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The BlazerRay... Now finished!


BassTool

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21 hours ago, gazhowe said:

Great job Johnna, that’s absolutely fantastic! 😎

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! ;) 

 

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19 hours ago, Soledad said:

Very smart work indeed. Applause. Brass nut seems a good idea, I'd imagine the harder the nut material the better. All right tasty.

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.

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10 hours ago, BassTool said:

hailed for its inherent transfer properties back into the bass

Sounds good (ouch) to me - the more of the string energy going into the whole bass and staying there as long as poss must be good, dissipation not good. Then the player has the job of control. Interesting that bridge ideas have moved forward from std to Badass to string thru etc etc, but maybe the nut gets slightly overlooked - after all it is the equal and opposite end.

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8 hours ago, Soledad said:

Interesting that bridge ideas have moved forward from std to Badass to string thru etc etc, but maybe the nut gets slightly overlooked - after all it is the equal and opposite end.

I like that Wilkinson has recognised that there is more potential string movement at the nut than there is at the bridge when you tune up.  They've put roller bearings where they are of most use.  I was unable to find the equivalent for bass however.

image.png.4ac6276cc8868618f396f34c7bc35998.png

Edited by SpondonBassed
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On 07/03/2019 at 18:59, Soledad said:

Random thought came to me today, thinking about this bass - if I could ever have had one - I'd ask to call it a MAN-RAY (Dada / surrealist like) ;)

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

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On 07/03/2019 at 15:47, SpondonBassed said:

I like that Wilkinson has recognised that there is more potential string movement at the nut than there is at the bridge when you tune up.  They've put roller bearings where they are of most use.  I was unable to find the equivalent for bass however.

image.png.4ac6276cc8868618f396f34c7bc35998.png

Great idea, but they'd all have to be individual rollers for each string surely? On both six string guitars and four/five string bass... if they do them for bass of course -  IMO I think they've messed up using one roller for a pair of strings in pics above ... 👍

The nut is a crucial, but so often overlooked, part of an instrument ;) 

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3 minutes ago, BassTool said:

Great idea, but they'd all have to be individual rollers for each string surely? On both six string guitars and four/five string bass... if they do them for bass of course -  IMO I think they've messed up using one roller for a pair of strings in pics above ... 👍

The nut is a crucial, but so often overlooked, part of an instrument ;) 

Quite so.  I have seen them with individual rollers and for bass too but I was unable to find images in my brief search to back up my post.  Sorry.

I'd consider incorporating this sort of nut in a five when I build my fantasy scratch build.  It would be prudent to pay close attention to the neck thickness at the nut in such a design however.  Great excuse for me to have a volute too.  Did I mention...?  I like a good volute.

What's more likely though is that I'd do a headless neck through five with the rollers at the bridge end since the nut end is where the strings are anchored.  That way there is more room for a good roller bearing system on a fully adjustable bridge.  Virtually all of the string movement during tensioning would occur at the bridge end in this configuration making it unnecessary to weaken the neck where strength would have been needed to support a headstock under tension.

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37 minutes ago, Jimothey said:

I didn't realise you liked a Volute! I can't believe you haven't mentioned it before!! 😜

Yes.  I hardly ever mention it.  I even like one on a headless neck (assuming that's still called a volute).

I shall bring it up more often now that you've pointed that out to me.  Thank you.

Sur la photo de gauche, on voit l'angle de la tête de manche, ici un angle de 17 degrés. Sur la  deuxième photo, on voit une tête de manche avec une volute qui n'a servi à rien. Sur la photo au milieu à droite, on voit bien la volute sur une gibson Flying V2 de 1980, la volute est plus ou moins élevée et son angle varie d'un modèle à l'autre à l'image ici de la SG I de 1972 dont la volute est particulièrement haute.
guitare_angle_tete_de_manche guitare_volute_cassee gibson_volute_guitare grande_volute_gibson
 
From JerRock
Translated:
  • In the photo on the left, we see the angle of the head of the neck, here an angle of 17 degrees. On the second picture, we see a head of the neck with a volute that was useless. On the photo in the middle right, we can see the volute on a gibson Flying V2 1980, the volute is more or less high and its angle varies from one model to another in the image here of the SG I of 1972 whose volute is particularly high.
 
And of course, almost no-one has heard of the big Gibson volute controversy before...
 
I now have Tutti Frutti by Little Richard going off in my head only he keeps going "Tutti Frutti, vol-utey"!  I hope you're satisfied young man!
Edited by SpondonBassed
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4 minutes ago, Jimothey said:

Sorry @SpondonBassed we must have had our wires crossed I thought you meant the deep water marine mollusc with the colourful spiral shell!! 😁 

I am fond of the occasional mollusc or two actually now that you mention it.  African Snails are amazing.

image.png.50d20c8a3223bb1506fdb765b010d318.png

Now I have MC Hammer's I like Big Butts on repeat in my squirrel cage of a brain!  The bugger keeps saying I like big molluscs and I can not lie...!

That must be why he kept jumping around in big pants... he was smuggling African Snails across the border in them and was forced to fidget to hip-hop music to get past customs whilst being molested by concealed molluscs about his nethers.

I'll go and lie down in a darkened room for a bit now.

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1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

I am fond of the occasional mollusc or two actually now that you mention it.  African Snails are amazing.

image.png.50d20c8a3223bb1506fdb765b010d318.png

Now I have MC Hammer's I like Big Butts on repeat in my squirrel cage of a brain!  The bugger keeps saying I like big molluscs and I can not lie...!

That must be why he kept jumping around in big pants... he was smuggling African Snails across the border in them and was forced to fidget to hip-hop music to get past customs whilst being molested by concealed molluscs about his nethers.

I'll go and lie down in a darkened room for a bit now.

And SpondonBassed wins the award for most diverse thread deviation 2019...

 

🤣

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