rwillett

I brought this off ebay (yep, first red flag) as a "Genuine Made in Japan Fender Jazz Bridge 1999". When it turned up, it has a set of holes in the back of the bridge for mounting plus two holes towards the front of the bridge, see pictures below. My MIJ 1997 Fender Jazz Bass only has screws at the back of the bridge. I was told when I brought the bass that the bridge wasn't original, which is why I wanted an original one. However I now have doubts as to have genuine this bridge is. It's not that well finished on the base of the bridge, but its not too bad, the rest of the bridge looks OK, but it has no other logo on it or stamping. I have looked through dozens of Fender Jazz basses and cannot find a single picture of a fender with screw holes at the front of the bridge. So I'm wondering if its not genuine. Any help or advice welcomed.

Started playing guitar whilst first year at Uni. Was pretty crap then. Practised really hard over the intervening years and with a significant amount of effort and hard work have moved to crap. I play the guitar how I played rugby, pretty much as a blunt instrument to be tackled into touch at every opportunity. Never take a step backwards and if in doubt hit it harder. I was a pretty good open side flanker until I made the inevitable transition to blind side and then hooker as I got slower and fatter. Again pretty much like my guitar playing. I was gifted (stole?) a cheap p-bass at Xmas. Found in a loft and I had a play without the slightest idea what I was doing. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Started reading books and learning scales. Decided to spoil the habit of a lifetime and get taught properly by a bass tutor in Sedbergh. Slowly getting slightly better than crap with significantly more enthusiasm than skill. would love to play blues in a band with similar ambitions to my own (none) but given where I live, highly unlikely. I am expecting to do Grade 2 this year though and am as pleased as punch. rob

I am just watching the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain on YouTube playing "Smells like Teen Spirit" as we speak. I suppose (hope) satire is excused.

Damm, beat me to it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law)

All good information for the future.

Thank you. Was looking for something like Tim. I'm selling a Lunt Solar scope and if you think guitars are difficult to ship, try high end optical gear. Triple boxed, and dedicated cut-to fit-foam between each box. Knowing there is a decent courier makes my life a lot easier. Will call him once its sold. Rob

Technically the lady is about a Googleplex times better than I am, indeed I would say that @funkgod 's dancing chicken is better than I am. But after listening to the video, my head hurts. That could be because I had three vaccinations yesterday, Rabies, DTP and MMR (it's real tough living in Yorkshire), or it could be that this type of jazz gives me a headache. I'm with @Burns-bass here and "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". I seem to recall some blues great in the sixties stating "it's not what you play, it's what you don't play". Brilliant technique, but where's the spirit? Where's the emotion? Might be that I just don't get this type of jazz, but I'd rather hear Lemmy playing almost as fast nine times out of ten. I wish I could play like her but then I'd play something different. Rob

S'Manth Abstracting the hardware away makes good sense. I'd do the same for the reading and writing of information to storage. The extra overhead of an abstraction layer is negligible. Don't forget you could also look at long presses of the switch, short presses, double taps. The latter could be difficult to do on stage TBH 😊but might be worth thinking about just in case. Four switches gives you an awful lot of options. Are you still planning on an LCD per switch? If so, then abstracting this output layer as well makes even more sense as you have two buttons working together to do something. Looking good Rob

It's pretty good when the back is as beautiful as the front. Rob

That tape would be brilliant if he wanted to swing from the guitar underneath a helicopter whilst flying through New York. You could probably use that tape to hold the neck on without any bolts. You might even hold the helicopter together. May I respectfully, in defence to @TheGreek and his clearly vastly superior experience to my own, suggest a low adhesive double sided tape. Search for "low tak double sided tape" on Amazon and take your pick. Rob

I apologise and I will withdraw rob

People misunderstand how long it takes to set a CNC machine up. I built a CNC machine as a lock down project (see here https://forum.v1e.com/t/new-build-in-clapham-north-yorkshire-uk/16519) so have some experience here. I am not a professional in this area (or any other area 😀) It took a long time to build the CNC, but it takes an awful long time to design something that isn't just a simple engraving. If I wanted to do a house sign, thats pretty easy. Cutting space for pickups would be relatively easy as well. Anything that is complicated, such as the guitar above, could take a long, long time to design and get right. If they told me, it took 50 - 100 days to design and test, redesign and test, I wouldn't be at all surprised. I would expect them to create an awful lot of saw dust as well, I certainly did. A CNC machine makes sense in some areas, but it is not a cheap machine to buy (good ones are over £100K), they are not cheap to run, you tend to need a dedicated machinest, not cheap to design for, it takes real skill. Routing out pockets for pickups is fine, that work of beauty above is very difficult. I'm not bad with Fusion 360 and have designed some reaonably complex stuff, which tends to be square and lots of straight lines, but I wouldn't even know where to start in that guitar. This took over six months to design, test, redesign, retest. It's a magnetic, modular dust show for collecting waste from a CNC. it uses magnets to hold things together. It didn't work very well 🤐 Circa $8,000 doesn't sound that bad to be honest. Not cheap, but you pays your money and takes your choice. Thanks Rob

