rwillett

That's an interesting question, so far for my six strings, not an issue. However it could be, given the size and weight of a bass neck. I did think that this would be a problem for a bass. One option might be to make the end of the body hollow to pack weights in, enough to balance it out OR use one of the anti-dive straps. I do know that my V1 is quite light, certainly lighter than my 89 Telecaster. I can't see the advantage for me to build a neck. I don't have the skills and I couldn't do a better/cheaper job than buying a decent neck. Thats a bridge too far for me <no pun intended> The design workflow is important as you are basically programming the model from step 1 onwards, you are applying instructions to sketches, extrude this, split this. Then apply a sketch to that part of the model and do more instructions. The way you plan this is important as the order is critical. Miss a bit out and it doesn't work. Bascially a short scale SG? Rob

Happy for you to steal what you like. The key thing with this version is that it's easier and simpler to make. The next version will be a bass, probably not a five string short scale headless, but I want to check some stuff out with V2. The design workflow is important. The order you do things is really important and I did it the wrong way for V1, but I might have done it the right way for V2. Basically get the 'master' dimensions roughed out, width and position of bridge, where does the neck go, how high is it? Position of pickups is pretty unimportant from a design point of view. Once you have that, then do the honeycomb, but do it as a repeating pattern, and make each side big enough to handle a clamp end so you clamp to glue. The repeating pattern requires maths but it's not difficult, simple trigonometry. Overlay the printing size of your prusa and then start looking at outlines to fit. Its a bit like object oriented programming to be honest Rob

I have now almost completed the design for the next version. I don't think a single component has been carried over from V1. Some of the neck measurements and the plywood backbone have remained but every other element has been redesigned based on what was learnt from V1. It looks similar but thats about it. The original ideas for the first version were: 1. All my own design so nobody can claim I'm stealing their design. - That still stands 2. No glue. I hate glue, it gets everywhere - I am now experimenting with glue. I have a number of different types of glues from various superglues, Bostick Hard plastic Glue, and the current favourite FloPlast, a solvent cement from my local builders. 3. As there is no glue, all fittings most be as hidden as possible. - This still stands but I have significantly modified the structure to make it easier to print. I have removed most of the bolts and screws from the outside structures and am assuming glue will hold them together. Certainly Bostick Hard Plastics glue and FloPlast are very strong. 4. Must be modular. I don't know which bridge to use yet, I don't know which pickups I want and, importantly, I might want to change them or add three pickups without having to print everything again. Completely rethought how this works. Before, I would have to unscrew the whole guitar to change the bridge or pickups. Not any more, I've thought about this and now have a simple set of adaptors. 5. Must be able to take different necks. I don't have a neck I can use yet, so not sure what I'm going to get. I'm looking for a thin telecaster neck but not found one on eBay I trust to buy yet. Struggling to find one at the price so the Yamaha one off the proof of concept is going to be used. 6. Must be playable. The last guitar was light and easy to play. 7. Must be easy to print and fit on a 220mm x 220mm print bed. The Prusacaster one takes four days to print one part. No doing that This is still applicable. I have changed the design to make it printable without a lot of interventions from myself. I'm now down to four big pieces rather than five. 8. Must be able to use different controls as I have no idea what I'm buying, Telecaset and Stratocaster wiring is easily available second hand on eBay so thats a good start. This version is going to be based around a Telecaster Deluxe. I also think that a lot of the control sets on eBay are junk so am working with House of Tone to get a better set of pots and controls. 9. As few as possible supports for 3d printing. This has zero supports needed at the moment. I'm delighted with that Lesson learnt from the previous guitar is that I need to print the top of the guitar facing down to get the nice smooth finish that the Prusa satin plate provides. This means supports for the three modules in the middle. However as these are hidden from view, no so concerned. So I've picked up a pair of Tesla pickups, thought a lot more carefully about the design and parameterised just about every dimension so I can adapt as needed. The Tesla pickups are bottom mounted so are designed to fit to the guitar and not to the pickguard. That has spurred me to make the pickuops more modular. The same with the bridge, I've gone for a cheap and cheerful hardtail off eBay. Its not quite finished yet, but the second iteration design was a lot easier as I had learnt from the first one. If I take the pickguard off You can see a row of mounting points. The bridge uses these mounting points, in this case the tesla pickups do. They can be moved back and forward to change the tone. I could even get a third pickup in. There's a tiny mounting plate to make the Tesla pickup work. There's now a cable channel to the three way switch on the top. More routing ports to the four pots at the bottom. Learnt my lesson and provide a lot bigger space for controls. The back will have a simple plate that fits across it to hide the void. The strap button mount points are in. Things to do are: 1. The output socket channel. 2. Put the screw holes in for the pickguard. The pickguard will have to be printed in sections as it's too big for my printer. If it works, I'll get one made to measure. 3. When the bridge arrives, make the mounting points on the bridge. 4. Finish the neck mounting section. 5. Keep experimenting with glues just to check stuff like shear strength. Some of the glues are very strong, but how about if I knock it sideways or heat it up? 6. Hope and pray that the Tesla pickups aren't too high. I'm working in mm here and I reckon I have around 2mm spare. I do have a solution to lower the pickup by 4mm but it's a hack. Trying to finish this for Xmas, but have done no printing so far. Lots of test prints to check, but nothing real yet. Rob

