Stub Mandrel

One thing I found REALLY weird. At school I was useless on violin, even with little plastic markers taped on the fretboard. After learning fretless bass I can play violin in tune, not very well because my bowing technique is absolutely shite, but pretty much in tune!

I used to know a biker with a dent like that in his head...

🙂 Good venue? I've got tickets for Phil Campbell there in November - he should be good on home turf!

🙂 My brother keeps on encouraging me to buy a cheap 3/4 classical guitar and a 'ukelele bass conversion kit'. I saw the ideal guitar today in a charity shop for £15. Unfortunately I'd just dropped my car off for its post-MOT work and I just didn't have the balls to walk through town carrying a bright pink 'Barbie-style' guitar...

Buy a Squier Jazz, swap necks and put the Squier neck on the bay (or send it to me as a reward for such a good idea).

My Squier Jag has rolled edges to the fingerboard (if I am understanding what that means properly)

This mention of lemon oil got me thinking. It seemed weird to me that a vegetable oil would be used on fretboards. Why? Vegetable oils oxidise, thicken and go gungy over time. Mineral oils don't. So I looked up the MSDS (material safety data sheet) for few a popular brands. They are typically >90% white mineral oil or 'heavy naptha' (which is the same thing but longer molecules so a bit thicker for lemon oils used as a 'lacquer'), the 'lemon' bit appears to be just a touch of essential oil to add fragrance. What's the cheapest and most easily obtained source of high-purity white mineral oil? Sewing machine oil, which is thin, hardly smells and is specifically chosen not to go nasty and gungy when used in a very challenging environment. Just happen to have a bottle too! Tried it on an old no-name neck - worked great. Tried it on Hohner rosewood - great. Tried it on Laurel - spankin! I also found an MSDS for pure lemon oil. Slightly toxic if taken internally, hazardous (irritant) with skin exposure. In other words, don't put pure lemon oil on your fretboard, just drip it in your new-age oil vapouriser and use it to summon unicorns. I suppose you could add a drop to sewing machine oil and make your own 'lemon oil'. <edit> found this which seems to agree with me! https://www.guitaranswerguy.com/12-lemon-oil-debate/ 🙂

Better than my Portugese 🙂

I think it looks great... I wonder how they get the 8R impedance with three drivers, they must be non-standard wind?

length should be pretty much standard, but there are 6mm and 1/4" (6.35mm) shaft diameters out there. Also some guitars have splined shafts (in either diameter...) My Jag has splined shafts and that same style of knob, but the ones with lock screws in your pic are designed for plain shafts with a flat on them. You can also get push-on knobs for shafts with a flat. So in short, no, there are at least six different styles... splines, screw fit and flat push on in each of two sizes. Actually.. a bit of digging, add coarse or fine splines to the list. And 5mm EMG pot shaft diameter. And long or short (~3/8" or ~1/2") shaft. Not to mention 3/8" or 10mm fixing nut. I'm boggled... You can also get collet fit knobs for plain shafts, but they are probably too push for basses...

It's been done before, truckloads of aluminium necks out there, but alloy bodies as well, apparently this guitar is 10.1lbs: https://reverb.com/item/18234435-2017-electrical-guitar-company-standard-baritone-aluminum What surprisies me is that people always go with raw aluminium, OK when polished it feels OK but if it tarnishes it feels bad. Anodised aluminium has a lovely feel, as nice as wood.

I'm impressed with the TGI extreme padded gig cases for about £40, but for another £5 - £10 Gear4music have some surprisingly impressive looking hard cases.

You've got to watch those Canglewoods...

The laurel one is actually a Squier VM SS Jaguar... I suspect they work hard to make sure the Squiers don't outshine the Fenders, at least on their website.

Hmm, perhaps some lines to try... "Sorry about that, I didn't realise you were struggling to keep up with me until near the end. Do you want me to knock the tempo back a bit next time?" "Do you think we should try death-metal vocals to better match our playing style?" "I would turn up my amp, but your speakers sound like they breaking up a bit already." But the ultimate weapon for any bass player... "You think that's loud? THIS is loud..." 😁

Sounds like a flaky joint. I fixed a noisy valve amp just by removing each valve then working it in and out of its socket for a while 🙂 At the weekend I fixed a mixing desk that had developed a mains 'buzz' - I just resoldered every suspect-looking joint in the power supply and it magically went away. The main suspect looked like it had been bad from new. Made me look like an electronics god, but to be honest all I had to do was identify where the regulator circuitry was.

It may depend on the actual piece of wood - I may have got lucky! Old (~35years) rosewood left, young laurel (right). The laurel has similar but not quite as nice grain, but darker. Similar finish. The rosewood used to get treated with fast fret, but not for decades.

They also made Hohners, I understand, and many of those were damn good instruments.

My first electric was the six string version, I still have it. I fitted a tune-o-matic bridge and got rid of the 'tremelo' and added various switches. As stated above, put it through ridiculous amounts of distortion and you get wails of feedback and a sound Neil Young would die for... The body is undersize, only 1" thick,and plywood. The tuners are three-to a plate acoustic ones. It's lovely to play too, with 008s on it 🙂

Two rosewood and one laurel fretboard right here. One of the rosewood boards has a slightly richer figure if you look VERY close and the laurel is slightly darker. I doubt I would have noticed if I hadn't read the spec.

Now the Truth can be told... Mike Rutherford is Ed Milliband's evil twin....

You might not have me if it wasn't for the effect of Lonnie Donegan on my mum...

Yes, and arduino or AVR was in the back of my mind too. I've always fancied one since seeing Haze in the early 80s! With my co-ordination it would probably be little more than hitting a note and keeping my foot down...

At the risk of getting shot down in flames my approach on guitars has been to wind the highest string bridge piece so its as close to the neck as possible and fit the bridge so it's exactly twice the distance from nut (or zero fret) to 12th fret from the nut. The highest string usually needs only a small amount of movement to set the intonation and this leaves plenty of adjustment for the other strings. The bridge should never need to be closer to the neck than this.