That's really nice of you all. I have a slight tear in my eye. Thanks Rob

The honeycomb doesn’t have lots of perimeter or infill. It’s 20% infill , 0.2mm speed setting. Still 22 hours 😒

Just had a quick look at printing it, this one piece is a day. This is nearly three days to print. Took me 30 mins simply to get it to fit. This piece is approx 750g, so around £15 of a reasomable PETG or PLA filament. Will look, but its a lot of printing. Rob

Small incremental changes, lower the gap distance, round off the edges would be two improvements that come to mind Anyway, they are in the post, Rob

I've looked at that and thought Mmmmm..... My problem is I get easily distracted by new shiny blingy things, or just anything really. I have a search on eBay at the moment for the parts for this, basically a decent neck and the rest I'll wing it. A reasonable bridge, and some cheap pickups. The article used a Harley Benton as a doner kit of parts. No idea if they are any good. It's pretty simple to print, thought it will take some time. At the end of the day though, are you going to have a better than £250 Telecaster? It will be different which is always good, but better than a basic Squier? Anyway we're going off topic. Rob

@TheGreek V2 are in the post now Lets not live on our laurels (which is rather apt I think) Rob

There are a number of programs that you need to master to be able to do 3d printing. As with all software, some programs are easy and some are really complicated. Simple 3d printing, e.g. simple blocks and curves can be done using quite simple software, more complicated stuff requires a good design program, a decent 3d slicer and the ability to think in 3d dimensions. However none of the programs are impossible to master and to learn how to use them, though all require a certain amount of time to be put in. Tye more time you put in, the more you get out. I have put more time into 3d printing than to playing the bass, so I'm less bad at 3d printing than playing (it's all relative). I use Fusion 360 as my main design program. I think I have tried every free version and every demo for 3d design software. However my tests might vary from a few hours to a few days. I do not claim to be an expert in any of them, just more familar with one or two.Depending on what you want to do, you may get away with simpler programs but a decent 3d design program takes time to learn. I gave up on F360 a few times as it's sometimes very odd to use. However the more time I put in, the better I got. The advantage of F360 is a it's a full-on professional 3d design system and is specifically targeted at that audience. The disadvantage of F360 is a it's a full-on professional 3d design system and is specifically targeted at that audience. It's big, it can do anything but you have to learn to use it. You will not learn it in a weekend or even a month unless you are very good. t took my 3-4 months before I became familar enough not to tear my hair out in fristration. Thats not full time, thats a few hours a week. I strongly suspect that any other design program at F360 level will be just as complicated. Once you have F360 working and there are a lot of videos and the community help is very good, you design your stuff, and here's the pickup surrounds I did for @TheGreek You do a simple extrustion to get some depth to it and you get this You export this STL file to a 3d slicer for conversion from STL into a fileformat that a 3d printer uses. All a 3d printer does, is play battleships in 3 dimensions extruding out thin lines of plastic filament. You can control just about every single apsect of everything when printing, from the speed, the width of the lines, the temperature, the bed temperature to parameters that I have no idea what they do. I use PrusaSlicer as I have two Prusa MK3S+ printers which are probably considered high end prosumer devices. I used to have a Creality Ender 3 pro which is entry level and is very good. The Prusa's are a lot better but 4-5x the price each. Anybody starting should get a cheap printer and learn, you can pick them up for less than £200 now. PrusaSlicer converts the file you have loaded into gcode files that the printer understands. It also sends the output file to either an SD card that you manually insert into the printer or to something like Octoprint which is a network print server for 3d printers. The 3d printer will then work its way from the bottom of the object upwards and lay down a thin layer (e.g. 0.2mm) of filament as told. When doing the design you ned to think about overhangs and where support is needed, so sometimes you print the object in an unusual orientation to avoid an overhang. This is easier to demonstrate than to explain and once you've seen it, you understand The rings above took a few hours as I did them at a higher quality, but you can change to work in draft mode or just about anything else. As with all things, the best way to learn is to do it, to print simple things and move to complex things, here's a tube ring that is fully parameterised for mounting computers on telescopes. This version is approximately 200 versions along. Its taken 18 months to get to this. There's a lot of things in here to make it just right, Hope this helps as a primer to 3d printing. Rob

Because it's actually quicker, cheaper and easier to print it. You have to get appropriate plastic sheet, cut it neatly, cut holes in that are in the exact place to the right diameter, taper them for a counter sunk screw and then make two of them. I designed all of that in F360 in 10 mins and it'll take 90 mins to print even at a high resolution. If @TheGreek wants another one or two, or three or 99, I just print them off. It's the future I can do a nice tapered finish so the inside of the ring is perhaps 2.2mm tapering down to 1.8mm at the outside. Thats another two mins of design. Rob

If its what you put at the top, it's about 10 mins to design and an hour or so to print.

what do you need printing. So long as it fits on the bed it should be easy enough.