ped

I like your thinking - lets get some

I've had some of them too, big box Cali (I actually sold that to Scott) and some 3 leaf stuff (proton and wonderlove). I have no need for a pre/DI. I'd like to try the MXR at some stage though experience with the FI and C4 tells me I wouldn't actually use it.

Same, he's a really nice guy. He'd be just as enthusiastic about your setup no matter what you had in your chain.

I'm surprised it fits over the bridge, but now I think about it, it probably seems as though it's designed to fit! I do a lot of palm muting on my stang so I haven't tried one, but it does look good.

Absolutely stunning job. Interesting that you replaced the non original bridge cover - is that a Daryl Jones nod?

If you don't own one of these, a Noble/Capo and a Cali 76, are you even really a bass player

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad it sounds OK. Better to be consistently wrong than all over the place - as you say, perhaps it's partly the bridge intonation. The strings are really light gauge so I can't quite get enough relief on the neck with them as things are - once I have the new bridge installed I'll do a proper setup with my usual strings. Currently with the truss rod slackened off, there's a verrrry slight back bow giving some rattle around the first few frets. The parts are all arriving over the next few days - the bridge and decal are here, the pickup surround and loom are in the post - so we're nearly there.

Hm I’ve gone from graphite necked midi equipped basses to vintage wooden short scales. Probably about as opposite as you can get!

Unfortunately the slant is so slight that I can’t really make that argument 😂 it did cross my mind though

Thanks - I must admit having never taken a tuner apart or replaced one before I'm fully ignorant in the ways of the tuner. I'll have a look at how things fit together and see what needs doing. Another option is to have the Musicmaster neck defretted, giving me the option of the Mustang ebony neck which I could leave as-is.

Better now I've attached a strap to it that goes around my head

Thanks to the most excellent @Burns-bass I am now ready to celebrate the hootenanny!

Yeah I think it'll really show off the wood nicely - but will see what the luthier says. I'm only interested in it because it looks so nice but the more I read about it the more I'm leaning towards leaving it alone - if it needed some work anyway then I'd be leaning towards it but as it is - I'm not 100% sure. The material varies so much so I'll see what Steve says, what he has experience using, and go from there. Currently the relief is about right but I'll wait until it's finished to put my favourite and slightly heavier strings on it, and the new bridge. These strings are OK but I've forgotten how 'grabby' non coasted strings can be. All in all I'm really glad that the main parts function so well before the modifications/corrections take place. It also needs shielding, badly. Lots of hum when not touching anything but silent when you do. So: - Bridge is on the way - Neck needs coating - Musicmaster decal to be applied - Pickup surround on the way - New wiring loom being discussed (likely pan/tone with series/parallel option and possibly second capacitor mode - Shielding - investigate using original tuners (maybe) - Learn to play

Care to test that theory? 😄

I’ve got a dilemma now though. Recently picked up a fretless to match the fretted but it’s faded to nearly yellow. It’s going to be impossible to match a strap to it, and because I use a Backbeat it’ll be easier to have one strap for both. Gone for my old 90’s ‘Slapstrap’ which is super comfy and a bit of a classic

Updated pic with fretless neck attached

Maybe I need an angry parent to make me learn properly! RE the pickup surround - I talked to Tim at Gig.Ink https://gig.ink - despite offering a super cool range of designs, he was more than happy to do me a simple boring white rectangle. He sent 1:1 templates to test and we're all set. The bass looks quite cool with a surround around the bridge, too - so at a later date I might do that, or get surround(s) in other colours, maybe.

I think the lines are in the wrong place on mine

Yeah me too, at least this way I can use the bridge as an excuse

OK - the fretless neck is adjusted and the action/intonation is set. It plays beautifully - amazingly the intonation is pretty spot on - I can't get it exact because of the shared saddle arrangement, but the new Albridge will sort that. However, I will install that last, if I need to - I quite like the original bridge, so given the inaccuracy of my fretting, it might not need to be perfect. We'll wait and see. Along with the wiring harness, one other job is to correct the slight slant of the neck pickup. There's room under the pickguard to move the pickup by a few degrees, but doing so will necessitate cutting the scratchplate a little to make it fit. What I'd like to do is fit a bezel around the neck pickup, using w/b/w pickguard material in a rectangle, to go around the J pickup and hide the gaps left by the old position. I wondered if anyone on BC has the skills/time to make this, otherwise I could try a pickguard website (I have used tinyTone before with great results) It just wants to be like this, around a dimarzio J pickup

I sometimes wonder myself!

Precisely, so I can’t solo a pickup to check if just one cancels the hum. But from looking online it seems as though they definitely do.

Yeah that’s the sort of thing I was thinking of but then I saw a used version of the Soul Mate which seems to offer a similar set of features plus some useful additions. I really like FKY audio stuff (Had the Meridian Funk-u-lator made by the same guy but for Meridian guitars) so I’ll check out some more demos of it.