BassTool

But you'd be forgetting to incorporate a nod to the donor bass remember the Man and Ray both come from the original bass 😎

Oh. And an open string between those two lumps of brass does sustain for hours.... 🤣

Back in the day when I subscribed to the magazine 'The International Musician' (showing my age now) 😆 there was a free Di Marzio booklet issued with one of the editions. Almost every bit of stuff they were making as add ons was crafted from brass. The nut in particular was hailed for its inherent transfer properties back into the bass, as well as sustain - something I've never quite got as I've always tried to control the length of the notes I play anyway. But as @SpondonBassed says, it's a great metal to work with, and I put a brass nut on my fretless years ago. It's dead easy to refurb as I've demonstrated, and I love the look of it too The chance to upgrade the pretty crappy plastic one on the Blazer was too good an opportunity to pass up.

When I saw you were following the thread mate it ramped up the pressure to get it as good as possible! 😆 (For the uninformed my mate young Gaz is an aficionado of the MM Stingray, he's owned a few and is a very fine player of them too!) We'll have to catch up as I really have no idea what a genuine Stingray sounds like 😖 Be good to compare with the real thing to see if I'm in the ballpark - but bottom line is, the BlazerRay sounds very good to my untrained ears.. 😂 Thanks Gaz!

^ This^ As someone who has always looked after my gear, I just do not get the relic thing - at all. Don't get me wrong, my own basses show many signs of years of gigging, but to deliberately 'damage' a bass to make it look used just does absolutely nowt for me 🤔 Just my opinion

Love your builds Jimothey, glad you've enjoyed it 👍 Forget those Stingrays..... and build yourself an imposter 😁 😎

Thanks very much Rikki, honestly, if I can do it, anyone can go for it. Incidentally I used 2000 grit to get that orange lacquer down. 👍 All my other basses except my P have rosewood boards, my own first Blazer back in 1980 however was a maple neck like this one (it then became my fretless in 1983 when I defretted a Cimar Grabber maple neck with RW board and put it with the Blazer body, still got it) I'm loving the revisit to a maple neck and board, and as you can probably imagine, I can't put this down at the moment 😆

That pup and pre you sold me are a fantastic combination 👍

Headstock decal was provided by Rob at www.guitardecals.co.uk After being quoted £57 by Rothko & Frost for my 'complex design' request I found this guy on ebay who did me two waterslide transfers for less than £10. Great bloke to deal with, and got my decal exactly as I wanted it - recommended 😎

You three chaps were instrumental to this transformation. @TheGreek your amazing bass as I've said earlier - maybe a swap? 🤣WOW the job @Andyjr1515 did transforming that into the stunner it became, and his threads were my go to for advice from all the stuff he's done generally @Jabba_the_gut amazing work and incredible designs, yourself and so many other fabulous builders on here - too many to mention - whose threads I've followed and learned from this last couple of years, thanks to you all for sharing your skills 👍 Really enjoyed doing this and well pleased with the end result - I forgot to say that it sounds exactly like a BlazerRay... 😲 I'm going back to being an avid reader now 😀

Oh, and I messed up with the battery cover today! But as the sun was shining I thought I'd get my pics

I've literally completed it today, and I have got to say a big thanks to John East for helping me via email to get the wiring right. (No welding rods required!) I emailed him with a query at 8.50 this morning and he had got back to me with a detailed answer by 9.30! Brilliant service John if you're on here 😎

Cheers BassBus 👍

I'll try and sort pics @Pea Turgh but I started with the bass in bits and am gutted I never took a full on shot of the Blazer before starting - and I don't know what I'm going to do next if anything! This truly was a first for me, a big undertaking and I've learned a lot from it. I took a punt on the gluing thing first and it just snowballed from there! After following build diaries for so long and finally doing my own I've got to say I've loved almost every minute 😆

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you.... The BlazerRay 😊

Well the rest of the job was connecting up wires and installing the control plate and jack socket, no pics necessary really. After two months, my project was finally finished.