LukeFRC

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1500306105' post='3336806'] [center] [/center] [center][/center] [/quote] hold up - he's got to do another month hand building a custom case for it first, including getting Adrian Newey to teach him how to mouldy carbon fibre... ... then he will post it to you

What Walbassist said. Then try this - get an active bass (or a preamp of some kind something else with more gain to it than a passive bass) - Plug it in the the effect return, this bypasses the front end totally. Does it still distort? If not (and I suspect you've worked this out already) its the preamp stage. the good news is the preamps in these aren't totally complex - and my old puma was all sensibly designed PCBs - so an electronics expert in the UK should be able to fix it.

search "pingray" on here for an alternative solution....

I've had that on a japans squier - it was kinda this awful mess of bad basswood, coated in a plastic type outer that made it hard. I picked the body up secondhand and someone had taken a chunk of the plastic type layer off already - I ended up buying a cheap replacement body. My 2p if you haven't already taken it off - leave it and use the existing base to put your paint on - there's no need to take it back to the wood

the article is common sense, it's annoying not everyone understands why loud stage noise is bad. Drummers I can kind of forgive as it's just poor technique but guitarists is one knob... and don't witter on at me about 'tone' as you point your mono directional speaker at your ankles. ... IEM are a different kettle of fish - and with a decent setup and sound team can be great. Often not though- again not so good musicians can very easily not listen to what they need to and zone out into their own wee world. [quote name='gjones' timestamp='1499892352' post='3334413'] The guitarist in my band has a 15 watt valve amp. He's very well trained. [/quote] Sensible I think. I never forget lugging my old guitarists 2x12 fender valve amp up and down stairs with him - took two of us to lift it. We then supported this irish band who had a very very similar guitar sound... by sticking a mic in front of wee a blues jr

I contacted Alan (?) Armstrong over something and he was great - didn't end up ordering in the end but wouldn't have a problem with using them. I wonder if your existing pickup is fixable.

I also started playing with the ink/paint I'm going to use. Now start looking at wood dye and wood stain and different forums and sooner or later you'll find AndyJr1515 syndicating himself across different forums expousing the beauty of using ink for wood dye. He gets some amazing finishes - go and look. But for anyone trying to follow him there is a bit of ambiguity in what 'ink' actually is, and from my fine art background I know not everything is the same... So: Dye based inks use a colour fully desolved and suspended in a carrier. They will penetrate the wood well but from an art POV tend not to be as lightfast. So your lovely build will fade over time. Pigment inks use a pigment suspended in the carrier - they will tend to be more lightfast. Simple yeah? Well not really as you can get different types of pigment ink - indian ink will dry perminatly and waterproofly as it has shellac in it, other inks are acrylic based (this is what Andyjr1515 has used before) and there are a few different types I've forgotten about... they all will do different things, and will have different levels of lightfastness. And you can't really argue with some of the finishes that Andyjr1515 has been getting with them! For me, and as this bass is going towards the transparent black colour range I wanted something water based, transparent and wouldn't affect whatever finish went onto of it. I knew from my art days that a concentrated water colour paint should give a lot of the benefits of using ink, be chemically simpler as it won't have been designed to be fast drying, give me less of the uncertainty of finish mixing and also be designed for archival levels of lightfastness. So off I went to town to buy two wee bottles or Dr PH Martin's Hydrus fine art watercolour. I went for Payne's Grey (and blue black) and carbon black (a very black black) I hate the images of guitars with a transparent black with the grain filled darker and they just look grey and meh - if the grain gets filled darker then I want the lighter bits to have a bit more richness to them. In my day job as a graphic designer you call that rich black. You could either do that taking it down the yellow/brown tonal range, or you could take it down the deep blue blacks range and see how that works. I started wiping the ink on like so many videos on youtube do - but it didn't really work - probably as it's pigment based rather than dye based? Any way wiping it seemed to lift it off as well as lay it down. A brush seemed to work better Top bit of this image is a wipe of Payne's grey, bottom half is the carbon black - I've then used a water colour brush to add more payne's grey ontop of the carbon back - it's not a good image at all but gets the idea across - work more layers of that up... PS it's a scrap of pine with a test cut from one of the templates that wasn't good enough

and to finish this eve.... Lets start making a template for the cavity. It's getting there!

