tauzero Posted June 25 Share Posted June 25 If you happen to be in search of a 4-string headless neck, there's https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/276524377301. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted June 25 Author Share Posted June 25 My mum lives in Chesterfield 😊 thanks for thinking about me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted June 25 Author Share Posted June 25 Just seen the last pictures of the neck. Nope step too far for me. Thanks though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 13 Author Share Posted July 13 I've spent the last three weeks working out the best finish for 3d printing. Whilst you can sand and fill and spray (repeat as necessary), that's hard work. So have tried to use 3d printing to get the quality up so it looks good. The issue I've had to overcome is that the body has an angle on both the top and the bottom as well as the edges being rounded (or filleted). 3d printers obey the laws of gravity, so when you have an overhang, it has to be supported. Nature abhors a vacuum and 3d printers abhor stuff sticking out without a support. A support leaves traces of the support on the material, and a complex shape such as part of the guitar below doesn't have a single dimension that doesn't require some support. I think I have managed to get it so that the top is smooth and speckle free and the back is slightly grooved, which is fine. The new Prusa Mk4 is very quick and I can test this out. The downside to it being very quick is that I have gone through a fair few rolls of filament. Mr Amazon has a beaten path to my door. The other thing I have been working on is a simple system for attaching pickups and easily adjusting them. My aim was to take "standard" pickups and design a system so that most (but not all) pickups can be easily added and easily adjusted using carbon fibre rods. managed to get some Carbon Fibre in at last. They are astonishingly light and rigid, 3mm rods do flex, but not as much as I would have thought. This is the dark brown below and the red pickups are there to see how much adjustment I have. As the body oft he bass is now 38mm vs 45mm, I have made life difficult for myself, but lets see if I can fit it all in I've also been drilling aluminium and taping it with M2.5 and M3 holes. Thats a tedious job. Each hole has to be drilled twice, a pilot hole to go through double materials, one material has three different taps, then countersunk (very slightly), the other material has a different sized clearance hole. Repeat for many, many holes. I still need to redo the electrics, but thats relatively easy in comparison to drilling and tapping. Rob 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 17 Author Share Posted July 17 I've now worked out how to hang the pickups. Shooting is too good for them I have two carbon fibre rods running in the bay in the middle. The pickups sit in a sledge and can be adjusted along the CF rods as well as up and down, i.e. closer or further away from the strings using screws, so pretty much the same as normal, apart from the fact, the pickups can be located anywhere and most (but not all) pickups can be accommodated. Split pickups can't fit inside the rods. This is a deliberate design decision as it would make the middle section very, very wide. Split pickups can be used as they can screw into the base of the guitar, they just can't be adjusted along the middle of the guitar (yet). Different pickups that aren't 40mmx24mm or 28mmx24mm can be easily accommodated using a different sledge. The sledges work really well and are smooth, so delighted with that. Also the cabling fits very nicely along the side. The neck heal in black and all of the gray stuff outside the pickup rails is a quick print to check fit and will be discarded once I know everything fits together. The aluminium backbone will also be cut down once I know it all works. This is the material for the finished bass. This is Prusament PLA Galaxy Black, it has little speckles in it and looks great. The pictures make it look kindof rough but its really, really nice. The last month of fine tuning the printing has paid off as its very smooth, looks premium (whatever that means), doesn't require much finishing (circa 10-15 mins) per piece. This is the filament under the printers, a week or so ago, this was jammed full, but I've managed to use quite a lot. There's probably another 6-8 rolls in boxes elsewhere. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 17 Author Share Posted July 17 (edited) This is the first version of the initial fit for the guitar. These are all the holes needed to make it all fit together. In the end I had to make four (count 'em, four) drill guides to do all the drilling and printing. Some were 2.04 holes that were tapped to 2.5mm, some were 2.5mm which were tapped for 3mm holes, some were countersunk, some weren't, though they needed deburring. I eventually got down to 45 holes, some of which needed 3-4 actions on them. This is without the pickup mounting holes if the rail system is not used. Thats another 20-24 holes to give some flexibility. Mmm... I might not do that This also has design features that went away, such as side mounting holes for the body pickguard, there is now a hole for the wiring as opposed to a slot for it to go through, this tidies up the top of the guitar. These got in the way of the carbon fibre pickup rails. The control panel now has a detachable back to allow access from the back through to the wiring. It also allows an active set of electrics to be fitted so a battery compartment can be used. The current weight is around 3.5Kg with strings, controls (no knobs, they seem to weigh about a kg each), I was targetting 3.9Kg so that's looking good. Lets see if I can get it under 8lbs which is 3.6kg. I suspect active controls will push above that simply due to the 2xPP9 batteries. Edited July 17 by rwillett 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnH89 Posted July 17 Share Posted July 17 Jeez Rob , you've been busy . Looking mighty fine so far . I'm guessing the filament suppliers will be taking a holiday on the business you put their way .😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 17 Author Share Posted July 17 Thank John I really, really wanted the finish to be as good as I can make it. I also wanted to rethink the whole design and to simplify that as well. This meant going back to the very beginning and questioning every decision I'd previously made. This is why progress has been visually slow. It turns out that most of my decisions on earlier versions were, perhaps, sub-optimal 😊. Very subtle changes in the design often made big improvements. The longest amount of time was spent getting the side profile right. The is the profile that you look at from the rear of the guitar to the front. I wanted it far more sinous, more Strat than Telecaster. However the rounding of the side profile generated other problems, such as supports during printing, how to join it together, too much rounding meant that filleting (different type of rounding on edges) didn't work. That neccesitated going back to the very, very first sketch and checking dozens of tangent curves. I have now got the finish I was after without relying too much on printed supports. There are some subtle issues with 3d printing, corners that are tight, arcs and nozzle diameter that eluded me for weeks. I finally worked them out but did hundreds of prints to resolve it. Octoprint now congratulates you on your hundredth print which was nice. That's in less than three weeks. Simple changes at the start of the design had massive changes downstream. I must have gone through the time line in Fusion 360 many dozens of times step by step to work out what I meant to do. I really must go on a Fusion 360 course to learn how to use it properly. Anyway, I'll stop whinging, tomorrow night is where I plan to check the neck, strings, pickups and bridge to check it's all right. I suspect the neck and bridge are 1-2mm too low and will need to be heightened to allow enough adjustment on the pickups. You kindly helped me before, I may ask again 😊 Rob 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 You could have the perfect pickup fitting solution by simply adding, between the two bars, a predrilled plate with glued nuts to accommodate any type of pickup, so being able to adjust them in the two dimensions and even three with slots and screws on the two sides. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard R Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 As I've said before - really impressive work. Attention to design details that the end user may never be consciously aware of, but which make the product a better in a hundred little ways, is a mark of of a great engineer or craftsman. Clearly you are both. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 28 minutes ago, Hellzero said: You could have the perfect pickup fitting solution by simply adding, between the two bars, a predrilled plate with glued nuts to accommodate any type of pickup, so being able to adjust them in the two dimensions and even three with slots and screws on the two sides. @Hellzero Thats exactly what this is now. There's a plate under the pickup with glued nuts in. Those nuts line up to the pickup holes, so the neck pickup is 38mmx24mm and the bridge pickup is 40mmx24mm for hole spacing. The grey sides on each of the pickup slide along the CF rails, so it be easily adjusted. They are locked by the cross headed screw. The hexagon screw head adjusts the pickup up and down. The heads are different to stop me unscrewing the wrong one. Learnt that lesson. Technically the nuts are taped in at the moment as they are M2.5 half height nuts and they're not cheap. Once I have it right, I'll epoxy the nuts in (carefully). Just found out Gorilla super glue stains the PLA, so will experiment with epoxy. I'll post more pictures later. The downside to this flexibility is how to make a pickguard that is as flexible. As I change the pickups position, how do I make the pickguard pickup holes adapt? I can easily print a new pickguard each time, circa 2.5 hours but that's a brute force approach. Still thinkkng about split precision type pickups. I may have a solution but will experiment over the next few days. Rob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 37 minutes ago, Richard R said: As I've said before - really impressive work. Attention to design details that the end user may never be consciously aware of, but which make the product a better in a hundred little ways, is a mark of of a great engineer or craftsman. Clearly you are both. You've posted in the wrong forum again 😊 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnH89 Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 The first iteration worked very well as a proof of concept and was built to a tight timescale so don't beat yourself up . The alterations to the design and engineering have been spectacular . Any help I can offer from here on in is willingly given . I do have a few ideas on the pickup front ...... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 1 minute ago, JohnH89 said: The first iteration worked very well as a proof of concept and was built to a tight timescale so don't beat yourself up . The alterations to the design and engineering have been spectacular . Any help I can offer from here on in is willingly given . I do have a few ideas on the pickup front ...... Ooohh... I like ideas I've got a load of real and paid work on today. For some reason , no idea why, I make absolutely no money from doing these guitars, so I need to put the interesting and fun stuff off and do (looking at my list) 1. Sort out paperwork for onboarding two contractors. 