Maude

It is a bit quorny.

More ramblings, mainly so I can remember what's in my head. 😉 The best place for a soundpost if needed? A doublebass has a bassbar running from just below the neck joint to around the tailpiece height on the bass side and a soundpost on the treble side. One foot of the bridge is over the bassbar which distributes the tension of the strings over the soundboard, the other foot of the bridge is over the soundpost which transfers vibrations to the rear of the bass, except that the soundpost is normally not directly under the treble foot and if moved around to fine tune the sound of the bass, too close to the bridge foot can choke the vibrations, it's a fine art I don't claim to fully understand. With this little knowledge, yeah I know, dangerous, I wonder where the best place would be on this Aria for a soundpost, and would it be detrimental to sound or an improvement? The Aria has an X brace which crosses about 30mm in front the the bridge, the edges of the bridge sit on this brace. A single soundpost could go directly under the centre of the saddle or under the cross point of the X brace. A pair of posts could go under the braces where the bridge sits but I then have to balance two posts tension so one doesn't fall out, so I'll stick with one for now. A DB sounds worse without a soundpost but acoustic basses don't have them so I assume they won't improve the sound, else someone would be fitting them, right? So we can rule out the sound improving by transferring vibrations to the back and say it'll just be for strength. But too stiff will stop the soundboard vibrating properly and deaden the sound. So I wonder if the post would be best directly under the bridge or the X brace in front of the bridge? Which needs to vibrate freely the most? It's no wonder I can't sleep at night. 😆

I've heard that vegan quarter pounders lack heft.

When I bought my Quarter Pound pickup there was a good second hand one for sale. The bloke said he only wanted a tenner for it, so I told him I didn't understand what he meant and bought a new one instead. 😉 Another thought as pedantry runs strong in this thread, is it 'a Precision pickup', or 'a set/pair of Precision pickups', as there's two of them?

I've kind of tried to look at that earlier on in the thread. I made a makeshift bridge mounted in front of the current one, so directly on the soundboard, strung and tuned it up and left it for an hour. Before, during and after showed no noticeable distortion of the soundboard against a straight edge. The proper taller bridge will probably sit on top of the existing bridge so as to spread the load and to utilise the piezo. I managed to use the string pegs to do this but will have to use a tailpiece in practice because the extreme angle behind the bridge will pull the pegs out. I guess there's no real way of telling how it will react long term without just doing it, but I did mention the possibility of a soundpost earlier in the thread. With the jack socket/battery box one side and the EQ/tuner housing the other removed I have relatively good access to attend to any of these things, even drill and bolt the neck if I don't/can't make a good job of the dovetail. They may have seemed like nonsensical ramblings but there is some logic in there somewhere, honest. 😄

I think maybe that's why it broke apart. Partly me being a bit heavy handed but partly because the central part of the heelblock has about 60% of the dovetail, while the two outer parts only have about 20% each towards the top so started to move before the centre.

You can see the joins here.

I have a Precision bass guitar with a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound pickup. I have a P bass with a Quarter Pounder. One of the above makes you sound like a tool, you choose which one. 😉

Stupid Kid - Sultans Of Ping

I forgot to say, with bass laying on its back, the three pieces are arranged vertically, side by side across the width of the heel, with the neck horizontally on top so I can't stagger them.