and sawdust! After cutting all that MDF it was nice to be cutting something real. Look if it all goes wrong I'll just cover it with a pick guard! If I was a pro, and had more gear to get the tight radii in the corners that could be better - but I can live with what i've got. The edge is straighter than this photo makes it look - it's not been wiped down from all the fluffy sawdust the router kicked up. wait a mo! what's this??? and boom - done it once - done it again! I was so so careful routing that wee bit between the pickups - but it looks to have worked! I drilled the the string thru body holes tonight too... not 100% perfect... but I planned ahead to work out a way to work around the almost inevitable slight wonkiness ... that will come up later.

now I got really fed up of trying to saw straight lines inside a hole with a coping saw for the edges of a neckpocket/pickup - so I ended up just nailing a bit of straight wood to the template and using the guided bit to rout it stright. A bit ghetto cos I had to root around in my scraps to find bits with a straight edge on it but it works and as the story goes... if the pickup fits... close enough for me. Measure, measure again, measure a third time. Think about it a bit and then measure again. Then draw loads of lines, and measure to check they are in the right place... tape then clamp in place....

So I'm supposed to be building a window cill. Or should it be Sill, I'm not sure. But I got bored, and took photos. First job is the er holes (?) to put the pickups in. I made about 4 templates that didn't work until I made one that did. Then for some reason the 6mm MDF that I was copying onto the 12mm MDF decided to destroy itself and I was back to square one. This time I was a bit more organised/methodical. first the radius of the screw lugs I can work out and then use a hole in a bit of wood to rout out with the brushing. two down - one to go! and then the corner radii - one corner (top left) wasn't quite bang on which is the problem when using a crappy almost pillar drill rather than a real pillar drill.

I'm willing to bet that the Eich t1000 amp isn't to much different to the tecamp puma 1000 I used to have - in which case the we and compressor are just perfect

1) strings sound different. 2) rough rule of thumb as you wind the pickup away from the strings you get more bass and less mids. Also less volume. So on a two pickup bass you can balance both volume and tone with pickup height. Rereading: Obviously you're taking about low output AND low low end... so ignore me and check your wiring like's been said

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1499594738' post='3332364'] Gig went well (phew) I really like this Osmo Polyx. Just got to do the final tidying up in one or two places, but the finish is pretty much all on and sorted. It's held the colour of the sanded wood to a remarkable degree: [/quote] I really like the way it's highlighted the difference between the neck wood and the body wood - I think it's kept the lightness you wanted but really really emphasised the beauty of the wood compared to the unfinished photos you stuck up

Deeper neckpocket done. Tried first template for the pups- pretty close but not great for the corner radii ... £4 on a guided router bit - ah go on then! No photo updates for a bit - I need to sort a new window cill in our bedroom first before I pick this up again. Lots of sanding to come (on both projects)

If you use a blend make sure it's an 'MN' blend. That way at the centre each pickup is at 100% Other blend pots may give you each pickup at 50% at the midway position

Also found out last night when starting to fit mine.... Schaller 3D metric tools needed Hipshot A imperial tools needed What is your set of Allen keys - buy a bridge to match?

[quote name='Danuman' timestamp='1499083826' post='3329003'] I know. It's awfully petty. The Kickass is a nice bridge, but to me it just looks off on a P. Do any of you happen to know if there's any difference in the relative height of the A style vs the Kickass? [/quote] they have scale drawing on their website

So. Tuners on bridge Measured and drilled holes for bridge all ok - think it's in the right place. Strung it up to check, just on two strings - seems ok. Think the neck pocket could probably be 2mm deeper as the bridge saddles are set quite high... but without a setup who knows. Hard to check intonation without an amplified signal!

Main thing is don't use toghten it under pressure cos then it's only the threads of the screw that is pushing it down. Slackening the strings, or physically pulling the neck back does the same thing - it lets you tighten the nut without it being under pressure - lessening the chance of stripping anything.

Is it a uv blocking finish to stop sunlight changing the wood colour over time?

[quote name='stoo' timestamp='1498948124' post='3328231'] I take it the holes that are oversized are the ones in the neck? Would it not be worth getting some dowels glued in the holes and then redrilling at the right size? It's easy to sort now, but it'd be a nightmare if it all let go once it was up to tension.... [/quote] that's a good idea! Probably would have been - as it was only 1 of the 6 insets stripped - the superglue will have both hardened the wood and er stuck it in so I think it should be ok.