A 3d printed headless bass ...

[rwillett]

1 hour ago, SamIAm said:

I’ve 3D printed knobs in the past with good results. I imagine you and your sexy gear would get excellent results.

Sam x

The printing bit is easy, but the splines on the potentiometers trash the inside of the print and they just spin. Tried that last year and it was a miserable failure. If you know of a way to stop the splines grinding the plastic away, do say.

 

However I have managed to get the tall push pull pot to fit by taking a Dremel to the edges and taking off a mm or so. Its very tight but it now fits. This means the volume knob on the push/pull looks OK. It might be a mm too high now. I now know how Andrian Newey feels designing the body to fit his F1 car, packaging is difficult

 

Rob

[Richard R]

A bass styled by Adrian Newey would be something to see. But it might only work propery if played really, really, fast.

[SamIAm]

34 minutes ago, rwillett said:

the splines on the potentiometers trash the inside of the print and they just spin

Ouch!

I modelled a sorta spline pattern when I printed and did not have the same problem, I used petg.

Sam x

[rwillett]

OK. Happy to have another try if I know it's worked. 

[rwillett]

7 hours ago, Richard R said:

A bass styled by Adrian Newey would be something to see. But it might only work propery if played really, really, fast.

 

Sadly I'm no Max Verstappen in a car or playing a bass. More Mr Bean.

 

Rob

[Richard R]

I asked CoPilot/Dall-e to create a bass guitar that looked like an F1 car:

 

 

I think that's pretty cool to be fair, and almost workable.

[rwillett]

So after 90 minutes of soldering I have something that's starting to look like wiring. Its very fiddly.

 

This is on a mule control panel, so the copper tape is just for checking that things work. Its all very, very tight. I might have to remove the choc blocks and put something else even smaller in.  The intention is to NOT solder the pickup wires, so I can change things. Still need to work out how to earth the black wires. Suspect a discreet screw, a washer and nut against the copper tape. As the wiring is more complex (because I'm stupid and never learn to do the easy option), I don't think you can simply solder it to the pot case.

 

 

When I've finished and tested this, I'll move to the proper control panel.

 

Rob

[rwillett]

Just now, Richard R said:

I asked CoPilot/Dall-e to create a bass guitar that looked like an F1 car:

 

 

I think that's pretty cool to be fair, and almost workable.

 

That is pretty good. Some interesting artefacts on the bottom of the neck. Also where the strings attach to the front appears to defy space and time. However given where things were only 18 months ago, the progression is amazing.

 

Neat idea.

Rob

[SamIAm]

38 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I don't think you can simply solder it to the pot case.

Many of the basses I’ve fiddled with have ground soldered to the pot cases, just need an iron that goes hot enough.

Sam x
 

[rwillett]

Thanks for this. 

 

I have a decent soldering iron so can solder to the pot case if needed, but the wiring diagram differentiates earth in one part of the wiring from the bridge earth which is soldered to a pot case, hence I'm not sure.

 

Will post the diagram tomorrow.

 

Rob

[rwillett]

This is the wiring I am using

 

 

Now it's not clear to me where the two earths on the Push Pull switch on the top PCB actually go. The ground from the bridge doesn't appear to be following the same system. The diagram is clear that some wires are grounded on the pot case as well.

 

Most of the wiring is done, I do need to sort out the tone pot and jack socket wiring, but thats for tonight.

Rob

[JohnH89]

The 2 earths from the push/pull can go to any ground point . I would suggest that the back of one of the pots . On various semi permanent wiring jobs I have done , the back of the pots can get a little crowded so I have on occasion used a wago connector to link all the earths together and then run a single wire from there to the back of the pot . 

Edited August 5 by JohnH89

[rwillett]

@JohnH89 Thanks for this. I'll check it out.

[Hellzero]

13 hours ago, rwillett said:

...

You have two distinct earth wires because of the series function.

 

In other words, the neck "earth" wire can't be connected directly to earth, because it's the cold point allowing to have both pickups in series, that's why you have two other earth wires to connect wherever you want on any pot to create the earth, for example where the earth of the bridge pickup goes.

 

It's a lot of earth, I know. 🤦

Edited August 5 by Hellzero
Too fast typing.

[rwillett]

@Hellzero

 

Thanks for this. I've just had a look at the wiring diagram again and wondered why the top potentiometer used earthing symbols and not a simple blob to the pot case. I *think* it was due to making the diagram simple and as the push pull pot has a lot of wiring, they didn't over complicate it. Its easy enough to do this anyway so will see how it goes.

 

I won;t be looking at this until this evening as I (sadly) have real and paid work to do

Rob

[rwillett]

Sorry, I'm confused, easily done.

 

I've recoloured the wiring diagram so that it's a little clearer so I can try and understand.

