bertbass

Nothing wrong with that.

After suffering them since the 60s I can't stand any of them anymore!

Most excellent. Thanks.

Thanks. I searched for a couple of hours this afternoon and only found the ‘continued’ thread.

I've been trying to find the Basschat 12” cabinet diary posts but without success.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?  I was thinking of building one or two while we can't go out and play.

I'd try to get a used Roland kit if possible.

Haven't watched it but thought it might be interesting. Questioned them paying as high as £100 for a live band?  I might question the pubs as to why they are charging so much for a pint.

I've got NewTone 50 - 110 on mine.

I saw a lefty in green at Anderton's and bought it.  Not a bad bass at all, me thinks.  Changed the strings for Newtone and it sounds and plays a lot better.  I've not been able to play it loud yet, and probably not in the foreseeable future, and the string spacing is taking some getting used to, but I'm liking it a lot!

19 hours ago, TheRev said:

Back in March, I was in a similar position to the OP,  in that, in the absence of gigs, my band needed to start working remotely to do some videos for virtual festivals, stand alone music videos and demos for our next album.

 

The final track mixing and mastering was done by our drummer using Pro Tools,

Wow!  Drummer using Pro Tools,  our drummer can't even use, or own a smart phone and doesn't do emails, only snail mail.  He occasionally answers the land line though.

Love the song and the video.  Excellent!

There's no such thing!

The simple answer is no, it won't follow the radius of the neck.  All the fret slot cutting videos I've seen show a cut straight across the fretboard whether it's radiused or not and it would seem from the replies above that the jury is out on this one.  All the fret cutting jigs that I've seen, that are available to buy, only cut a flat slot.

Sorry for the tardy reply but I've been a bit busy.  In my enthusiasm to post I'd assumed that what was in my head would have been easily understood by all, however, what is is in my head is quite often not understood by even me so my apologies for not explaining properly.

To answer your questions,

On 08/10/2020 at 17:06, SpondonBassed said:

Good luck.  I'm interested to see how durable this jig will be.

Then you said:

Why didn't I think of that before?  I'll just go and find mine.

Heeheehee

More seriously, is there a reason you can't use the cutter engraver directly on a fretboard?  Is it just going to cut right the way through or what?

A couple of reasons really.  The laser only cuts a slot 0.1mm wide so although the slots would be perfectly spaced they'd still need opening up with a saw, also, although the laser in a precision machine in operation, setting the work pieces in place isn't, so a great deal of trial and error is involved getting things square.  This isn't a problem normally but if I wanted to cut fret slots square to a fret board, I'd only know if I'd got it right after it's finished cutting.

Secondly, The varying density of the wood being cut effects the cut which means that it is not uniformly consistent over the whole piece of wood, so a hard bit of wood in the middle of a fretboard would result in a slot being less deep than the others and could even end up burnt.  I have used the laser to cut a fretboard for the long term P bass that I'm making and here's a photo of the results.  When I say P bass, I don't mean precision I mean Pallet, as in made from pallets.  If I eventually finish it I'll post its construction.

To answer the other questions, here's a photo that hopefully illustrates the principle behind my thinking.  That's not actually a fretboard, it's just a bit of wood that I had laying around.

When I've made basses before, to cut the fret slots, I've used squares and various blocks of wood to try and get the slots square and vertical.  This worked OK but was time consuming.  Now I have the urge to make a couple more I got to thinking, is there a better way?

I could perhaps buy a mitre jig but they are a tad expensive or perhaps I could make or buy a tiny table saw with a 1mm blade and then use a slotted rule for fret positions.  That could take quite a while to design and build.  So what to do?

Having a laser cutter / engraver the obvious solution for me was to make one from 6mm thick acrylic.  I calculated the fret spacing for a 30" scale and then designed the fret slot cutting jig this was transferred to the laser cut and cut out.

The individual pieces were then glued together. Once the glue had dried, a quick pass through the band saw saw the jig nearly finished.  The edges were sanded and polished to make it a little more professional looking and the finished jig looks like this.

Just a quick buff needed to get rid of the excess glue marks.

The jig sits over the fretboard blank.  The fret cutting saw just fits in the slots and the acrylic being 6mm thick should hold the saw square.  I'll let you know how well it works after I've tried it. 

I use mine vertically on an amp stand.  Sounds great.

If you want roundwounds get in touch with Newtone strings.  They'll make you exactly what you want and they won't break the bank either.

5 hours ago, BassManGraham said:

Your comments nearly sparked me into an HB panic buying session, but then I realised being in Ireland I may be on the right side of the Thomann drawbridge. That won't help me bringing back the bass gesr stash I have accumulated in UK, but been unable to collect since lockdown.. 

That brings up a lot of questions for after 31st December 2020.  You might be better off stashing it in the UK and just transporting yourself to gigs over here if we ever gig again.

2 hours ago, Count Bassy said:

It's still less than it takes to wrap a body though ..........

And you know this how?

I use a headset mic so I could use one of these,  If we had any gigs that is.

Simple answer is no!  Music in the early 60s was not that inspiring.  Classical or classical, a great choice.  I did join the lunchtime guitar club when I bought my first guitar, a Vox stroller, single pickup and a TV aerial socket as an output jack and it was brand new!  I shared a half watt amp that my guitar playing mate had built and we both got thrown out of the club for being too loud.

Thanks for that, very interesting.

When we had a 3 way PA I used to use faith healer by The Alex Harvey Band.  Perfect for checking each frequency band was working.

I bought a new left handed Sapphire in 1969 along with a Wem ER40 and 15" Starfinder cabinet, both from Bell's Music catalogue.  I remember it as being a pretty good and playable bass.  I never had a Rapier though and apart from the price I don't think there was a lot of difference except perhaps for the finish, machine heads and perhaps pickups and sorry, can't remember the switch function, in fact, I can't even remember it having a switch.

Nice bass though.

Or from here.

https://www.crimsonguitars.com/collections/fretting/products/radius-blocks