mhoss32

I Think i Understand, forgive my slowness the practical question is, if i had 2 pickups, each with their own 2 band EQ and an active/passive switch, would this be a reasonable way of ensuring that if 1 pickup was in active and the other was in passive, there would still be a reasonable blend of both? and if not is there a solution? here is an outline of the setup im thinking about: this is based on using 2 identical, passive pickups

Ah awesome, thanks for the response! the application is quite a bit different to the intended purpose, im wondering about having individual 2 band preamps for each pickup, and then feeding them through the buffered blend to ensure there weren't substantial differences in volume. in theory would this work? and how would it sound if one pickup was run passive and the other through an active preamp before the blend control?

Wondering if any electrical Gurus have any insight on a couple of questions I came across this schematic of a buffered blend pot deisgned to take inputs of different Impedances and/or outputs I have 2 questions 1: would it be possible with this schematic to replace the 10k pot with a 3 position switch? like a normal pickup selector switch but with the advantage of working with very different pickups? 2: if you had 2 individual pickup volumes upstream, would there be a big/noticeable drop in output volume if the switch was set to both pickups, but 1 pickup was at 0 volume? i know these are kind of odd questions haha, its for a pretty unique application thanks in advance if anyone can help!!

Id drop bruce wei a note on etsy, he did the fretboard inlays for my last bass perfectly for a fairly reasonable cost

All the way through this you guys have been so kind, and helpful! its awesome to have conversations like this while building, and really good to get peoples thoughts and opinions on things as i go along i've got a few ideas cooking for the next project already!

Thanks for your kind words everyone! You guys are absolutely right, its a difficult finish to apply well. ive had a little bit of experience with it before and did some practice before having a go at this, but the steps i followed are as follows: sand the surface back to 600-ish all over i mixed up a 2lb cut of the shellac with methylated spirits. its a pain to get clear methylated spirits in the UK without a permit, but some model railway suppliers do sell it in small quantities. i let it dissolve for at least 24 hrs, with a regular shake. using the 2lb cut of shellac, i layed down a fairly thick wash coat over the surface, not using a rubber just using a lint free rag. with about 3 hours of drying time inbetween to ensure that it had totally gassed off. make up a few french polishing rubbers. I use lint free t-shirt cloth wrapped around cotton wool pads for this. using one of the rubbers, add a small amount of the methylated spirits, and dab a very small amount of fine pumice onto the pad, and begin working it over the surface of the bass. this fills the pores very effectively. you can hear and feel the abraision happening, and then adjust the alcohol and pumice accordingly. this needs to be done pretty slowly, but it leaves a good base for the final polish. once the surface is filled and flat, i actually diluted the 2lb cut slightly, as it wasn't as thin as i was used to. this was then applied to another of the rubbers, and lubricated very slightly with a drop of olive oil. the polish is then applied in figure 8 motions. the length of each polishing session can vary, and its best to just do this by feel, but generally each session of polishing was about 5-10 minutes for me. if you feel the surface getting soft then stop and let it dry before coming back. between sessions it use useful to wipe over the surface gently with a rubber with only alcohol to remove any residual oil to remove the fine swirl marks after youve done 2 or three sessions, sweep over the surface with the grain with a rubber with just alcohol once i'd done 5 or so polishing sessions, the pad had started to build up a bit of a crust of shellac, and at this point i began to add some more pressure and added more pure alcohol to the pad to burnish the surface. once youve reached a good gloss to the finish, a final gentle wipe down with very little alcohol will help to even out the finish. I let the finish dry and harden for a few days, and then wipe it with a soft rag and some good quality furniture cream polish, just to bring out the gleam that you see in the above photos and feel free to ask if you want any more info on the finish! with that in mind... Here she is!! in a case with some foam and velvet, where she belongs! needs a proper set up, and some proper photos taking, and i will record some sound clips but these will give you an idea of the final look: As i say, needs a proper set up doing, some fret leveling and truss rod adjustments, but at the moment its still a lovely bass to play. ended up very heavy (over 12lbs) but this is a gig bass, not one to take to practice for a few hours. the preamp is a john east U retro with a passive tone control, and the bigsby combined with the roller saddles and graphite nut dont knock it out of tune when used thankfully! i will get round to signing the truss rod cover with a gold sharpie as well, but as itll be on and off a few times i thought id best not just yet. The inlays didnt seem to mind the neck being under tension or the first minor truss rod adjutments, so that's more good news. ive strung it with one of my spare sets of optime gold strings, but i think it would benefit from a set designed for a longer than 34" scale. I hope youve all enjoyed the log, and as i say i will get some proper photos and some sound clips done. but in the meantime it'll be onto the next one!!

