Norris

It would be nice to have a bit of a double bass discussion from the uprights amongst us. I'm sure there's a few db-curious on BC

Do you really need any other bass than one Precision?

Oh my goodness that's appalling. Evil woman

What IS the best bass for metal? I thought I'd better get that one out of the way!

Any piece of wood must jump for joy when you buy it Jez, 'cos it knows you're going to make it look stunning!

Have you looked through the pinned recommended luthiers thread? There are also a few enthusiasts that post in the Builds forum. Where are you based? There may be someone local that is willing to help, although not many will have a thicknesser. 10mm is quite a bit to plane by hand

That's not restricted to the US

One song we play is Radar Love. It nearly always gets people dancing. In the middle section we play as quiet as possible (ppp for you theorists) and get gradually louder (crescendo) over about 32 bars. The audience doesn't ever stop dancing. The dynamics add tension and the audience can feel it building until we hit the chorus with full force. It's a bit like the long drum roll in dance music before the "release" when the theme comes back in. That's not the only song where we use dynamics. There are several where we'll drop the volume for a section of guitar solo before coming back up to normal volume. It adds interest and certainly doesn't stop people dancing. On most songs it sounds better to back off slightly for the vocals, get louder for the solo or chorus, and then drop back down for the verse. It doesn't have to be quite so dramatic as my earlier example, just switching between mf and f (medium-loud and loud). The audience may not notice what we are doing but do know it sounds good. Playing too loud is a different subject entirely.

Nice idea by @Akio Dāku there. You could feature the composition competition. Maybe talk about the photo competition too - great for audio

Micromesh pads go up to 12000 grit iirc

You can always sand the heavier dyed areas a tad and give it another wipe of dye. You'll always have some variation though as that's the nature of dye on natural wood. Otherwise you may as well have painted it instead

Oi! I'll have you for copyright!

A mate of mine used to own a guitar emporium. He told me the same thing about Gibson minimum orders. He simply couldn't justify stocking them.

It depends how flexible the neck is. The truss rod needs to cover the range of the neck that will flex under string tension. If the truss rod isn't long enough you could end up with a bit of a "ski ramp" at the dusty end

Fret wire comes in a large range of varying heights and widths. It's down to personal preference. A lot of people go for "jumbo" frets, although you'll struggle to find a fret wire described as such on sale. The action is the gap between the strings and frets, so the height of the frets doesn't really have a bearing. However it sounds like you might prefer a shorter fret, in which case it's probably best to keep them wide to avoid excessive wear, especially if you use roundwounds

It needs to be anchored in the thicker parts of the neck, so yes, within the heel

No orange basses then

Just bought a Mexican P from Lozz. Very smooth transaction, excellent communication and bass in fabulous condition. I'd happily recommend a shady deal in the motorway services with him. He was kind enough to meet up halfway. Thanks!

Brilliant!

Lovely work. Did you make two cuts on your scarf? The grain matches rather well - lovely attention to detail! I'm rather jealous of your cabinet making background - although I'm sure it would be much different doing it for a living rather than a hobby. I would love to have done more woodwork in the past, but the school timetable clashed with music, and I never really did any until the last few years. Now my eyes are about shot for close work these days, so I'm constantly switching between glasses, magnifying goggles and naked eye. It would have been so much easier back when I could see

I tend to avoid wet & dry paper altogether. Even the decent stuff leaves bits of abrasive embedded in the wood. I use 600 grit stearated aluminium oxide paper for final prep before finish and for flatting off between coats. Then I use micromesh pads (dry) for the final polishing - frequent wipes on a microfibre cloth avoids clogging Think of it this way: it's a constant learning process, and your bass will be really well prepared by the time you've done

Mine is an Indonesian Squier P-Bass Special. Pretty much the same spec though. Precision body, jazz neck and passive P/J pickups. I bought it second hand on here a few years ago. I think it had sat around unplayed for some time, so just needed a clean up and it was pretty much pristine. The SD QPs and Hipshot detuner I've upgraded it with cost more than the bass (£150 iirc). It's my regular gigging bass

First of all you could remove the brass plates. That would cut the eyesore rating by about 90%. After that you could maybe carefully sand the excess glue back to level with the body (600 grit sterated aluminium oxide paper followed by micromesh ideally) then polish out the scratches with T-cut (or even smoother polishing compound). After that, you'd need to fill the screw holes with dowels, dye them to match as close as possible, then drop fill with lacquer and sand/polish. I don't think you'll ever not be able to see the repairs, but they shouldn't be too noticeable from a small distance

When I built my telecaster it took longer to get the finish right than it did to build it from scratch. If you're a perfectionist (and not an experienced builder) it's never right. At some point it will become right enough. Just don't rush it at this point. Having said that, it'll probably pick up a dint first time out anyway

Ki0gon made my loom with mini-pots. He does those too. We had a bit of fun getting the switching pot to fit in such a tight area though, as it gets a bit narrow on the T of VVT on my Squier