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Finished! It's a bass, Jim...


Andyjr1515

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35 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

The irony is that there are only six or so main configurations I'm aiming for- the rest are potentially useful, but essentially collateral damge!

Well, as "42" is clearly now out of the running for a name, I think you may have stumbled across the perfect alternative: "Collateral Damage".  That has a real Spinal Tap vibe about it :)

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The most complicated wiring I can remember ever successfully doing was on a Strat and for one of Vigier's show demonstrators (beats me why he wanted one of my builds).

From memory, it had 125 combinations.  He spent the best part of a weekend trying all of them repeatedly until he found the two - yes two - he'd been looking for.  And he was as pleased as Punch.

I was just relieved - on many counts. ;)

 

It was a tight squeeze in the controls channel of a standard Strat:

2WjkTUsl.jpg 

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Well, not an update that will rock the world but...it IS the first cut related to the project :party:

I've cut the back wing mahogany blanks ready for thicknessing :)

4r6MeAQl.jpg

The mahogany was a gift from @tauzero as a thank you for a small job I did for him a year or so back.  If I remember correctly, it's from an old bar top.  It's nice wood - thanks, Mike!

Tomorrow I will get my trusty Makita thicknesser out and get all four pieces down to their final thicknesses.

@Jus Lukin and I have also decided on the arrangement of the neck laminations (9 piece) and so tomorrow I should have the order for the neck and fretboard timber into David Dyke. :)

 

 

 

 

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OK - well this morning was the chippy/dusty process of bringing both the top and back pairs down to their finished thicknesses.  

Just a quirk of physics - the pretty powerful industrial vac I rig up to the extractor vent on the Makita thicknesser still has a tendency to clog up even though I am thicknessing at less than 0.5mm per pass...and yet it will suck up three XL rubber gloves without a blink of an eye 9_9

These will both darken when finish is applied, but these are the faces that will be seen at the top and the back.  The back will also have the multi-laminate neck running in between the pair:

HySdrinl.jpg

In between the two will be a 2.5mm constructional veneer of black walnut (on its way) which should give a pleasing demarcation line.

The two mahogany wings will be hollowed and - if I remember correctly - we are going for a modern 'F' hole a little bit like @Len_derby 's 'Swift Lite' lightweight build from a year or so back:

Fe1EzTpl.jpg

 

In terms of immediate next steps - other than ordering the neck and fretboard timber - it will be to join the top. 

Those of you who have seen my previous builds will know that I'm a bit unconventional here.  Instead of using a template, I hand finish the top and then use THAT as my routing template for the rest of the body later in the build.  There are - from my point of view - sound reasons for me doing it pretty much the opposite way to any other builder in the world.  That might be a point of view of one, of course :D

Edited by Andyjr1515
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Settles in to watch master at work. 🙂

A quick Google about the number 63 and it's applicability to naming OTT bass guitars came up with this on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/63_(number)

Amongst the many options: M63 is the Sunflower Galaxy, maybe a bit hippy. Element 63 is Europium, will be considered political. The sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey has 63 chromosomes,  not an application analogy to Andy's builds.

I reckon there will only be 42 discernible tones, so you could still call the bass Douglas.

 

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14 minutes ago, Richard R said:

Settles in to watch master at work. 🙂

A quick Google about the number 63 and it's applicability to naming OTT bass guitars came up with this on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/63_(number)

Amongst the many options: M63 is the Sunflower Galaxy, maybe a bit hippy. Element 63 is Europium, will be considered political. The sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey has 63 chromosomes,  not an application analogy to Andy's builds.

I reckon there will only be 42 discernible tones, so you could still call the bass Douglas.

 

Ah - M63

I've got to that age where the phrase "I used to..." is a common phrase.  Like, "I used to do astro photography".

Back patio, lot of patience and a very, very steep learning curve:

yJFRl5ph.jpg

 

And if anyone had told me a few years earlier that it was at all possible to take something like that with relatively modest equipment against the glow of light-polluted Derby...

Great, great hobby.  Rubbish, rubbish country to do it in xD

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So after hand-jointing for a good gap-free joint, the top is now gluing in the sash-clamps where it will stay until the morning.  Where I've wiped the squeeze-out with a damp cloth, you can see the wood tone it will darken to once the finish has been put on:

A5LYJJbl.jpg

It's a nice piece of walnut.   I have high hopes that this will look fabulous when it's done :)

 

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On 17/11/2020 at 12:41, leftybassman392 said:

That changes the result a bit.

In addition to the 54 options listed above you would have an additional 3+3+3 = 9 options.

New total would therefore be 54+9 = 63 options

I did it quite simply. Each pickup can have 4 settings - MM, P,  J, off. 4 x 4 x 4 = 64. However, off-off-off isn't that useful so 63 that will make a noise.