Okay, so finishing has progressed significantly: Polish upon polish upon polish upon polish. lots of polishing. but the finish did come up really nicely. there are a few minor undulations, but the colour is perfect The bigsby now has its nice new brass string bar done on the lathe, and the holes drilled with a stainless steel guide on the pillar drill, and these are then mounted on the newly polished body! The Headstock piece of the cocobolo came out a bit darker than the body wood, but the grain is still gorgeous. I bought some extra thin abalone to go behind the little gold tree of life for the headstock, and made a truss rod cover from some 2.5mm black plastic. i was originally going to do this with some of the leftover cocobolo, but i want it to stand out a bit more so i have somewhere to sign my name in gold sharpie. this should hopefully all get finished up this week, and I will try and get someone with a good camera to take some finish shots!

Guess whos back!? thats right, its been 7 moths, ive got a new job and have been away from home for ages, so this project has been on hiatus for a long long looooooong time. but now im picking it back up again. so heres some updates: Side dots time for the fretboard. drilled first then using some brass tube and some very small abalone dots superglued in we'll have some nice shiny details that match all the rest of the gold and shell. Then mixing up some shellac for the finish, this is a fairly thin cut of liberon blonde flakes, dissolved in clear methylated spirits: And this is the first few coats applied to one of the pickups, and to the body: makes the cocobolo look insane, all that lovely grain finally coming out! will be doing some more regular updates now so stay tuned, need to get this thing finished!

i had indeed considered it, in fact both of the buzzards had tru-oil finishes. i absolutely love the stuff! the problem is with the cocobolo. it's so oily that the oils in the wood can prevent the tru oil from drying properly 🙁

again, sorry for the delay in updating again! once again its been a very busy few weeks. but we have progress! Tuner holes are drilled for those massive schaller tuners!, and i drilled in a little recess for the little gold "tree of life" logo im putting on this bass. then the 6 holes for the neck screws and their bushings. then, after that comes the part i'd really been dreading. fretting the neck *gulp* Thankfully that went relatively smoothly. had a couple of small chips out of the inlays but nothing too major, and i didnt lose any of the pieces. so just a matter of carefully glueing them back into place. for those wondering, its Jescar evo gold fw43080, so pretty small. and yes, its gold. nothing on this bass could be described as "understated" 😁 of course, i couldnt resist a quick mockup: id say it was looking a bit like a bass! over the past few weeks i've also finsihed sanding the body all the way up to 400 grit, so it should be ready for finsihing soon. i've ordered some blonde dewaxed shellac, and im excited to see what it'll look like once the finish is on! another side effect of my little hiatus however, is that the cocobolo has darkend quite a lot! im honestly not 100% sure on the chemistry/biology here, whether its to do with oxidation or reacting to light or a little bit of both. either way, i really like it, its starting to get that nice deep red colour and lovely black grain. the end of the journey is just about in sight!!

and to reassure you all that progress is being made... This is how we do electrical engineering and preamp design in manchester... with a pint... in the pub

Hello all! sorry about the delay, ive been away all Christmas so not been able to progress much, but i have finished the top carving! will be moving onto the final sanding in the new year so stay tuned! P.S thank you for your patience!!