Oh I do have a basement, its full of a large biomass boiler, hot water tank, pipes and boxes we haven't opened from the last 2-3 hosue moves Rob

@Andyjr1515 Thanks for your really nice comment. Appreciate it. I originally was going to use a Telecaster kit from a supplier to provide the neck, bridge and electrics, but after building it, I found the shape of the neck was too deep and I struggled to play it as my thumb was in agony after a while. Too many rugby injuries have taken their toll on my body. So I built it, enjoyed doing it with my daughter and gave the guitar to the local schools music dept who were very happy to take it off my hands. By this time, I had laid down the foundations of the 3d printed body and had designed the neck module depth (not width) to fit the other guitar neck. I then started looking around for a guitar neck to use instead and found somebody selling the neck I used on eBay. I took a gamble and it's a great neck. I'm 90% certain it came off a guitar similar to this https://www.axebition.com/electric-guitar/yamaha-rgx-121d. It's stamped RG121DM on the end but no date I could see. I'll be honest and say it never ocurred to me to change the neck height in the 3d printed neck module to compensate for the fact that this neck was not the one I planned for. My thinking is that the original neck was thicker than this one and simply putting a 1.6mm shim in brough the neck up to the same spec as before. Of course that could be complete b0ll0cks and it all just worked. I think the more experienced amongst you are ascribing a level of planning, competence and expertise to me that is wholly unwarranted, I think in my case three wrongs made a right. I've never thought about building a guitar before, so I tried to work out what I presumed would be the fundamentals, the length of the neck from the 12th fret to the bridge, the height of the fretboard and the height of the bridge. Everything else was just guesswork and trying to make it fit a shape I recognised and could print. In hindsight I made so many design and printing errors, I am mortified I got so many things wrong. Anyway, I have now: 1. Shimmed the neck up by 1.6mm 2. Lowered the nut by 0.5mm, glued it on using wood glue. 3. Raised the saddles so there is more adjustment. 4. Drilled a hole in the bridge module so I can run an earthing cable. As this is a 3d print, drilling is normally a big no-no, but as this is a proof of concept, I wasn't going to print another module, this time with a hole, and spend 10 hours waiting for it. 5. Put an earthing cable from the bridge to the ground on the control panel through the newly drilled hole. 6. Swapped the wiring around so that the switch works the right way. 7. Repaired the output socket. 8. Fixed the loose knob 9. Set the string height so its the same as my MIK Telecaster. 10. Tuned it up. 11. Plugged a NUX Mighty Plug Pro, attached headphones and strummed a barre G. Well knock me down with a feather. The damm thing worked, hum was almost all gone, tiny bit in the background but I've heard worse, it sounds great. The neck pickup sounds better than the one on my genuine Telecaster, the bridge pickup, not so good. The tone controls work. No neck buzz, no idea why, luck I guess, the 3d printed nut is fine, no idea how long it will last but it's 24 mins to print a new one. I'm going to leave it overnight and see if the strings go out of tune, but I'm quite pleased with how its turned out. I can still see every mistake I made (and there are lots) but not too shabby for a first effort. Now for V2 Rob

Printed a smaller height nut, printed a 1.6mm shim and put them on, adjusted the saddles and tried to set the strings the same height as my Squier 89 Telecaster. Different neck but it's all I have to go on and to be my utter amazement, its quite nice to play. The Yamaha neck is great, the tuners are really smooth. This is really nice neck and for £30(?) is fabulous value. Suspect it's 30+ years old but great value. I'd prefer it to be a little wider as I have big hands but I can live with it. However In the process I broke the cable off the output socket so that will need repairing and the soldering iron is downstairs and I have a 44 page business case to review before 17:00. So thats me for the day Rob

Thats an interesting idea. I have just about to print a 3d nut thats a little lower, I'll see if I can work it to use the tension rod slot to locate it. I will also print a few neck shims 0.75mm, 1mm, 1.25mm, 1.5mm, 1.75 and 2mm to see if that helps. If they do, I'll repring the neck module with the right size. This was originally designed for a different neck, so suspect thats my issue. Rob

Lowered the saddles as low as they can go, an awful lot better, suspect the nut is actually about right now. I think the neck is a little too low and that it should be around 1mm - 2mm higher so I can use the saddles a bit more. I can easily print a 1-2mm higher neck module, but will see if I can find a good guide to set the neck up properly. This is now a long way outside my comfort zone and expertise. Rob

@bartelby @BigRedX Thanks for this. I'll check out what I can do.

