neepheid

Selector switch arrived today, so it's big drill time - no pressure, yay! Going super careful, I put masking tape over the hole and its edges, then went up 1mm at a time from 9 to 12mm. Despite the tape, I did chip the finish a little in one place around the hole, but thankfully not a big bit and hidden by the dress washer. Attack a perfectly nice bass with this monster using a hand drill? No, it wasn't scary at all, lol. Unfortunately, that's all the "easy" jobs done. Next step is to make a template for my pickup route, then take a big, deep breath and attack the front of the body with forstner bits and a router.

Well my Z7 (solid finish so not ash, CBA looking up what it is got back to the computer, it's alder) is 9 and a half pounds, and I don't consider that to be particularly heavy.

Well, a MK2 edition would be most welcome, take what they've learned with the Plethora and apply it but unfortunately they haven't. Smells of resting on laurels to me - because the functionality it has would have been genuinely impressive 13 years ago. I still appreciate it for what it is, it's still super handy, and the Spectracomp in default guise is very useable. The Spectracomp Toneprint in the BH amp is the main reason I got a standalone Spectracomp for my pedalboard.

Aw, thanks! The Inevitable Teaspoons are very grateful for your purchase 🥰

My solution for that - a wristband, pulled up to where the forearm meets the body. I play basses with zero forearm contouring, even binding without issue if I do this.

Mini toggle switch installed... Had to remove a little material from the control cavity to get enough threads to poke through the top, because life is never easy. Next job is to enlarge the hole left by the jack socket from 9mm to whatever the pickup selector needs, probably 12mm or something.

You don't need to give me an excuse to show off my korinaburst Triad. It also has a Freeway 10 way switch fitted, for the standard options on one bank, then various series/parallel options not normally available. Pretty simple fit, visually undetectable, very elegant mod (works by tilting the blade switch up/down to access the two banks of options).

Busy evening. Got home and fitted the new pickup ring to the pickup - fit great first time, except the pickup height screw holes were a bit tight but they pushed though OK with a little persuasion. I decided to get stuck in and make some more progress, so I got down to dismantling the bass. Found some interesting things: The channels which the bridge saddle grub screws sit in are actually stamped into the bridge plate, proud and so there are shallow channels routed into the body to accommodate them. # Wonderful documentation - separate date stamps for body (Sept 1998) and neck (Oct 1998). Anyway, after unearthing some hidden treasure, I made my plan: That's a lot of wood to get through (about 47mm)! Body clamped securely in the bench vice. But I wasn't ready just to gung ho so I grabbed a scrap bit of wood for a test run. I deliberately picked one which wasn't much bigger than the 20mm bit so I could see how good my aim was. Turns out my aim is pretty good. Also checked that 20mm was indeed big enough to accommodate a jack socket. It is. Time to take a deep breath and drill for real this time. As you can see I did deviate a bit from the original pilot hole, but not in either of the directions which would matter. The drill did wander a little at the beginning when it was trying to break through the finish, hence the white mark on the bottom edge. But by the time I got to this depth, my drill wasn't making much progress. So I decided to stop there (about 10mm short of breaking through into the control cavity) and simply enlarged the old pilot hole a little to allow space for wires to come through. Jack socket loads in from the outside. A tad unorthodox, but hey, it's an unorthodox bass! Done. As luck would have it, I found a "football" jack plate in my spares box. So that saved me ordering one. Made a couple of pilot holes (using the hand drill this time - had quite enough of power tools for one day!) and fitted the plate to the side of the body. Last of all, I moved the jack socket properly (as in desoldered it, moved it to the side and reconnected it - which would not have been necessary if I had gone all the way through with the forstner bit but it's a small price to pay for sanity etc. Now there's a hole free in the top of the body for a pickup selector switch. But that's for another time.

Are you sure? A Z3 is only £399 new. The only SBMM which comes close to matching its spec is a Ray34, and that's £999, and you still won't get an 18V preamp, passive mode, a 22nd fret or mega rolled fingerboard edges. (Using Andertons for both prices) But I guess £399 is a lot if you don't have it, but you didn't really specify what the metrics were...