Thanks so much everyone! i'm super happy that everyone is enjoying this build log, im certainly enjoying building it! making a start on the top carving for the body now. lots of work with rasps and spoke shaves. as mentioned in the previous post, this isn't going to be the most radical of carved tops, its more to add some shapes and highlights to the upper "horns", i also have to keep the carve very close to the edge at the bottom, so that the top is flat enough to accommodate the bigsby. on the wider parts of the body, i really just want it to catch the light, and be a bit more shapely than a normal bass. this will also help to remove a little bit more of the weight from the body! you can see from the left picture sort of what im going for, the curve is mostly convex and then only concave right down at the edge. it makes it look quite bulbous, but i dig that! i also put a tiny bit of tru oil (literally 3 drops for the whole board) do darken the ziricote a tad before i put the frets on. i might do 1 more but i think that'll be it. i dont want the board to end up shiny, just a bit darker to add some contrast

time for a very frightening part... cutting the binding channel... and then binding it! on that second picture it looks hugs, but in reality its about 3mm, which is just about right for the 3 layers of banding ill be using. te be honest, this part was fairly painless, the cocobolo machines pretty well so long as your router bits are nice and sharp. as you can see, the binding channel is fairly deep, and once the binding is installed it will leave about 4mm of the cocobolo top over the top. the plan is then to carve the top down to the binding, so that the body has a nice subtle shape on the top. The first layer of the binding, you can see how much of the cocobolo is going to be carved away... and aslo how close in coclour the tulipwood is without finish on it. in relaity, the cocobolo will darken a bit more once a finish is applied, so there will be a nice contrast. the second layer (the ebony) went on a hell of a lot smoother than the first... its only .6mm thick and the grain runs along it so its pretty resistant to splitting along the tighter curves. and finally... all 3 layers are on! theres a steep learning curve to doing binding, but overall im fairly pleased. i think itll look good once the top is carved and the binding is scraped. but if you think it was nerve wracking doing it on the body... this damn near gave me a heart attack. i couldnt quite put my finger on why... but i wasn't quite 100% happy with how the fretboard looked. i'd placed the inlays about 2mm away from the edge, so that if i wanted to i could bind the fretboard after the fact, and thats what i decided to do. and honestly... im super gald that i did. i love the way the padauk binding looks now that its sanded back. and the inslay survived the whole operation intact. it looks more like a picture in a frame now, and i like that a lot! its starting to look like a bass! ill be glueing the back in place today and then im more than a little nervous about carving the top next week. its slowly getting there....

okie dokie, time for another quick update! in order to make things a bit easier on myself in the long run, i decided to do the binding on the F hole before i glued the top to the core of the body. genius! the F hole is pretty narrow and delicate, so instead of the tlipwood/ebony/tulipwood binding that will go all the way around the body, im just going to bind it ebony/tulipwood. the ebony part of the binding is just made from a strip of 0.6mm ebony veneer, and so went on really easily. no trouble there. its very flexible and sticks well. the tulipwood on the other hand was a massive pain in the butt. it looks lovely, as the grain runs vertically, but this makes it really liable to snap as you try and work it into place. its also a fair bit thicker than the ebony (about 1mm) so it needed a lot of sanding at each end to get it to join up smoothly. thankfully it seemed to some together alright in the end. i think it'll look really nice, especially around the edge of the body. one quick note: i realized after my last post, that the banding i have has the thin strips of black and white the other way around to the picture i put up (black on the outside and light on the inside), and that i removed the top layers of black and white with a scalpel so you can see the tulipwood from the top. ive also started to do a bit of work on the bassby (the bigsby for the bass). first step i found some nice 10mm steel roundstock that was going spare in the workshop: then a bit of turning on the lathe to get the grooves for the clips that hold it in place and it fits very nicely :), the small round piece with the hole through next to it will act as a drill guide to make sure the drill bit goes through vertically when i drill the 4 holes for the strings. and here it is! just a first mockup at the moment, the plan moving forward is to do the same thing with some brass roundstock and then polish it up so it matches the frame a bit better. brass is also a lot easier to work than the hard steel bar ive been using, so the holes in the final version will almost certainly be a bit neater as they will be easier to drill smoothly. im optimistic anyway! having had a bit of time to consider the daftness of putting a bigsby on a bass guitar, there are a few "solutions" ive come up with to the obvious problems. first off... this isnt going to be used for massive dive bombs and the like. more just for adding some shimmer to notes when needed. the holes for the g and e strings are 50mm apart center to center on the string bar ive made, which will work well as the schaller bridge's standard spacing is 51, and with adjustable spacing should be able to match up perfectly with a bit of fine adjustment. the roller saddles will also allow minimal resistance as the note is bent. ive already got a graphite nut, and the headstock is designed with straight runs from the nut to the tuners, so between all of those things tuning stability should be ok (fingers crossed).