Love Is The Drug - Roxy Music

Righty ho, here's the next installment of my descent into madness. 😉 The only sensible part so far is that I've got @Andyjr1515waiting in the wings to possibly build me a new, wider neck if needed. Thank you Andy for the assistance you've given so far and any future help. Ive done some serious measuring using my EUB as a comparison, my doublebass is in storage at the mo. The fingerboard at the nut is the same width on both so no issues at that end. At the point where the neck meets the body on the Aria, the EUB board is 10mm wider than the original Aria one, so 5mm overhang either side. It's surprising that a doublebass board is not that much bigger than an electric bass one, the main reason it feels so much bigger is the much tighter radius making it arch a lot higher. This is the original neck layed on the EUB at the body join area of the Aria where the biggest overhang will be. The black on the sides is the EUB board which is the same size as a DB. The bare wood is the neck to heelblock join which separated with the heat when removing the neck, note the terrible shape from the factory, a really asymmetric carve. More of that in a minute though, back to the neck/board. I've ordered a board and have a plan to still use the original neck. A new, more DB like neck would be much better to fit the new, wider board to, but if it's deeper like a DB and wider then I'm worried about the added weight on one end the bass. If you can imagine the profile of the Aria neck as a ( shape, then the sides meet the board at less than 90 degrees, if that angle were to be continued on the sides of the DB board, which is 11/12mm thick, then the 5mm overhang might be able to be lost while keeping the top playing surface full size. Remember the nut is the same width so will only gradually get wider towards the body, and after the body the width and shape is irrelevant to it fitting. The original neck won't have the profile of a DB neck but I fear that would add far too much weight. Hopefully this way the added weight of the thicker board will be spread as the board will go over the body as well. I possibly have a cunning plan regarding the length of board but that's for later in the week. I've glued the three bits heelblock back together. I'll let that dry overnight and glue it to the neck tomorrow. Then I can try and clean up reshape the joint ready for when the new fingerboard arrives. What is it they say about clamps? Also if glue is supposed to be sticky, why does everything become unfeasibly slippery once a layer of glue has been added? Not enough pressure from the clamps and the gaps don't close up, too much pressure and the whole thing slides and explodes. I need to sharpen a chisel to clean out the neck joint socket of this forlorn looking thing now.

I'll have to second Keith Moon, just for the sheer craziness of it all. Also Stephen Morris for the raw energy and Boris Williams because he's just a great drummer.

Burning Down The House - Talking Heads

Keep On Running - The Spencer Davis Group

I confused, but it is late. Why would the B string be any shorter from ball to silk than the E string? If anything I'd expect it to be longer as the saddles generally get moved back progressively towards the lower strings to achieve correct intonation, meaning that length would probably be longer on the B than E.

Here you go. Maybe different repairs and tools but techniques that can be adapted maybe.

I watched a video on a luthier repairing Willie Nelsons guitar. Just to make it structurally sound but keep the mojo. I'd guess that's what you'd like to do here? I'll have a look for it in the morning. Also in my Aria FEB thread in this section Matt P posted a link to a luthier with lots of content on acoustic repairs, really interesting if nothing else. Here you, hopefully there's something in there with similar repairs. https://youtube.com/user/twoodfrd

Yeah save that. The soundhole is only where the finish has worn away isn't it? Glue a few cleats under any splits. Have you seen Willie Nelsons? https://images.app.goo.gl/y2TsvXRE7oggToCX7

Definitely worth steaming that and then see where you stand. It's amazing what will come out, then a fine sand and some oil and you might just be surprised. My doublebass fell over from standing with the fingerboard hitting the edge of a granite step first. It crushed a string into the board and absolutely destroyed loads of windings on the string. Being ebony it's very dense and hard. I steamed it with wet kitchen towel and a soldering iron to really target the two inch long dent, a strings thickness deep. It took a good few goes but it came out completely, finish with 800 wet'n'dry and lemon oil. The rest of the band couldn't believe it the following week. You've got nothing to lose. 🙂 This was the string so you can imagine the board.

Hot, Hot, Hot - The Cure

Completely separate to the 4003 bass. More of a answer to the repeated asking to re release the 4005, albeit with a different body shape, pickup spacing and tailpiece. Yours for £5k 😆

Pssst, that was Avril Lavigne. From what I hear Swifty is a pretty shrewd, and ruthless if needed, business woman, and if you're her target audience then she writes a pretty catchy pop tune. Good luck to her.

Or........ well, you know.......find someone who could make a new neck about 20mm wider at the body end with the Takamine headstock grafted on with a scarf joint. You don't know anyone do you? Ha ha, now you wish you hadn't joined in this thread. 😄 I going to leave it for the weekend as I want to try and get my Hofner pickups in and wired up. This Takamine wasn't meant to take over but the excitement of flame throwers and sledgehammers got the better of me. I might get a fingerboard ordered and go from there. I'll order some veneer of some kind as well to shim the dovetail. In one of the vids mentioned earlier he glued a veneer to edges of the dovetail and filed/chiseled/scraped to shaped after changing the neck angle, seems like the simplest way.

Raspberry Beret - The little purple one