding sealer > clear gloss nitrocellulouse. If you are aware of the hazards AND have suitable facilities, check out the range of nitrocellulouse rattle cans on Manchester Guitar Tech. IIRC they do a translucent white

That was pretty darned good

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/27/fender_smart_guitar_amp_dumb_security/

Many years ago a mate of mine was a bit of a hi-fi buff and had bought some spanky new speakers. I had recently bought some car rear shelf speakers. For a laugh we A-B'ed them with his hi-fi and were rather surprised at just how good the car speakers sounded. ... which is a roundabout way of suggesting that some rear shelf car speakers might fit the bill for compact side fill on your surround sound

Can you hook the speaker up to another amp to check it's working?

Nigel Tufnel: The sustain, listen to it. Marty DiBergi: I don't hear anything. Nigel Tufnel: Well you would though, if it were playing.

Did anyone mention cake?

Not so much in the apparel sense, but many years ago we used to cart all manner of junk around with us. One fan used to work in an abattoir, and made for an especially memorable evening when he brought some work home for us one night. I'll leave you to imagine a Dansette record player perched on top of a toilet bowl with a few pounds of offal rotating at 33rpm...

For coil tap switching look on the Seymour Duncan web site. They have loads of diagrams for about ievery pickup and switching option you could imagine

You could always try it. The pickup will work just as well temporarily suspended over the top of the strings. If you solder the cable direct to your jack socket you'll be able to plug it in and hear how it sounds. Plucking the strings may be a little more awkward but you should get an idea of the sound in various positions. I'd use masking tape to attach a couple of blocks to hold it away from the strings then place it on the bass laid down

LED ftw. You can buy RGB ones quite cheaply that have a remote control - any colour, any brightness to suit your mood

Pickups usually work or they don't. Are they close enough to the strings?

To be fair @SpondonBassed I have only built the one guitar to date so have somewhat limited experience. I did take two years to build it though, and did a heck of a lot of reading to make it how I wanted, so I suppose some of the information stuck

Very nice

I can't remember where I got the grain filler. It's "thixotropic" if that helps. It was really messy to use and could have done with several filling "passes" tbh - you'll miss bits on the first fill and it then took me ages to build up with sanding sealer. The dye is spirit based. You may notice that some areas of the ash took the dye better than others. I quite like the effect but if you're after a more homogenous colour you might want to consider a coloured clear lacquer base coat

Being ash you are probably going to need to use a grain filler if you want a smooth finish. So to complicate things even further for you, that is available in a range of colours including clear.. If it helps, here is my telecaster guitar with black grain filler and blue dye, finished in gloss nitrocellulouse

Maybe it's just a high fret, but a tad more relief should help as it's towards the middle of the neck. You may want to take it back to your tech when you have the opportunity to see if the fret is a little high.

A way to help work out what the bass is actually doing in the first place, is to pitch-shift the song up an octave. The bass will then be loud and clear even if it sounds like Pinky and Perky are singing along to it