Thaks andy! high praise coming from you!! I screwed the pickups to piece of scrap wood ,and then just passed them over a cutting bit on the router table to a depth of about 1/8 inch. the covers themselves were cut from the offcuts from the body and were glued in place while they were still oversized, then just sanded back with a couple of files and the disc sander

well things have been progressing slowly but surely... first of all ive sanded down the pickup covers: from this: to this: very pleased with them, i think they'll be a nice touch once verything is nice and finished up! i do need to get some gold pickup screws, as they came with silver ones so they match the rest of the hardware. also, got he headstock plate glued on with some more alaldite (the saviour of the man trying to glue cocobolo to anything): the purpose of the huge cutout for the Truss rod cover is so i can have a flush fitting one made of padauk. I love the look of padauk, but im trying to keep it's inclusion in this build to some subtle highlights here and there. along with the truss rod cover, im going to put a thin sheet in between the back piece of cocbolo and the wenge core of the body, and possibly along the edges of the fretboard as well. its such a bright colour when its finsihed, and although the figure of the cocobolo is pretty striking, all the other woods in this build are a bit more subdued in terms of their colours. speaking of which: the padauk glued to the back of the wenge. at the moment, that is just roughly cut back with a knife and some rough sandpaper, so theres a couple of rough edges where i had to glue some chipped off bits back on. its 1.5mm thick, but splits along the grain so easily. and i cut the pickup holes and neck pocket from the top piece of cocobolo while i was cutting the F hole with a fret saw: couldnt resist dropping the pickups in just to see how they looked, you can see from the picture how much the body wood has darkened since it was cut, against the freshly sanded pickups! and one bit of self indulgance deserves another, once i got home i layed everything on top of eachother together: its just about starting to look like a bass - exciting times! will be moving onto the bigsby at some point this week. the plan is to machine a new string bar with 4 holes spaced to match the schaller 462 roller bridge - about 16.5 mm. then, once the top is glued... itll be time to cut the binding channel (Gulp!!) im a big fan of the "bound on the top, round on the back" look, a bit like the fender aerodyne, so the top and F hole will be bound with a combination of ebony and tulipwood: the colours will give a nice compliment to the cocobolo i think, without being too light. i wanted to keep it all fairly dark for this build. stay tuned!

thanks very much! and i shouldnt think so. the ziricote is very hard anyway, and is slightly thicker than a normal fretboard, with the inlays only being a mm or so thick they won't have much effect on the material properties. thanks! theres a couple of little scratches here and there but nothing unfixable. thankfully a fret saw is sharp enough with enough teeth that it cuts through shell just fine, ill be more worried about seating the frets themselves. there's a small risk of chipping the shell as the frets are put in but ill cross that bridge when i come to it.

Da daaaa! the inlays are only bloody in!! little bit of super glue and wenge dust to start with... ] followed by a fairly intense sanding session... and heres the reults! theyre not perfect i know, but in the end im sure they'll be a nice flourish. im happy so thats the main thing! im not totally sure whether or not to darken the ziricote with some oil to help them stand out... what do you guys think? in the meantime... the headstock has had the wings glued and cut, and i got a nice cocobolo headstock piece cut as well: And, i also managed to get the tops off the pickups, and cut out some nice bookmatch pieces of cocobolo for the covers to match the top! its all coming along fairly nicely at this point next step will be to trim those down and sand them, then later in the week ill be working on the body again... hopefully removing some of the weight.

