Al Heeley

Both are 43mm wide at the nut but you might run into problems with the slot width and depth. Most new nuts will need a bit of sanding to bed in right, get the right height, etc., so maybe worth a try if you're not happy, a new nut is only a few quid.

Quick facelift on a pedal I put together last year. Classic Red Llama distortion pedal modded with 'phat' switch for bass freq boost. Great agressive overdrive sound with big gain stage.

warmoth necks are excellent but expensive. Allparts I think are overpriced. Go for a cheaper neck if axes r us have any in, esp if its your first build. JB pups - go for Wizard pickups [url="http://www.wizardpickups.co.uk/shop.asp?category=Bass"]http://www.wizardpickups.co.uk/shop.asp?category=Bass[/url] or if you want budget ones to try, get some GFS pickups off the internet. [url="http://store.guitarfetish.com/gfsbasspickups.html"]http://store.guitarfetish.com/gfsbasspickups.html[/url]

nICE jACK, THAT LooKS SO CooL!

cheap pots don't have a proper taper, generally they have 2 tracks that give you 2 ramps or gradients of resistance change. They are less well sealed and can have more chance of getting scratchy after time. Cheap pot = 75p, good pot (CTS) is £4.50. CTS is overpriced at that but in the context of a good bass you're fond of worth a few hundred splash out and treat it!

ok so my one won't have been trodden on by either the Beatles or the Bay City Rollers.

spectacular bargain for vintage effects buffs (I can put one of these together for you for £2.70) [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-Tonebender-fuzz-Mk1-5-Tone-Bender-Mark-1-5_W0QQitemZ260572920837QQcategoryZ22669QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp4012.m8QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DMW%26its%3DC%26itu%3DUCC%26otn%3D14%26po%3DLCA%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D8749946316396600881"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-Tonebender-f...946316396600881[/url]

Excellent - well persevered, its so frustrating when you can't find the fault but great once you've managed to trace it and get it working properly.

excellent job! Thats quite an ambitious project there, hats off to you for getting it solved!

Thanks to all for organising, and the abundant raffle prizes, well worth a day out to come back with a few new sets of strings as well as talk bass gear with you all. Nice one

Mikey - you planning to bring your fanned five? I'd love to see that

generally stompboxes are designed to feed in straight from instrument before pre-amp, rack effects are usually meant to go between pre- and post- gain stages (fx loop send/return), so if it has its own preamp you should make sure its not set on 11. Digital multi-effects often have a choice of either config so people without fx send/rtn loops can still use them but they say you can lose the character of your preamp stage if you have digital effects before it.

Dolphin music also deal in Ampeg and have an online shop. Sadly my Soundslive experience was not all positive, but you should not tarnish the reputation of a strong retail business just because of one peeved customer.

You could go one step further with a simple blend pot to have the ability to alter the amount of signal sent to the FX loop, so you could switch then between bypass or blend, with wet/dry blend ranging from 0% to 100%. Do a search for a simple blend circuit which adds a transistor, a couple of caps and resistors.

make a simple audio probe and follow the signal path round the circuit. go here for info on audio probe and step by step debugging. [url="http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/debug.html"]http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/debug.html[/url] you cant buikd pedals and keep your sanity without an audio probe to help out

Here's this weekend's project - a nice little veroboard circuit and a classic fuzz-style overdrive clone. It uses a CD4049UBE hex inverter chip to cascade gain stages to produce a pretty good usable overdrive tone. For me its somewhere in the middle of a fuzz and a tubescreamer-type distortion. Well worth a build.

d'you think you could send it back if the tuning wasn't perfect?

LOL No firm rules on these 3, sometimes a signal from a fuzz into a booster can step the gain up into the amp; why do you use a booster? Is it for volume increase during solo passages? If so, it may not work too well before the muff, but it will certainly make sure the muff is fully clipping! It comes down to personal preference.

3 for under a tenner on ebay - worth a punt... [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-TITANIUM-COATED-HSS-STEEL-CONE-STEP-DRILL-BIT-SET-NEW_W0QQitemZ380160432485QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Home_Garden_PowerTools_SM?hash=item588353d965"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-TITANIUM-COATED-HS...=item588353d965[/url]

good work on the decal side, Jack, I always failed to get them to lie flat without bullble or rips when trying to do an enclosure top as one section.

router's not for the edges, its for setting the lower level of the contour around the perimiter of the body. It can help shave off an even 7 to 10 mm as the baseline for the 'lower level'. Then you can blend in between upper (around the pickups) and lower levels (the perimeter) with scrapers and sanding disks to get a nice smooth transition. Spokeshaves are pigs.

(1977) big muff is my next project but it uses a load of silly value resistors I need to order in. I have the pcb and the IC's. Once the Compressor is finished I'll post some big muff pics (phwooarr...)