JPJ

We've got a couple of the Behringer 12" 300w powered monitors. Got them for under £200 each (can't remember exactly how much they were) and they do the job very well indeed.

Much of the established wisdom about mixing drivers comes from a time when a typical 15" had no more excursion than the 10" it was under resulting in the 15 being little more than an amp stand for the 10's. I'm not sure that this is still the case as the drivers we are seeing these days have much better excursion and hence air moving capability. I'm sure one of the more knowledgeable forum members will either confirm or confound my 'new' theory :-)

Now that is one sexy bass! This just proves it doesn't have to be all exotic woods to produce a timeless looking instrument. Congrats, that's a hell of a bass you've got yourself there :-)

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1406901782' post='2515779'] Perhaps a cheeky five-string Ric-inspired bass... [/quote] BANNED! Seriously though, great work on the neck. I've made a few bodies now and I have it in my head to make a neck next but I doubt I'll achieve this standard. Well done, go buy yourself a beer you deserve it

Tonights progress and in truth I got a lot more done than I thought I would. Firstly, I worked on finishing the 'gut cut' on the back before moving on to round over the edge of the 'gut cut' and the forearm chamfer. I do these by hand with sandpaper as the router tends to make a bit of a mess of them due to the sloped surfaces. Then as the night was still young, I moved on to rout out both the neck pocket and the pickup. This was made a lot easier as I'd kept the template from the first time around but, because I'd already glued the maple top on, it was a bit of a heart-in-mouth operation as the business end of the template was only held with double-sided tape. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1119_zps05d92ebd.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1120_zpsd71b4f54.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1118_zps15a6b91f.jpg[/IMG] I was going to move on to rout out the control cavity, but Mrs JPJ objected to the router noise because 'its ten o'bloody clock!'

[quote name='fretmeister' timestamp='1406800712' post='2514775'] I think part of it is hollow - send Dawn (at Status) an email. She's a lovely lady and very helpful. [/quote] Doh! Wise words indeed and email duly despatched

Does anybody know what's in the heel block of a Status Graphite replacement Stingray Neck? The reason I ask is that I have one of these that I'm about to use on a project, but its already been drilled for four neck screws and I want to go with six. I'd like to fill the existing holes first as they are rather large. Does anybody know whether there is a wood block in there so that I can just dowel them like on a wooden neck or do I need to use some sexy epoxy type filler product?

[quote name='fretmeister' timestamp='1406720247' post='2514028'] Normally I understand the moans. But this time I sold my Hyperbass so I had plenty of funds for it. Women! [/quote] I once made the mistake of airing the view that perhaps, on reflection, the one in one out rule, should apply to her handbag collection. I won't make that particular mistake ever again

Decision made, Allparts DPDT mini-switch on-on-on in black ordered

We bought my daughter one of those 'cheap' Harley Benton electric violins from Thomann for Christmas. Despite the low price, it only took a half hours minor fettling to get it playing like her acoustic that was several hundreds more than the Harley Benton. Really authentic tone amplified too and looks pretty cool as its a skeleton body in white.

As progress advances, I'm thinking about that pesky three-way switch that was the downfall of mk1 version of this bass. Decision to be made, do I go with the three-way, do I change up for one of those mini toggles, or do I omit the switch all together as I hardly ever used anything other than the 'neck' series position on a previous Stingray V? I'm guessing the mini-toggle option would be series or parallel only, but that would be no hardship as I never used the single coil option.

Thanks, but there is a touch of de ja vu, as I've been here before with this particular build. Happy to say that so far, the one or two 'errors' this time have been very minor and easy to rectify :-)

Quick update: Managed a couple of hours in the work shed tonight. The bend of the maple worked perfectly, so I've completed the rough machining of the 'gut tuck' and also rounded over the edges of both the top and bottom. Next task is to rout out the neck pocket, pickup, and control cavity, drill for the edge mounted jack socket and drill for the volume and tone controls. I still have to radius the edge of the forearm chamfer and refine the 'gut tuck' before I get on with the finish sanding. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1116_zps0b1a6a80.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1117_zps37d2a414.jpg[/IMG]

Ok, so I've now glued on both halves of the maple cap and successfully bent the maple over the forearm chamfer. As I said in my last update, I decided to do this as a three step process, glueing one half of the maple in place, allowing that to fully dry, before glueing the second half of the cap in place and allowing that to fully dry before bending the top over the forearm chamfer. Here's a phone photo of the first half of the cap in clamps [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1100_zps674d56a3.jpg[/IMG] And here's a phone photo of the bending of the cap over the forearm chamfer [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/JPJ/IMG_1110_zps73825d73.jpg[/IMG] I used a slightly different technique to last time, and instead of using wedges I simply used a large G clamp to gently apply pressure and bend the cap to shape. Before bending, I had placed a sponge on the top side of the cap and soaked this with boiling water. After a few minutes I started applying pressure with the G clamp and the maple bent nicely to shape. I then released the pressure on the clamp, flooded the void between body blank and cap with Titebond III adhesive and reapplied the clamping force. Then, working around the edge I applied more clamps in sequence to achieve an even 'glue' line, which I then scraped off to leave a lovely clean join. Over the first fifteen to twenty minutes I kept increasing the tension on each clamp to ensure that as the glue began to cure, any shrinkage didn't result in a loss of clamping force. Next step will be to trim the excess top material away using a combination of a jigsaw to rough cut to shape leaving about 3-4 mm to remove with the router.

