Waddo Soqable

A bit more stuff done, I got the glue and cocktail sticks out, and plugged all the screw holes in the body, most of them will be redundant but a few will almost, but not quite, line up with screws thru the scratchplate, so best blank them off and drill pilot holes in, hopefully the right places! The bridge is in the wrong place, as can be seen by the string line up, and needs shifting "south" a few mm. so these screw holes were also filled as above.. the rest is trial fitting and trimming etc.. the scratchplate once its got the full size pots in place, very much wanted to sit where it does, so will require a couple of mm taking off the curve where the butt end of the neck joins it. I previously shifted the neck back into the body a bit so this seems about right, judging by the old scratchplate holes its kind of in the right place ! I marked with tape where the bridge originally was with lines to show approx 'in tune' saddle positions, and marked where new screw holes will be pilot drilled. I'll also have to take the neck off and shim it quite a bit, as mentioned before, the saddles are right down on the bridge plate, so theres no adjustment at all as it is!... I'd certainly like a lower action than how it is now, tho of course it's all just trial fitting at the mo anyway.

I've been having a blast from the past and listening to some Scientist tonight.. Tracks like this were very influential to some of the post punk bands too, especially the likes of Killing Joke etc, so influences go round in all directions.. I believe this track has Ansell Collins on keyboards.

Great track!..That reminds me of Louis Jordan's "jump" stuff.... its always really interesting to speculate what the guys were listening to early on, and what influenced them...

Paragons...Old school ! I do hope they got some serious royalties from blondie for "tide is high" !

Actually , been listening to this again, it reaaly grows on you ! This is a lovely song ( course a proper dub would be great too ! )

Dubbing it up is Always a good thing..!

I'd still say the only way is to go and try one, (or preferably a few)... If Prof James does that he can then either....1,get the idea out of his system once and for all...or 2,save up and buy one if he like 'em !

Try one, make up your own mind... I've had 3 over the years, I ended up flogging them as you do...at length I wish I'd kept the last one, a tatty black '73. 4001. I like them, others hate them, only you can decide.

Got a few bits on the way ( and many thanks to our gallant Reggaebass man above for the bridge !👍 ) I ordered a Zero fret set up as I'm going to fit one, I started a seperate quick thread enquiring about these as I couldn't remember the name of the product... The name i was looking for was Zero Glide, they're an "easy" all in one replacement nut and zero fret unit...but, unfortunately these seem unobtainable in UK at the mo.....so I've gone the other route and gone for a Sintoms zero fret, which is just a specifically shaped piece of fret wire of appropriate dimensions for the purpose, that will require the nut to be ground down a bit and butchered, sorry, adapted to include the zero fret ! Just for a lark today I squeezed an old random P stylee pick up from the junk box under the strings, it still had the pots and jack socket dangling so was able to plug it in in a very rough try out fashion, didn't last long as one of the wires fell off but gave me a couple of mins hearing it "live" ! I reckon when it's sorted and the decent pick ups & proper pots fitted it'll be a goer !

Having looked around t'internet, getting an easy option Zero Glide one doesn't seem viable availability wise...so as regards doing it d.i.y, I've ordered a Sintoms Zero fret, (about 8 quid) which is just a length of the fret itself, but allegedly shaped specifically to be a zero fret...I can then butcher the original nut to suit and hopefully Bob will be one's uncle....

Yikes.. put like that it does doesn't it.... 😲

Metal bass construction has been considered trust me !.... oddly enough I did once make a guitar stand ( yep,from rusty metal) the purpose of it being to have a battered old SG bolted to it, so I could wander over to it ( bass still round me neck) murder some nasty chords for a short time, then wander off again to continue hammering the bass.... Wasn't really Jazz tho