One of the benefits of working in an Engineering school - ready access to 3D printing. Replacement pickup ring for the Peavey T-40 pickup - the original one is a little bent and won't sit flat on the deck so I thought I'd give a homespun replacement a go. Top surface is dimpled - I could sand/polish this shiny, but it might match the top surface of the P pickup, so I'll leave that decision for when it's all mounted up.

Not this guy!

Use of the word "may" noted and approved. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

It's all cobblers that "this bass is only for that music" nonsense. Get the one which felt the best/most comfortable to you.

Some of you might recall that I recently bought a DeArmond Jet Star bass for the simple and highly frivolous reason that it made me laugh. Those who are familiar with the single pickup, long scale variant will also be aware of the decidedly bridgeward location of the pickup, leaving vast tracts of empty space on the body between the pickup and the neck. I think you know where this is heading. Well, a very nice chap in the States who makes YouTube videos (and occasionally posts on here - @Rib13Bass - shout out to you, bass brother) sent me a gift which arrived today... As Ozzy used to sing - what is this that stands before me? You gathered bass cognoscenti don't need me to tell you this is a pickup from a Peavey T-40/T-45. What is a person supposed to do with such a behemoth of a pickup? Oh, maybe something like this: So, the plan is to move the jack socket (currently front mounted) to the side to create a hole for the pickup selector switch. Will have to make a wee hole for a coil selector switch for the T-40 pickup. Oh and a big eff off hole for the T-40 pickup. T-40 pickup goes through the coil select switch, then onto the pickup selector switch, original pickup goes to the pickup selector switch, then the output of the pickup selector switch will be wired up to the existing harness at the volume pot. Easy as that! Now, where's my router...

The WS-70 only has one button, so even an idiot like me can operate it. It's pretty much bassplayerproof!

Joke killer

Paging @rwillett...

Plus it'll take me about an hour to set up my plethora/smorgasbord/I can stop anytime I want.

No complaints here with the Lekato WS-70, but maybe I'm a cloth-eared idiot.

Big knob? No idea what you're talking about...

Small update, the neck pocket has been cleaned out. Unfortunately, that means it's a tad too deep and a tad too wide. So will be building it back up with wood veneer, which should hopefully be arriving today. Also suspect that the screw holes were drilled out by hand and are at rather jaunty angles, so I'm going to check that and if it's too far out of wack, gonna fill those for subsequent redrilling.

Ooh, that's a shout. More Reverend variety, I'm all for it.

Reverend FTW. Was about to say "saves me taking a bass" but then I remembered that my Triad 4 has a 10 way switch, so I guess you (and others) might be interested in that so I had better bring it.

Just a little update to say that the bass performed very well at its first live outing. Also, it's a wonderfully comfortable bass to play. Maybe it's just me but there's a bevel cut into the top edge of the body which my wrist just sits on like it was designed for it. Someone stop me from taking a saw and chisel to all my basses

Last night, I played for the first time in about a month because of band members' holidays etc. with Nine Lives at The Butchers Arms in Inverurie. Great to get back in the saddle, I've missed it! Anyhoo, it was a really good night, quite busy, lots of folk up dancing, a couple of young bass nerds took a photo of my pedalboard and were chatting to me at half time - about my basses, how long I've been playing etc. Fridays can be so hit and miss so very happy to find the place being reasonably busy. In honour of the Prince of Darkness, we did a little three song Ozzy bit in the second set, Crazy Train, Bark at the Moon then Paranoid. That went down well. Anyway, I played pretty well, I only forgot how one song went in one bit (but we're ditching it soon anyway so maybe I was already subconsciously deleting it from my memory). I think some video was taken so if anything appears I'll be sure and share it. Gear was the Greco triple pickup LP then the DeArmond Jet Star (Wonky Boi) into the yellow and black cubes of doom.