Norris

"You want to start a Glee club?!"

"There's a lady who knows all that glitters is gold"...

Dictator: "The Americans battle with these?!" Lackey: "They make you squeal like a pig, sir"

That sounds pretty good. I bet it's a great sofa noodler

I was gutted when I dropped a tool on the top of my meticulously prepped guitar, creating quite a large dint. It steamed out eventually and required only light sanding afterwards. It is surprising.

I'm now eyeing up that tin of high VOC hardglaze that I have sitting in the garage. There must be at least a litre left in the tin. I wonder how old it is, what state it's in and how much it might be worth to someone

A kitchen towel is likely to shed fibres that will end up in your finish. Microfibre cloths don't shed fibres. I imagine that @Andyjr1515 is well practiced in avoiding streaks

If you put a few drops of water on the ding, put a damp cotton cloth over it then gently use your steam iron to get it nice and hot, you'll probably be able to steam the ding out. Edit: That's assuming it's still bare wood

I've just bought myself a Makita RT0700CX4 (which they describe as a trimmer) for that same reason. The lighter weight and adjustable speed is far better for hand-held guitar building purposes. Also that particular model comes with side bearing guide that is ideal for routing the rebate for binding.

Gigs like that happen. We've had weekends where we've done a couple of gigs. One has been a brilliant, buzzing event and the other has been completely flat. We've not done anything different. Often it's the gig you're really looking forward to is the crap one and the one that you're not expecting much from is brilliant. Mark it down to experience and march on. If a particular venue is consistently poor we do discuss if we want to continue playing there. It's certainly beyond comprehension if a venue doesn't do any promotion and quite frustrating. In years to come it's the really poor gigs that will give you a laugh when you look back at them - wedding reception with only one guest apart from the bride and groom anyone?! Don't let it put you off

One bottle of dye should be plenty, unless you are doing a lot of sanding back and re-dyeing as you might when popping grain on figured maple, etc.

Looks like Dartfords have changed their colour charts recently and only display a single shade now. Rothcoe and Frost use the old 2-tone colour guide but don't explain the difference between the shades. I have an old colour chart downloaded on my work computer but won't be back in the office for a few days. If you're really curious and I can remember to look for the download when I get back to work, I'll confirm the difference in shade. Having said that, it's only a guide and will probably look completely different on your bass rather than the sample wood they used anyway

I think one is raw and the other is with lacquer iirc. It does say on the site/pdf somewhere

I've only used lacquer so far, and then I used sanding sealer after grain filling and dyeing. I think you'd grain fill and then use primer if you're painting it

Very unusual. Very nice. It looks gorgeous

Chances are your neck is a tight enough fit. If you're going to add paint or lacquer that will close up the space. As long as it's within about half a mm you're fine. If you grain fill, do it a couple of times. You WILL miss bits on your first pass, or it may sink very slightly. It's a key stage to getting a good finish, and trying to build up any remaining pores with paint/lacquer gets time consuming and expensive. It looks a lovely body for the money

If you're after an aggressive, rocky sound then chances are you'll have the volume and tone turned up full. In effect you'll be shorting out the resistance, so it wouldn't make a huge difference which value pots you use. It's only when you back off the knobs that there would be a difference. A passive P bass would usually have 250k pots.

Last year our guitarist/lead vocalist had a bout of bronchitis and his voice still isn't up to strength. The drummer and I are going to have to step up to the plate a bit more to give him some rest time. Although I've been doing BVs and the occasional lead for years I appreciate the advice on here. Certainly last weekend I did about the best performance ever of the one I do lead vox on, mainly down to singing with confidence. The more you do the better it gets

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