Further shoving and bodging continues.... I was going to use my home made six screw neck plate, ( subject of another small topic )but only could find 4 neck to body screws among my junk, I wanted to bolt the thing together asap so I used the conventional set up for now..I can always put the 6 hole one on later if I fancy it. Drilling into the neck was a bit of a pain, I did the tape around a drill trick, to go thru the body holes, in theory nice and straight, and into the neck, it worked kind of but a couple of the holes went a bit skewy... I enlarged the body holes a tad to allow a bit of wiggle room, they're meant to be clearance holes anyway, and bullied the thing together, not perfect but it'll do ( I don't think the "lutherie" thing is my game really..I'm happier welding bits of metal tbh ! ) The machine heads were another faff...obviously you have to get them in line etc, I used a small engineers square along the top of the headstock and front edge of the MH back plates to get them symetrical, the first one needed a couple of the pilot holes plugging with cocktail sticks and glue, and do 'em again as they were well out ! The machine heads on I thought i'd bung an old set of strings on it to see how the basic thing stands... well I gradually brought the strings up to a tone under standard for now...hmmm we're going to need a good old fag packet in the pocket here I think ! the bridge saddles I dropped down to the metal...the bridge will need moving down a tad (towards the control knobs) having shown it the straight edge it is in fact not properly centered as it came out of the factory so I don't feel i'm cheating too much here. The saddles will need new slots filing for the strings too as the existing spacing is all wrong. On the plus side I've been twanging it acoustically and it does seem to twang quite resonantly, (apart from the E string!)... bear in mind tho these are just random old strings I had knocking around so likely well past their best! Also to my surprise, the intonation at fret 12 isn't too bad straight away as it stands, so my shifting of the neck back must've been about right ! next trick I guess.. shim neck, move bridge, get playable action..all good fun huh...

Wasn't there some thing about Marc Almond along those lines, but no, I'm, erm, sure it's not true.....

Good plan it's easy enough to enlarge them... not so easy to shrink 'em ! Obviously if you really bolloxed it up you can plug the holes up with wood pegs and glue and start again, but hopefully won't come to that .

Cheers gents, I'd certainly have done pilot holes anyway, I'll have to show the plate to the grinder to round the corners off a bit anyway, the neck screws are 3.6 mm core depth of thread 5mm o/d..... t' internet rummage suggests 3mm drill for pilot holes...?

I made a six screw plate, just dropped on the body for a quick look.. now bear in mind I haven't shaped the corners this is just roughed out and drilled, (as I had the crafty opportunity to use a decent drill press when no one was looking!) the only snag being however, if I used this, the butt end of the NW Gtrs neck has an open recess at the end of the skunk stripe, and I'm not sure it'd be a great idea to put 2 screws in the neck here where it's got less solid wood...not sure.

I jocularly mentioned "childhood" as I guess that must be a huge influence on what you listen to.... As a kid the stuff played at home, my mum's choice mainly...was Classical, lots of symphonic stuff, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, etc, plus quite a bit of classical piano, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg.... Alongside all this was Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle, Cole Porter, Mantovani... All this stuff was all in my head and I could kind of sing along to myself to most of it. Then came along Punk and I was rapidly off and away with that, leading to joining bands and the whole nine yards...so the short answer is "quite varied" !

Well the Sennheiser 206 (for a whopping £15.99 off ebay !) are great !..... I've tried them for music, with a few things from a bit of Goth, to Mahler no5 and Grieg's piano concerto, all good..... my ears have had a battering over the ages so I'm probably not the ideal person to review anything, but they sound very well detailed to me, and you can hear 'into' the music and no nasty noises! ...I'm mainly going to be using them for playing bass etc, as said before at that price you can't go wrong ! I'd also add they've got a lot more volume than the last lot, I plugged into an old ME50 pedal that I'd last used with the others, and had to turn the master vol down pretty sharpish with the Sennheisers.... a good set of cans and a bargain too !

Cue the intro to "Hyperactive "....... " tell me about your childhood....."

I have been known to do a bit of welding, and have been tempted before to have a go at something like that, tho I doubt it would approach the quality of M. Trussart

I can also spot weld the bolt heads to the back plate, they're not going anywhere then... In fact I made a prototype backplate today from some 'orrible galvanised 3mm plate cut out of a scrap joist hanger, so we really are heading in this direction.... I'll be making one of those rusty steel bodied basses next no doubt !

Yes thats another option, I'll have a close look at pics of the produced ones and have a think ... Good call 👍

Or go Richie Blackmore and glue the bugger as well......

I'll probably stick with six !.... any more and I suspect it may start to weaken things a bit. I've had a measure up and will make a backing plate in the next day or two, Iuckily I'll have access to someone else's pillar drill which will help greatly in the manufacturing of this.