songofthewind

Hey there basschat hive mind. I'm planning to put an MM pickup and a Jazz bass style front pickup in my MaybeRay build. Does anyone have an opinion about this type of configuration? I assume it will sound good, but I am concerned about issues like differences in pickup polarity, likely volume differences. I hope to put a Bourns pan pot after the pickups and before the three-band preamp, which is from a Ray 34. I am very ignorant and probably unteachable about electrickery, but please let me know your thoughts about this plan. BTW, I am also considering making a unitary pickup container/ramp to house both pickups, with a nifty rosewood top. I f i do this it means i can remove the pickups from their covers.

I love the whole album, and I love playing the Ruby Baby bass part. I can’t wait to dig into this video! Thanks for posting!

And and and the bugger is playing a bass with a ZERO FRET! Just not ok!

I think it should be possible to drill out the rivet from the non-head side. Cautious use of a rubber or nylon headed hammer should suffice to flatten the cloverleaf. The chrome plating will not withstand blows from a steel head hammer. I’m a bit stumped about where and how to get it riveted, again.

And a bit more progress. I started on the body contours, using the trusty Shinto rasp. I love this thing. Every wooden object around me is going to have a nice round-over when I'm done with it. I've gone for a kind of Ibanez style gentle curve on the belly cut, and a flatter one for the arm cut. The arm cut is making me nervous because I have to bend the maple cap over it, so it probably won't be as curvy as a real Ray. I really enjoyed this part of the process. I don't seem to have pix, but I added small round-over with the router to the entire rear edge of the body. It looks sophisticated to my eye: sometimes the big round-overs on many basses look a bit generic to me. Anyway, here are some photos. Frankie has returned to his role as supervisor.

The Indonesian SUB Ray 4's are surprisingly good, and have a 38mm nut, for the Jazz Bass fans.

The sled will now remain stationary over the workpiece, and the router will ride in the tray.

The rain held off so the following occurred: I set about modifying the router sled so as to reduce the amount of inaccuracy-inducing movement. I used the router itself to make a lengthways slot in the sled base. This was easy peasy and got me back into appreciating the router. So, that's good.

Yep, mine is the 21.5” version. I find its screen plenty big enough for Logic.

Mine is the "thin edge" type, with no trap door. Also, I think the model in the pix above would have the screen held on with magnets. I helped a friend upgrade his identical one.

You can check everymac.com for models specs and upgradeability. My late 2013 iMac was quite easy to open and it was a piece of cake to swap out the drive for an SSD. You need spudgers to slice around the screen, and a set of adhesive tapes to stick the screen back on afterwards. I would not want to try to upgrade the RAM in the same machine: you have to remove almost all of the internals to get at the RAM. There are loads of instructional videos on YouTube, and parts on eBay.

This. Swap out the slow HDD for an SSD, and prepare to be amazed at the transformation.

Thanks for these comments. I do have a local woodworking firm I can ask if necessary. Steve has used them, and says he thinks their machine won't go thin enough. But Andy on here has made a couple of points which I responded to above. The Artec preamp sounds useful. Dave fae Anstruther (Dov65) has kindly gifted me a Ray 34 preamp which I hope to use. I just need to find a way to add a separate blend pot if I go with two pickups. Hopefully the weather will let me work outside tomorrow!

Andy, I just noticed your question.Thanks, as ever, for your encouragement. I think the answer is that it doesn't matter, since i should do as you say and flatten the back only. Then glue her up and see what it looks like to the eye. Much of the overly thick edge area will in fact be lost when I cut to the body outline. I have a plan to modify my router sled, giving it a long slot for the router bit to slide in. This is instead of my practice hitherto, which was to move the whole contraption from side to side.

Well, a bit more progress. I decided to alter the outline to something more asymmetric, like a jazz, in order to eliminate some of my routing errors. I used the trusty jigsaw to cut the outline roughly, and then had at it with the Shinto rasp. You can see the body on top of the original template. I've taken about a centimetre off at the obvious Jazz type locations. This was very satisfying to do, and so much more controllable than the router. (I am going to modify my routing rig, more info on that later.) Some more pix:

Really great work! Inspires me to have a crack at a short scale myself!

Steady, Stew! Breathe!