@Pea Turgh If mistakes are learning tools, I should be one of the cleverest people on the planet @BigRedX I've not even looked at the string height yet. The saddles can go lower. I'm going to print a nut to check things out before I start altering the the nut to fit. Thanks for the confirmation of the nut placement. Any idea what sort of glue would be good to fix the nut to the neck? Superglue, woodglue, uhu, hot glue? The bridge is not earthed yet. First job this monring when I go onto my first MS_Team call. can do that whilst listening in. I have some copper tape for cavity insulation. Lets see what difference an earth cable makes. V2 is already being thought about. Thanks Rob

Yes....from a distance. The number of mistakes I made when I look back it are far too numerous. I'm disappointed with how many there are. Plans now are to 1. remove the hum 2. get the action and intonation right. 3. Change the wiring so it works as expected 4. Fix the tone control knob as it's loose 5. Check if I can glue the outside frame with a decent plastic glue. Bostick hard plastic looks like it works, but want to try 3d Gloop for PETG. Can't find it at all in the UK. I have too many screws in the frame, it's rigid as hell but it takes a long time to print. I know what I said about glue, but I might change my mind. 6. Look again at variable layers in prusaslicer to try and get the little 5mm fillet around the edges cleaner. It looks bad to me. 7. Think through how to make the holes and embedded nuts at the same level as they are slightly different heights meaning the 3d printing interactions are too many. One of the pieces is circa 14 hours and needs constant attention to it nuts in. This means I cannot leave it for the whole day and must tend to it constantly. 8. Redo the outline shape to get it right before I do the rest. There are various issues with doing fillets on curves which means I need to have it right before I do the rest. I have a number of design changes labelled "hack1 to fix curve" 9. Do the maths to work out the honeycomb properly in advance as opposed to hacking it to make it fit. 10. Learn to cut wood with a coping saw so it doesn't look like I used my teeth to cut the curves. There are loads more as well. Oh well.

I can see your point here, you have to think in both a classic, almost Newtonian way of thinking and then at the same time switch your brain almost through 180 degrees into Niels Bohr mode, depending on exactly how you wish to examine the world. I have the same issue every time I buy a guitar, I think classically, "Can I afford it?" and then I shift into the Quantum mode of uncertainty, "Will my other half find out about it?". We can also consider Shrodinger here, his classic "Is the cat in the box dead or alive" experiment, can be rewritten to "If my other half doesn't know about the new guitar, does it even exist for her?" or more simply "If she finds out, will she kill me?", basically I am alive and dead at the same time fulfilling Shrodingers axioms.

It's finally wired up and working. A few problems. 1. The action is so high, the strings are in different timezones to the neck. 2. The nut isn't fixed down as I don't know how to fix it. Also not sure which is the front and the back of the nut. I think the front is the flat side and the rounded side goes to the tuners. 3. The hum from the guitar is appalling. Not sure if this is because there is no cavity shielding, poor soldering or bad/no earth. I suspect earthing but not going to look at it tonight. 4. I misread the wiring diagram so the switch is back to front but it does work. 5. The pickguard looks like it was put together by a five year old. It is lighter than my other Telecaster, the neck feels good and if I could reach the strings to press them down, that would be better. No idea about how it really sounds until I get the hum under control. I suspect I need a cable from the bridge to the earth on the control panel but thats tomorrows work. However it plays. Not very well (yet), but it does play

Perhaps it'll become the Scottish and North West bass bash....

I was a lorry driver as a student and did some long runs, but 600 miles round trip in a day is long run. The offer is there.

That sounds good, failing an non-exploding drummer, there's always drum machines.

Let's see. Thats a hell of a schlep.

