kodiakblair Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 11 minutes ago, Obrienp said: I am with you on simple solutions. Scratchplate. The G4M body has the typical P-bass router cavities for pickup/controls which will need covering up 🙂 Quick mock up with a G4M P-bass body/neck and Telecaster bass scratchplate. The scratchplate comes from eBay seller 'earlpillanz', Brian cuts these custom (£40) so you can have the WRHB pickup area omitted. Squared pocket area on the place means you can leave the body as is, it'll be under plastic 👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 2 hours ago, kodiakblair said: Scratchplate. The G4M body has the typical P-bass router cavities for pickup/controls which will need covering up 🙂 Quick mock up with a G4M P-bass body/neck and Telecaster bass scratchplate. The scratchplate comes from eBay seller 'earlpillanz', Brian cuts these custom (£40) so you can have the WRHB pickup area omitted. Squared pocket area on the place means you can leave the body as is, it'll be under plastic 👍 Ooh! Thanks for the suggestion. That way I could put my DP145 (mudbucker) in the neck position. To get completely carried away, I could also put my Glockenlang 2 band preamp with blender control in. Just a little route in the back for a battery box and perhaps a tele style jack socket in the side bout. As you can probably tell, I’m easily distracted! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodiakblair Posted March 31 Share Posted March 31 2 hours ago, Obrienp said: Ooh! Thanks for the suggestion. My pleasure. I've so much stuff here it's nice to put it to use, even if it's just a mock up 🙂 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 The G4M body arrived this morning, so this is the initial mock up. I am going to have to ease the sides of the pocket a millimetre or two to get the neck into it. I now see what you mean about the gap between neck and body only being about 3 mm. Somehow I had it in mind that it would be more significant. There is no drilling at all for the bridge in this body, so i have freedom to place it exactly where I want. That also introduces the dilemma of where the 17” inches from the 12th fret should fall on the bridge: half way along it, or more like a quarter along? By this I mean, should I allow an equal amount of fore and aft travel for the saddles, or more travel backwards? Also getting the bridge position centred looks a bit of a challenge. I have always had bodies that had mounting holes pre-drilled, or in the case of the 51 P body, it had been drilled for the through stringing. This enabled me to line up the bridge. Just as a general aside; I weighed the G4M body: 2.9Kg! I think this bass is going to be a bit of a boat anchor! Neck and machine heads weigh about 1.1Kg, then I would estimate around 0.5Kg for the rest of the gubbins. That’s about 4.5Kg, or 9lbs, 14oz! A real big boy bass and about 1Kg more than my ‘51 with the same neck. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodiakblair Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 6 hours ago, Obrienp said: That’s about 4.5Kg, or 9lbs, 14oz! A real big boy bass and about 1Kg more than my ‘51 with the same neck. Might want to keep that quiet around women, a fair few of them will have had babies heavier than that 👍 Headin out for couple of hours but I'll PM you regards bridge fitting. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulThePlug Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 (edited) IIRC Bridge Screw Mounting Holes @ 35" from Back of the nut seems to be the standard for 34" to Saddle for the G... and not likely to be shorter... Squier P with a High Mass Ibby GSR200 Ibby SR300 P Bitsa Edited April 4 by PaulThePlug 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 Thank you @PaulThePlug. That’s pretty well what I have ended up doing. This is how far I have got. Bridge now attached, so I hope I haven’t cocked up. It look alright to me but I will find out when the strings go on. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulThePlug Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 You say no Bridge Mounting Holes on the G4M Body... Has it got a Bridge Earth Wire Hole?.. Just before you get too comfy... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 No it didn’t have one. I had to drill it with an extra long bit. It took me two goes. Unfortunately it is very flexible and obviously flexed in the wrong direction first attempt, breaking through underneath: rats! Something to fill and cover up. Annoying because I have done this before without making a mess. The second attempt worked fortunately. If you look at the second pic above, the black wire is the ground from the bridge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HK. Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 Recently tried for this same thing. Only solution I found was either getting a warmoth, or going off brand. Ended up buying a harley benton 51ish P, then buying a lefty HB jazz, and using that neck (which was supposed to be compatible, but wasnt). All I had to do was plug the holes and redrill em, on the neck. But still. Atleast now I've got a 51iah P with a reverse jazz neck with a tele head. (Jugsaw to the headstock) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodiakblair Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 9 hours ago, Obrienp said: but I will find out when the strings go on. Sorry, late night. You could have dropped the split coil in place and used two wires for positioning. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 (edited) 4 hours ago, kodiakblair said: Sorry, late night. You could have dropped the split coil in place and used two wires for positioning. Wish I had thought of that! Thanks, I will use that technique, if I have to move the bridge. Fingers crossed that I have got it close enough 🤞. I won’t find out until this afternoon, which is my first chance to work on it. There is going to be a slight delay because I am waiting for new supplies of cloth covered wire to arrive in the post. Sod’s Law in operation: it’s the only component that hasn’t arrived yet. Hoping to get it ready for a blues jam on Monday evening. Edited April 5 by Obrienp 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Longwheelbass Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 On 12/08/2020 at 15:46, barrycreed said: @hooky_lowdown good to know, so there would possibly be some small gaps if I fitted a j neck. Huge gaps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 @Longwheelbass Can’t see the pics: says access denied. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 OK, so I have finally, pretty well finished. Not entirely straightforward but not too bad as these sort of builds, or I should probably say, assemblies, go. Fortunately, I got the bridge in the right place, judging by the string alignment on the neck. Strings 1 and 4 both have a good amount of clearance all the way down the neck, so they are not going to slip over the edge if my fretting is a bit wild. Pickup alignment is not so good but I am blaming the pickguard I got hold of. I originally lined the pickups up so that the strings were dead in the middle of the pairs of poles. Unfortunately, when I came to fit the scratchplate, the cut outs didn’t line up at all. It would have required too much to be cut off to get the pickups in the ideal place: it would have left huge gaps, so I moved the pickups. I have seen worse alignment and it works fine but it upsets my sense of symmetry. This wasn’t the only issue with the scratchplate and it is a lesson not to buy the cheapest available on FleaBay. It is cut so tight that it barely covers the control cavity route and in its original position the jack socket would have made contact with the side wall of the cavity. I had trimmed a little off the neck cut to make it match the squared off neck heel (thus covering the gap between neck and body) and these few millimetres north gave enough clearance for the jack socket. Then I didn’t have a gap to get at the heel truss rod adjustment, so had to make a notch to get the tool in (not as neat as I would have liked). Final gripe about the scratchplate is that it is meant to be brown tortoiseshell but definitely looks red to me. My fault for going cheap! I have levered open my wallet and bought a Stew Mac Telecaster Truss Rod Adjustment Tool from a UK supplier on FleaBay at a reasonable price. I am really glad I did. It works a treat and only requires the smallest gap to get it located in the truss rod slot. It doesn’t look as professional as the much more expensive Hosco tool but it works. The important bit is that the bass sounds much more like what I expect from a Precision. Nothing like as bright as the SD ‘51 in the Obeche body but still with some growl. The G perhaps sounds a bit muted but I guess that is the Tone Rider pickup. I am happy with the action I have obtained as well. I did pop a bit of credit card in at the heel to shim it a bit, to compensate for the thicker baseplate on the Fender high mass bridge. That seems to have done the trick, so I now have a bit less than 3.5mm at the 12th fret on the bass side and it is rattle free. The only drawback to the overall package is that, if I ever decide to buy a boat, I have the anchor covered right here. A quick weighing session on the bathroom scales puts it at 5 Kg on the nose! That’s 11 whole Imperial pounds! That is at least 1.5 Kg more than my other basses. This is definitely going to be a bass for short jam sessions and back up at gigs. No way I can use this as a primary instrument for gigging, or even rehearsing. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodiakblair Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 (edited) 3 hours ago, Obrienp said: I guess that is the Tone Rider pickup. Even though, by your own admission, the scratchplate forced you to fudge the pickup position 😃 Edited April 7 by kodiakblair missed the emoji. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 7 Share Posted April 7 2 hours ago, kodiakblair said: Even though, by your own admission, the scratchplate forced you to fudge the pickup position 😃 True but I think the pickup alignment is pretty accurate under the G string. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodiakblair Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 On 07/04/2024 at 23:33, Obrienp said: True but I think the pickup alignment is pretty accurate under the G string. Aye, you're right; it's well within the magnetic field. Could be the G got twisted when stringing up, fairly common mishap. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obrienp Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 1 hour ago, kodiakblair said: Aye, you're right; it's well within the magnetic field. Could be the G got twisted when stringing up, fairly common mishap. Hadn’t heard of that one before but it’s probably happened to me without me realising. New set of D’Addarios too. I got to use it at a blues jam last night. People said it sounded pretty good through the provided backline (Ashdown EVO head and a 2 x 10). Lots of compliments on its appearance but amazement at the weight. Heavier than a 70s P bass according to some. A couple of fellow bassists suggested I drill out some of the wood, like Gibson do on the so called weight relieved Les Pauls. If I did this, I guess I would have to do it from the back and cover the holes with a veneer. I also wonder how it might affect tone and balance. Strikes me it might be easier just to look for an alternative body in swamp ash, or similar, without going as light as the Obeche. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodiakblair Posted April 9 Share Posted April 9 11 hours ago, Obrienp said: Hadn’t heard of that one before but it’s probably happened to me without me realising. New set of D’Addarios too. Your new D'Addarios will be fine 🙂 There's not much to a twist, generally happens if you wind strings round the tuner post but the ball end is fixed in place; winding action can cause a wee twist along the length. You just slacken off the string and start again 👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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