Well as you might have gathered from the lack of updates, the veneer didn't work out well at all. Too many air voids meant it was no where near what I wanted and given the relative cost of the graphite neck, pickup, circuit etc. this went off to the great scrap bin in the sky However, after almost three years and a whole lot of other projects, I decided I would get on with this again. So a body blank (tulipwood) was sourced along with a new maple cap. The body has been roughed out for a while and sitting around in my man cave, but this week I have cracked on with gluing on the maple cap. Learning from my previous efforts, I fixed one half of the top in place yesterday, then after cleaning up the glue along the joint line, today I have glued on the other half. Once this has fully dried, I will wet (soak) the maple and bend this over the forearm chamfer. Doing this way means less variables during the gluing process as trying to glue both halves of the top and bend the top over the forearm contour in a single operation was a little stressful Oh and I've ordered the finishing materials too, so the intention is to crack on with this now and have a finished bass by the end of August.

[quote name='Kevin Dean' timestamp='1403874145' post='2487324'] .........you could do an add with me standing next to one of your famous users saying " We even look after normal people " [/quote] Normal? On Basschat? How very bloody dare you

Reminds me of covering my first bass (short scale catalogue job) in black 'sticky backed plastic' and wrapping the white scratch plate with tin foil.... guess which Irish bassist was my fave at that time

I'm neither for or against artificial relic'd basses. What I can say from personal experience is that the one bass in my collection that 'average punters' (i.e. non-muso, regular ladies and gentlemen who like a bit of live music with their pint/fruit based drink) comment on is the fretless P I put together using a relic'd Vintage (brand, not age) white body. Its probably one of the worst 'relic' jobs you can imagine because the exposed wood grain is actually also a paint effect but it seems to be the one bass that attracts praise. My expensive Overwater's don't solicit that sort of response from 'average punters' That said, its the one bass I don't worry about when gigging as any genuine wear and tear will hardly be noticed

Ashdown have been producing good reliable gear since they started. Sure, there has been a few exceptions (Superfly anyone?) by generally you don't hear too many complaints about the ABM range, and I know a couple of gigging bassists playing three or four times a week who swear by the reliability of the MAG series gear. Horses for courses, I've never found 'my' sound from an Ashdown head yet, but that's not to say that I won't in the future or if I had more time with one of their heads. They do seem to come in for a disproportionate amount of stick on here which is disappointing as they are a British company and the vast majority of us on here hail from the British Isles.

[quote name='bassmayhem' timestamp='1402777203' post='2476775'] If you have a preamp with a single output you'll need a split Y-cable so you can send to both inputs on the power amp. I use it for stereo rig konfiguration. [/quote] Does your PLX not have the parallel input option on the dip switches? My PLX1602 has this option which means you can use input A to drive both power amps in a stereo setup.

Holy cow batman! Whatever that cost, it isn't enough. That finish is simply stunning, reminds me of the early Washburn's. We need a full final run down of the control layout - it certainly looks interesting.

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1401475907' post='2464075'] Worth remembering that the master volume setting doesn't intrinsically limit the power of the amp, the amp can still deliver its full power if it gets a hot enough signal from the preamp. [/quote] Indeed. This is why I'm conservative on both 'masters' i.e. half on the QSC and half on the SWR. I also use the compressor on the SWR to clean up any nasty 'player dynamics' i.e. cock-ups I may make :-)

I'm four gigs in to my pre/power amp setup and so far, all is fine! I've gone with the SWR Marcus Miller pre into a QSC PLX1602 to drive (in bridge mode) my 6x10 mini-fridge. Because the mini-fridge is 'only' 1,000w 4 ohms nominal, and the QSC puts out 1,600w @ 4 ohms, I run it with the QSC on about half with the SWR master acting as er the master! So far, this rig has done two pub gigs, one outside gig (pub beer garden, no PA support) and a large bike rally (with PA support) and has handled them with ease. Weight-wise, racked up together they are a one-handed carry (as against the SM1500 that was a two man carry). Also, the amp appears to handle transients and low B stuff better than the SM, it's more immediate and less of a delay waiting for the note to develop.

[quote name='bassman7755' timestamp='1400836265' post='2457340'] I used to be obsessive about lows being a 5-stringer and wanting some "fundamental" but using a QSC amp cured me of this as I could play around with its HPF which could be off-25hz-50hz. I found that even the 50hz setting made no audible difference even on the low B other than the absence of excessive speaker cone movement. [/quote] I can only echo what Bassman7755 says here. I've just moved over to a QSC powered rig and currently run it with the low cut filter set at 50hz. The sound difference on the low B is negligible and even less so 'in the mix' on stage. The lack of excessive cone movement is however reassuring. Looking at our set list, most of what we play is in either A or D with an occasional trip down to G. Accordingly, the extreme low end is of less importance than the low end of the mid range as its this that I'm trying to pick out from the mush of guitars and drums on stage.