 

The black ground wire from the bridge pickup connects to the pot case along with the lime green from the bridge. As these two wires are soldered to the pot case and all the pot cases are grounded via the copper strip, which is how it would be on a normal bass.

 

The neck pickup ground wire is now purple. So I *think* you are saying that the the purple wire, whilst normally an grounding wire, similar to the neck pickup, can't be in this case. However the red earth and the blue earth could connect to a ground point, but I'm not clear where, could this be to the same soldering point on the second pot, where the lime green wire connects to? If so, why doesn't the diagram simply show this?

 

I wonder if the two earth wires, red and blue, are not actually to the pot case as it's actually quite difficult to solder to the push pull pot, you can only solder to the side and not to the top.

 

So is it just a case of soldering the red and blue to the second pot, along with the lime green cables?

 

Thanks

Rob

 

 

Edited August 5 by rwillett

[MichaelDean]

1 minute ago, rwillett said:

So is it just a case of soldering the red and blue to the second pot, along with the lime green?

Yes, exactly that.

[Hellzero]

3 hours ago, rwillett said:

So I *think* you are saying that the the purple wire, whilst normally an grounding wire, similar to the neck pickup, can't be in this case.

In the parallel mode the purple and red wires are connected together to the ground (earth), so your wiring is similar to a standard jazz bass.

 

In the series mode, the purple wire becomes the connection between the two pickups, so the earth is the black wire of the bridge pickup, then the yellow wire of the bridge pickup is connected to the black wire of the neck pickup and the yellow wire of this pickup becomes the output of the humbucker.

 

These two last wires can also be reversed if your newly created humbucker is out of phase.

 

In this series mode, only the neck pickup volume will work.

[itu]

On 05/08/2024 at 00:03, SamIAm said:

Many of the basses I’ve fiddled with have ground soldered to the pot cases, just need an iron that goes hot enough.

The temp is the same, but if your iron isn't powerful enough, the result will be a chore.

 

15 W for wires, +50 W and wider tip for pot cases.

[rwillett]

 

After a lot of fiddling about with small wires, tinning, trimming, soldering, frustration with all the previous, I finally got the electrics finished and in. Blow me down with a feather but it worked first time.

 

Volume on two pots and tone (well some version of tone) on the third pot.

 

Pull out the first pot and it puts the two pickups into series mode and turns off the 2nd volume pot,the volume goes down though, which is a bit of a surprise, I wonder if I have the two pickups out of sync. Now one advantage of the way I've wired it, is that its a 10 min job to change what is the bridge wire and which is the hot wire for each pickup.  That may be the solution (or not).

 

Anyway, I originally used a NUIX headphone amp plugged into the guitar to check it works. Thats a mistake as the NUIX bass amps simulators leave a lot to be desired and it wasn't clear where the tone was. Plugging back into Logic Pro tidied everything up and I could breathe a sigh of relief as it sounded well. The differences are subtle though, the neck pickup isn't vastly different to the bridge and the tone control has a simple 0.047uF capacitor and the change in tone is there, but is very small. Something to look and think about.

 

Strap buttons are on. It plays quite well (given that there are suspension bridge cables in use for strings). Needs some careful setup now.

 

 

Next steps are dismantle it all, glue to the major sections together for a more strength, copper tape all of the insides to reduce hum, tidy up the wiring inside the control panel, take a Dremel to little bits of the aluminium backbone to get them flush to the body, polish and lacquer the aluminium, reassemble and then learn how to really set it up.

 

Edited August 7 by rwillett

[MichaelDean]

Looks great and I'm glad the wiring works!

 

If you suspect that the pickups are out of phase (and it sounds like they might be), you only need to reverse the wiring of one pickup, otherwise, you're creating the same issue again as they'll be in the same phase orientation (if that's the right techincal term!).

[Hellzero]

On 05/08/2024 at 20:58, Hellzero said:

These two last wires can also be reversed if your newly created humbucker is out of phase.

... 😉🤔😉

[rwillett]

Just now, MichaelDean said:

Looks great and I'm glad the wiring works!

 

If you suspect that the pickups are out of phase (and it sounds like they might be), you only need to reverse the wiring of one pickup, otherwise, you're creating the same issue again as they'll be in the same phase orientation (if that's the right techincal term!).

Michael,

 

Thanks, I understand that bit. I remember messing with loudspeakers as a kid in the classroom and playing about with the phases.

 

Rob

[MichaelDean]

5 minutes ago, rwillett said:

Michael,

 

Thanks, I understand that bit. I remember messing with loudspeakers as a kid in the classroom and playing about with the phases.

 

Rob

Ah cool. Just wanted to make sure. Your wording had me worried you were going to reverse both and have the same issue again!

[rwillett]

32 minutes ago, MichaelDean said:

Ah cool. Just wanted to make sure. Your wording had me worried you were going to reverse both and have the same issue again!

Ask me how I know not to do that now