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On 19/11/2020 at 16:00, Andyjr1515 said:

Well, not an update that will rock the world but...it IS the first cut related to the project :party:

I've cut the back wing mahogany blanks ready for thicknessing :)

The mahogany was a gift from @tauzero as a thank you for a small job I did for him a year or so back.  If I remember correctly, it's from an old bar top.  It's nice wood - thanks, Mike!

Glad it came in useful. I think it was actually a mantelpiece.

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39 minutes ago, tauzero said:

I did it quite simply. Each pickup can have 4 settings - MM, P,  J, off. 4 x 4 x 4 = 64. However, off-off-off isn't that useful so 63 that will make a noise.

Indeed. :)

Unfortunately nobody told me the pickups had their own off switches until after I’d done the initial calculation, and since I’m not familiar with the pickups in question, and having been asked to do the calculation, I duly did so based on the information made available to me.

 

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3 minutes ago, leftybassman392 said:

Indeed. :)

Unfortunately nobody told me the pickups had their own off switches until after I’d done the initial calculation, and since I’m not familiar with the pickups in question, and having been asked to do the calculation, I duly did so based on the information made available to me.

 

They don't :)

I think @tauzero is using lateral thinking ;)

Anyway - no one's as far out as I was xD

 

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4 hours ago, leftybassman392 said:

Indeed. :)

Unfortunately nobody told me the pickups had their own off switches until after I’d done the initial calculation, and since I’m not familiar with the pickups in question, and having been asked to do the calculation, I duly did so based on the information made available to me.

I don't know if they actually have their own off switches, but if there were no way of switching a pickup off, you could only ever have all three sounding at the same time which would be inconvenient from the knob twiddling point of view. Off-off-off might prove handy for bass soloes.

That is, indeed, a jolly nice bridge (says a man who has resorted to soaking a neglected Hohner headless guitar bridge in oil to try to get it running freely).

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6 hours ago, tauzero said:

I don't know if they actually have their own off switches

It took me a little while to get my head around the SimS Superquads when I did Mick's Silk Bass and then realised I was over-complicating it in my head.  They are actually very straightforward to fit.

Each of the pickups has it's own wire-loomed three-way switch giving it the option of, basically, Jazz; P and Humbucker

In all other respects, except for the battery which is just for the LED's on each, they act exactly the same as standard passive pickups.

And so to wire them up, I will need to create a 6-way (actually, I realise it's 7 way - apologies, @leftybassman392 !) switching - bridge only; middle only; neck only; bridge and middle; middle and neck; all three - and the one I'd forgotten - the 'telecaster' bridge and neck.

Happily, none of this affects the build which - to be brutally frank - is the only thing I'm concentrating on at the moment! xD

7 hours ago, tauzero said:

That is, indeed, a jolly nice bridge (says a man who has resorted to soaking a neglected Hohner headless guitar bridge in oil to try to get it running freely)

Yes - I have high hopes.  Time will tell, but it is the addition of a thrust bearing that I think makes it stand out from the crowd.  Maybe Steinberger, etc, already use these kinds of bearing, but the cheaper systems I've come across in the past certainly don't.  I don't think a thrust bearing changes the friction on the screw-thread itself created by the string tension, but it does take away almost all of the friction of the adjustment knob against the bridge body.

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19 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

And so to wire them up, I will need to create a 6-way (actually, I realise it's 7 way - apologies, @leftybassman392 !) switching - bridge only; middle only; neck only; bridge and middle; middle and neck; all three - and the one I'd forgotten - the 'telecaster' bridge and neck.

How about a set of accordion-style rocker switches? 🙂

19 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

 I don't think a thrust bearing changes the friction on the screw-thread itself created by the string tension, but it does take away almost all of the friction of the adjustment knob against the bridge body.

I think it will also reduce the axial load on the thread. Proper bit of engineering design that, very nice work.

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The wiring is a bit weird- as one might expect! I'm terrible- well, almost completely ignorant- about electronics, but below is the drawing I sent Andy. It is not an electrical diagram, more of a very basic signal flow chart.

Each pickup has it's own three-way mini switch for coil selection, then bridge and middle each have a two-way on/off mini switch. If possible, the neck will have a three-way on/off/on, the third 'on' sending it out to a separate jack socket, for Ric-O-Sound style dual signal stuff. The main output will have a simple passive volume and tone, the neck only output would just be straight out.

Six mini switches, and two knobs, basically. To me it feels an elegantly efficient way of handling a potentially complicated setup, but this whole thing has given you a little window into how my brain works- make of it what you will! 😄

20200706_154653.thumb.jpg.7c88e53a0b6e1e58a126908ef4c06738.jpg

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34 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

One question about the Sims pickups.  I read that the battery was just for the LEDs on the pickups.  Would you still be able to see what had been selected at each pickup by looking at the switch if the battery went flat, for example?

Yes.  They are completely passive and the three-way toggle shows the option.  Mind you, with @Jus Lukin 's plan for the pickup selectors also to be toggles (actually, a very sound solution) I think to work out what is in what mode based on the switch position could be...er...challenging ;)

 

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