kodiakblair

Mark Provan, Bonny Wood Guitars. Link goes to a build Mark did for me earlier this year.

What always gets me is I'd known about his 'Super Yob' guitars for a year to 18 months, had posted photos on a few forums, before I found out he was just up the road 😀

It's looking braw, Mark is doing a grand job 😎

Wise decision 🙂 He's a good man is Alistair, think he still uses a photo of my Cabronita on the site.

It is. Alistair Reid sells Fender bass maple blanks, 22mm × 100mm × 940mm, out of his shop in Glasgow for £18.50. He does a roaring trade in mail order. With a plug cutter you'd be set up for life 😀

You and me both 😀

Maple blank 1" thick x 4" wide x 36" long = 1 Board Foot. Standard shaped Fender bass neck 1" thick, 3.5" wide at the peghead, 33" long =0.8BF Standard bass body blank. 2" thick x 14" wide x 21.5" long = 4.1 BF. Paul Reed Smith might take a few hours one afternoon to film a nice PR video of him knocking on bits of wood but if you're FMIC in Corona there's 360 units to produce in a day, that's them at lower production levels. Factories go through 1000's of feet every week so buy direct from sawmills, with bulk purchase discount. As to how little Maple actually costs, let me run this by you. There this decent wee sized mill in Michigan, Bell Forest. They mainly deal mail order to hobbyists and carry a very healthy list of timber. Their top grade hard maple is $6 for 1 BF, drops 25% to $4.50 if you buy 100 BF. FMIC are going through more than 70,000 BF in a year just for necks. 2" (8/4) ash for a body is $7.50 for 1 BF, if you use Basswood it's $6.35. Discounted for 100+ BF, $5.50 and $4.80. I'll leave you to ponder the discount offered on orders for 100k BF p.a. p.s. The 100k BF is just a random figure. FMIC build more guitars than basses, 3.7 BF for a guitar body blank, and not all of the 80-90,000 instruments they produce yearly in Corona use ash 👍

I'm looking forward to seeing it come together and I'll never get a chance to play it 🤣🤣🤣

Bloody Hell !! That neck is pretty. Stick to your guns regarding the colour scheme and you'll have yourself a cracking bass 👍

I've only built the one. Used the Overlord of Music system. It was a doddle to fit and set up, just think about the part you are fitting and how it interacts with others. Simple stuff like the distance your fretboard is proud of the body affects how deep a rebate the bridge needs. Course if you use mono saddles like ABM or similar there's no rebates to cut, just position for scale length and pole pieces.

Hartley Peavey likes to blow his trumpet about operating the world's first CNC guitar factory, this was back around 1977/78. He's wrong, Matsu in Japan beat he to it by a couple of years 😁 Thing is Hartley's set up was pretty basic, 7 pin routers running off a master template, but the results were good. After shaping all the wooden parts only got a light dusting with 1000 grit. There was no levelling of frets, fret wire was stamped in and a precut metal nut added. Today's machines are even more efficient 👍

I've bought a few. First one came from 'Wang Guitars', really sweet neck so I tracked them down through Ali-Ex and ordered another 4 🙂 Got another couple from Kmise UK, crazy price of £20 and £25 for the 5 string, no issues with them. Short scale paddle neck bought from Yinfente was returned, no fault with the neck just the given heel size was reversed; it was 65mm when I needed 56mm. I've no qualms buying in future. A wee heads up to those wondering "How can they sell these so cheaply ?" I got my "timber update prices" email yesterday. US sawmills are currently paying $200 for MBF of Hard Maple, just $165 for ash. That's for felled trees👍 When prices were higher the mills were selling kiln dried FAS hard maple or $1650 per MBF. Takes 1 BF to make a bass neck and MBF is 1000 BF. Should come as no surprise, given the scale of Chinese manufacturing, that enterprising folk own and operate mills solely for the home market.

Makes perfect sense to me. Rest your thumb on the side of a broom handle then cup your hand until the finger tips touch the handle, do the same with an aerosol can or similar. Which one has you move the finger tips the greater distance? I've wee hands, with stubby fingers. Relaxed I get about 40mm from thumb to finger tips. The most comfortable neck for me has been my Wishbass Lobes, they're 33mm front to back at the 3rd fret.

Had you calibrated your scales before the weigh-in? Reason I ask is though the T-series are frequently cited as heavy, that's down to the hardware. I had 2 T-40s from 1978 and 1 from 1979, all were 12.5lb. Stripped for cleaning, just neck/body/neck plate, they were a bawhair over 5lb. By 1981, Peavey were looking at ways to lighten the basses. One change was to the pickup, the blades are lighter. T-45s have 1 pickup, 1 pot, 1 knob weighing 1oz, and a scratchplate needing about 40 screws less than a T-40.

Sheryl is the lass who has been hanging or beheading Alice for years, she's also his wife.

Very enjoyable show from Alice Cooper last night. Interesting choices were made for the piped in music, "I Better Be Good" from Zipper Catches Skin was allowed to finish before the band hit the stage 😀 The Coop was in fine form, the band were great; Sheryl was as gorgeous as ever 😍

German lad over on Talkbass did that. He never said anything about a change in tone which didn't surprise me, I've tried 51 spilt coils, stacked and quad coils in my PB-50, had DCR from 6.7k ohm to 29.9k ohm; for good measure I've also went through ceramic, alnico 2 & 5 and neodymium magnets. None of them make a huge difference, alnico 2 was a bit quieter and the neodymium was louder but that was about it. What struck me was the rails looked odd, German lad thought so too. He later fitted a gold cover, made the thing look like a 'Guitar Hero' controller 🤣

Hope I can, you've got me thinking about a change on this 😀

Business address has changed from Glasgow to Newcastle, could be unpacking is taking longer than expected.

Saw them on the PMT website, has the same materials as the RB414 .

Once I would have encouraged everyone to do their own work, seeing this changed my mind 😬

Geographically too 😄 Alpha, Bourns and CTS all come out of factories in Taiwan.

You don't need luck, you need a doorway into an alternative universe 🤣 Later T-40s were lighter but none of the T- series basses had left handed options. Hartley didn't think left handed instruments were economically viable until the mid 80's. By that time the T-series were on the road out, only reason they kept building until late 87 was to use up all the parts the stores dept had.

Nope. The only option from Meridian was 3 ply B/W/B. Glad to hear that. I still have one, it's in bits but if they're bringing that kind of cash it'd be worth the half hour to stick it back together 🙂

If that's " Why would anyone remove the sticker ?" . As I remember it, in years gone by few of us gave a monkey's where or when our basses were made so why leave a grubby sticker on it 🙂 If you were really interested there was no internet databases to look up so your only option was write to customer service and ask. If they replied then you faced the real kicker, who could you share this wonderful information with ? There were no bass forums or gear pages, no collectors clubs or owners groups putting out Xerox magazines once a year. Knowing the year of manufacture or model had value for a couple of American brands but other than that nobody was bothered.