@ossyrocks I'd like to go to that as well, so lets knock out May 5th from possible dates. Gary is very vaguely aware of me as I have dropped a number of guitars in for setup there. However I have managed to avoid spending a lot of money with him. If you know him and think he might be up for a stand on Sunday and bring some stuff along, then go for it. If we can tell him we'll be having a lot of people there that would be help, but we're barely into double digits (if that) at the moment. We will not get a lot of casual people sticking their noses in, though a couple of KW of bass playing might attract some attention. As far as I know, few people in the village play anything apart from Jo, my daughters flute teacher. We get a lot of walkers coming in to walk up Ingleborough but I can't see them being interested. @neepheid If you start now, head due South, you might be here for May. I hadn't appreciated that Aberdeen was basically 300 miles away. We might have to offer beds for people to stay, we have managed to host 16 people in proper beds and sofas before now at Xmas. However that got a bit cosy, so you might have to sleep with the dog. He's friendly though. @Mottlefeeder Thanks for the offer, we'll sort something out. What I'd like to do is drum up more interested people. I suppose basschat is a good start, but we will need more people to make it interesting and worth their while to come along. I could amuse people for 10 mins with my inability to play, but that sort of excitement will pale very quickly. Once we have a date, getting flyers out to places like Promenade Music to put on their notice board (do they have one?) and other places where people play and go to listen would be good. My main problem now is telling my other half I'm now helping organise this when I have about 29 other things to run and do is going to go down badly Rob

This is Clapham village hall, it is probably, in the nicest possible way, as cliche a village hall as anywhere I have ever lived. It's very clean and tidy, people take care of it and treat it with respect as it's a valuable local amenity. The Brownies and Guides use it on a Monday evening, the local IT group for senior citizens use it every month, the WI have it, there are quizes here, we have jumble sales and meetings here. I would be gobsmaked if they have ever had anybody playing bass through a large (or any) stack here I am going to hire it for myself and my family so I can lay out my Scaletrix in full (my kids love it, thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it). My house backs onto the village hall and as I type this I can see the entrance door through my office window. The kitchen is good and there are plenty of plates and stuff. https://claphamyorkshire.co.uk/locals/clapham-village-hall/ We are around 25 mins from the M6 if you are coming down from Scotland. Lancaster is 45 mins away via either M6 or the backroads through Hornby and Caton. There is parking at the village hall, outside on the roads (no yellow lines in the village at all). Leeds is 90 mins along the A65, though it depends on the number of caravans heading to the Lake District. There is a train station, Clapham North Yorkshire, which has a reliable but infrequent service, about a mile away. Skipton is 35 mins. Anybody coming from Newcastle area would probably come Penrith way, 2.5 hours (ish). I think we are actually getting close to enough numbers to make this viable. My company will sponsor the event, which is a dead posh way of saying, I'll pay for the day and bank it through my company so it goes against my corporate taxes, there's no VAT to claim back sadly. What about a Sunday in early May, rugby is over, weather a little better than now, though you can expect rain. my forecasting is that good six months out. It always rains here I can see if Promendate Music in Morecombe would be interested in coming along. It would depend on numbers. I have no relationship with them, so if somebody lives Morecombe way, and knows them well, that might help. Who else is in for early May and what else do we need to do? Thanks Rob

Thats five or six. We can now fill a table. I've never been to a bass bash so unsure what to expect. I'm more than happy to organise the day but would like some input from people on what to do. What about early May? I coach an u16 girls rugby team so Saturday and Sunday is difficult. Not sure if people would prefer Sat or Sun so let's see what people like. I can provide power extension cables, laptops are not an issue, I have a few guitars and may well have made a few more by then via my 3d printers. Teas and coffee is easy and there is a proper kitchen to cook in. I don't have any big amps and don't have pedals as I use an ipad and or mod dwarf. Thoughts and ideas welcomed

So £899 down to £150? That's a good deal and I'd have paid that as well. Well done

As part of the learning experience, I've spent the last 2-3 days fighting one of my Prusa's trying to work out why the quality of printing was junk and failed constantly, checked the heated bed, checking the Z level, checking PrusaSlicer, doing probably around a dozen calibration prints and they looked like crap, I finally found the issue. I'd accidently set the nozzle to be 0.6mm rather than 0.4mm. As this setting was buried in the HW setting menu, I'd forgotten to change it back when I pulled the 0.6 nozzle off and put a 0.4mm nozzle on. I remember doing it but only on the second printer not the first. Putting this here so other people can learn from my mistakes. Also at the same time a Pi Zero has started playing up and was disconnecting, could be power, could be dodgy cable, could be goblins, could be anything, so thats now gone and a Pi 4 is in it's place. Overkill but I have a few spare ones and I just have received a new Pi 5 to play with. The nice thing about Raspberry Pi's is that changing the Pi Zero to a Pi 4 took around two mins. Power down, pull the SD card out the Pi Zero, put in Pi 4 and reboot. That was it, and it now seems to work OK. Finishing off the last two prints for the body of the guitar now, should be finished around 23:00 tonight. Then need to do the wiring and putting strings on. I have already thought about V2 of this and also a V1 bass guitar. We'll see if this plays well enough to justify V2 and a V1 bass. Rob

I shall no longer call myself old now, merely "Vintage"

Dunno, I would assume a lot more than I could ever afford. Though I do quite fancy one in pink. I like the colour and if it was £150 I might well buy it.

Damm, missed those.