2. Write reports, 3. Attend numerous MS Teams calls. I like these as 95% of the time, I'm just listening, so I can do an awful lot of work in the background and keep one ear alert to what's going on and if anybody mentions my name. 4. Chase people up to do the work I asked them to do a few days ago, listen to the excuses and ask them again 5. Repeat 2-4 Rob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 (edited) @Hellzero This is the design for the pickups. I don't model the screws and springs that hold the yellow pickup plate to the green support. The blue posts attach to the aluminium backbone plate, the grey rods are the carbon fibre, the green supports slide left and right along the rods. It looks very Lego*(ish) *Other block building systems are available Edited July 18 by rwillett 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 Excellent work @rwillett ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloney Balderdash Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 (edited) On 13/07/2024 at 23:49, rwillett said: Nice Kazoo! Edited July 18 by Baloney Balderdash 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 I had to think about that for a while ..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamIAm Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 What an absolutely amazing creation! You are truly a 3D god. Sam x Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 5 minutes ago, SamIAm said: What an absolutely amazing creation! You are truly a 3D god. Sam x Somebody else posting wrongly in this forum. Rob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 18 Author Share Posted July 18 Here's a close up photo of the rails, the pickups and the sledge they sit on. I ended up printing out some new covers for the Wilkinson pickups as they were slightly the wrong size. This is all printed at 0.2mm layers and as fast as possible so the quality is rubbish. This just checks that it all fits and works. There's some bending in the photo as its taken very close up and I can't be bothered to straighten it out in Affinity Photo. The rails nicely act as a cable guide as well, that wasn't planned at all The square holes on the left side are for the pickguard. I print the nut for the hole separately and just glue it in. Saves me waiting for the printer to pause so I can insert a nut. This alone was a good enough reason to redesign the whole guitar, no getting up at 03:00 to put embedded nuts in anymore. Also I've solved the problem with the Prusa Mk4 out of filament not triggering an email response in Octoprint, I would loved to have said I developed all the Python for doing this, but that would be a complete lie as I did nothing whatsoever, as I do not know Python, but sponsored a developer. It wasn't particularly expensive but he had to get deep into the system with Ginna (the Octoprint developer) to get it working. If anybody does any 3D printing, Octoprint is a must have, 3d printing without Octoprint is like Morecombe without Wise, or cheese without port or anything else that floats your boat. I sponsor Octoprint anyway, but its great to know when the going gets tough, Ginna will help. This plugin is only needed for Prusa's running the Buddy firmware, so Pruas MK3.9's, Mini MK4's and XL's. It's still beta but works fine and can be found at https://github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-PrusaFilamentRunoutMonitor Need to take dog for walk and then open a bottle of white and start seeing it the strings line up on the bridge and the neck and how high they are above the pickups. Rob 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 19 Author Share Posted July 19 Strung up the guitar and as expected, the pickups are far too close to the strings. So am printing out shims to raise the neck and raise the bridge. These shims simply start to get the neck, bridge and pickups in the right place. The issue I have with all of the bass setup videos are that they assume you have a bass that has the correct parts on and you are looking to do the final setup. My setup is a lot more fundamental at the moment. I'll check my Fender Jazz and get the neck, pickup and bridge height the same as that to give me a fighting chance. I recall somebody offered some advice on this very first configure but I can't find it. Any advice welcomed Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnH89 Posted July 19 Share Posted July 19 (edited) Hi Rob . How is the action of the guitar , ignoring the pickups . ? How high are the strings off the fretboard at the 12th fret ? Without seeing it , it may be a problem with the pickup height rather than the setup of the bass . Let me know and we will start getting it setup properly . I think the setup advice from the first one was done via PM . Edited July 19 by JohnH89 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rwillett Posted July 19 Author Share Posted July 19 @JohnH89 Thanks very much for the offer of help, I'll have a look through the PM's we had. We have so many channels of communications now that I simply lost track of who told me what. The bass is back in pieces as I'm just putting some stuff back on. I'll look through our PM's and see what we said. I will be in touch, but have to do real and paid work today Thanks Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnH89 Posted July 19 Share Posted July 19 24 minutes ago, rwillett said: @JohnH89 Thanks very much for the offer of help, I'll have a look through the PM's we had. We have so many channels of communications now that I simply lost track of who told me what. The bass is back in pieces as I'm just putting some stuff back on. I'll look through our PM's and see what we said. I will be in touch, but have to do real and paid work today Thanks Rob I however have no real and paid work today . Wheres the fun in that ? 🤔 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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