Rexel Matador

My first bass was one of these - circa 1993. The amp was an ancient guitar practice amp given to me by a mate of my dad's - no idea what it was. The first song I tried to learn was "Everything About You" bu Ugly Kid Joe. I switched to guitar shortly after and only came back to bass (via drums) about four years ago. And now, the band that I joined pretty much as soon as I took up the bass again is supporting Whitfield Crane in Newcastle next week! How's that for synchronicity?! Edit - just realised you can't really see the headstock in that picture - it's an Aria Pro 2 in case anyone was wondering

Truss rod is in. This bit always stresses me out. I find routers so brutal. But, all’s well that ends well. And this is a template for the neck And finally, everything glued together. My original idea of using cocktail sticks as locating pins turned out to exactly as idiotic as it sounds. Replaced them with little nails and all is well 👍

I totally agree regarding the strength. If I did do it, would be more to stop it sliding around while I’m clamping it up.

Great idea, thanks!

I haven’t done it yet, but I was thinking of maybe using some kind of locating pins/dowels. Mainly to stop it slipping when I clamp it up though - I’m confident that the glue joints will be plenty strong.

I'm glad someone said that - it's growing on me too!

Planed and ready for glueing (although I think I'll actually do the truss rod cavity first). I think I'll definitely be staining this - the wood colours are just not right - although I like the way the wings fade to match the neck just as they reach the accent strips. I think if I choose the right colour stain it could look pretty cool.

I think it's Basswood, if memory serves - I'd heard it was easy to work with and it was my first build. People say it doesn't make good instruments but this thing sings.

It's Bocote. I wonder if some of those knots will magically like up and serve as fret markers 😂

I knew I shouldn't have posted this build in realtime - I've been way too busy to do anything since I was last here! That said, I now have the right size piece for the fretboard, and I must say, it's rather pretty:

Hello! I didn't do a build diary for my first build, and my second one was a g***ar so I didn't post it here, but I'm onto my third now so I figured I'd post the progress in case anyone is interested. The plan is a maple neck through neck, bocote fretboard, walnut strips either side of the neck and poplar for the wings. The discrepancy in colour between the maple and the poplar might end up being a bit ugly, in which case I'll stain it, though I'm unsure as to how to go about staining the neck but not the fretboard. I don't really fancy trying to neatly attach a fretboard to an already completed neck. We'll see. 34 inch scale - I had planned to do a shorter scale but then I forgot an ordered a full length truss rod. Maybe next time. I am as yet undecided on the body shape. It might be a bit thunderbirdy, just for a change, but we'll see what the wood has to say for itself. I'm going for a 4 in line flat headstock - maybe reversed. I was originally going to do a scarf jointed angled one, but I don't want a veneer on it, so changed my mind. My last build had a single p pickup so the plan was for this to be a jazz, especially as I'm almost certainly about to sell my Fender Jazz. But I realise now that I'm not all that into the jazz sound, so it will probably just be a P again. Maybe a PJ, just for the the hell of it. I don't have a bandsaw in the half of a box room that I ridiculously refer to as a workshop, so I have glued another piece of maple to the neck blank to double the thickness in the body area, rather than having to try and get rid of a load of waste wood. And that's where I'm up to for now. Hopefully there will be more interesting updates in the future! As an aside, I ordered the wrong size fretboard blank, so I cut it into shorter lengths, laminated them together and made a little plague doctor. Might try and incorporate this sort of thing into a guitar somehow

Hi everyone - the stuff is all gone now, thanks!

Crimson Guitars Stunning Stains. It's gets pretty damn black after a few coats. I use a sponge if I want to get a deep saturated look, tissue if I'm going more subtle. Even when I diluted to try and get a grey colour, it still retained its not-brown-ness, as it were. If you're specifically asking about technique as opposed to products, I'm no expert, but in my experience, it's just a case of adding plenty of coats.

I've bought Body and neck blanks from www.reidtimber.co.uk. Prices and quality are great in my experience.

Hi, I have a few things taking up space that don't really warrant selling, so if you have any use for them, and can collect them from me in Liverpool, they're all yours... Left to right: - Gear4Music P Bass style body (not exact Fender shape) - Squier Affinity Tele neck - Fender acoustic with Artec pickup/microphone thing added - no strings - P-Bass made from various cheap bits - no pickup (it's just a cover) or jack but everything else is there

Thanks! It's a pot though, not the jack - but presumably the principle is the same

So I took my newly build bass to a gig last night, plugged it in and... nothing. Had to use the £90 beater that we happened to have in the van - rather crushing I'm sure you can imagine. Anyway, I opened it up and all my solder connections seem fine and it made noise when I plugged it in and touched the pickups. Then I put it back together and it stopped working again. I think that the volume pot had twisted round in such a way that one of the lugs was touching the foil shielding on the wall of the control cavity. Is that the likely culprit or could there be something else I'm missing? It was working fine before. I've moved the pot back into place and tightened it up, but would it be ok to maybe put some electrical tape around it to stop it coming into contact with the shielding? Or is there a reason that that is not advisable? Sorry for rambling - TL;DR - bass stopped making noise. Lug on volume pot touching cavity shielding?

I have a series of recordings that I'd like to be able to play along to, but none of them are tuned at A=440, as they were made by the instruments just being tuned to each other, rather than a tuner. My sense of pitch is clearly not great and I struggle with tuning my bass to match them. In this technologically wondrous age, is there an easy way of pitch shifting a recording (these are full band recordings) into concert pitch, so I can save them like that and not have to retune constantly? Is there an app or plugin or something that can just figure it out for me? Or will it be a matter of trial and error until I get the amount of shift that matches?

Thanks for that. I thought that was probably the case, but you put my mind at rest 👍

Exactly. I’m always using random amps/di at gigs so I use a pre amp pedal to get a half decent tone. Tone knob would be largely redundant for me.

No, there’s a third one out of frame and also another one hidden under the scratchplate going the other way. Just an experiment - probably overkill but it still sounds good. I saw a framus guitar in a studio that appeared to have only 2 bolts but when I googled it I saw that they have hidden ones inside. Thought is was a cool idea so I stole it!

Thanks! By the way, if anyone knows, is it significant that the saddles ended up in that position after intonating? Usually they tend to be further forward the thinner the string. Is it due to something I’ve done wrong or is it just something that happens sometimes?

I didn't document the build properly, as I was somewhat winging it - I plan to do a proper build diary for my next one - but I occasionally remembered to take a picture or two

It's birch plywood - not exactly functional as a "scratchplate" but it looks nice. It wasn't originally going to have one at all, but my pickup cavity wasn't really up to presentation standard.

Thanks! I'll take some more pics soon. Just volume. Decided to keep it simple for the first one. I never use the tone control on stage and I like the way it looks. Plus less soldering!