Wow this is looking amazing, i cant wait to see the top carve!

I know, i was lucky to get a piece that nice! although hopefully enough of that lovely figure will show through the inlays. the thinking is that the dark "cloud" pieces are supposed to look like the breaks in the clouds during a thunderstorm, so the ziricote is as much a part of the overall scene as the pearly bits. sort of like how lightning illuminates the clouds as it passes through: whether or not it works out that way remains to be seen... okay so exciting times are coming... THE INLAYS ARE CARVED OUT!..... but not in yet. most of the rest went fairly smoothly... again apart from those bits of lightning. next time i do an inlay... no lightning. annoyingly, by the time id finished doing all the waves, i'd got fairly good at it. no doubt by the time i come to do the next bass i will have forgotten all of this. for any of you interested what a fretboard looks like before the inlays actually get glued in, and what inalys look like not in the fretboard: you can probably see to the far left of the first picture a little black square in the first wave, turns out i went a tiny bit too deep there, so thats a little square of ebony veneer that covers up my mistake. in the end, i separated the large cloud pieces either side of the lightning and did them separately, it was just easier that way to get it to all line up nicely. you can probably also see on that picture the two bottles of CA glue poised and ready... well that picture was taken pretty late, and the missus told me to tidy the kitchen and go to bed. so you'll have to wait for the big reveal once theyre all glued in. you can also see on the second picture the headstock with the tuner holes plugged and the sides cut off. im going to glue some new maple wings on tomorrow to accomodate the new headstock design. for now... heres the fretboard with the inalys just laid in place: they all lie within a couple of tenths from flush, so they should all look very nice glued in and sanded back. the only real concern is the black MOP clouds... black mother of pearl isn't the most consistent, and so sanding back even a few tenths of a mm can really change the shades that show through. im hoping this won't be a big issue, but i really like the clouds nice and dark so hopefully they don't lighten up too much once sanded and polished.

I assume you mean the wenge? and yeah i think im going to have to, and take some off the edges, and drill out some weight elsewhere too... in case you can't read that... thats 4lbs 7oz just for the wenge. by my best guess, if this all got stuck together and the hardware added on as it is now, this thing would come in around 15lbs, and thats too heavy even for a beast of a man like me. im just realizing now that ive basically got a collection of the heaviest wood i can find and then built a huge body shape with it. worst comes to the worst i'll rout some of the thickness off the wenge, but if i can help it id rather not. in other news, the inlays are coming along well. i had a pretty successful weekend: getting the lightning and those tiny fiddle ends of the clouds in SUUUUUUUCKED. but im pleased with it so far. i like the way the ziricote looks in the background as well, i'd been tempted to just go with a flat black ebony to help the inlays stand out, but the ziricote gives it a bit of depth. what do you guys think? also ive now got a headstock design im pretty happy with: I had originally planned to go with a fairly classic symmetrical headstock... sort of alembic esque. but i always loved the look of le fay bass headstocks: its obviously very similar, although widened out a bit to accommodate a long truss rod cover and some big schaller tuners, and reversed. for some reason i always thought the le fay ones looked like they were the wrong way round.

Thanks guys for all the nice comments... if i ruin this now i fell like ill have let you all down! So the fretboard and body panels are now all glued up! yippee so ive been getting on with starting to get the inlays into the neck. scrapey scrapey.... The first wave took me about half an hour to get in, and based on the fiddly nature of some of the other bits... im guessing itll be a 6 - 8ish hour job alltogether. im really enjoying doing it though, so im going to spread it out over a few evenings and take my time. my missus is overjoyed and really likes sharing the kitchen counter with all the wood shavings. meanwhile, i managed to get the first cuts done on the body panels after they were glued up. (only the cocobolo is glued/bookmatched, the wenge is one massive slab!) not weighed them yet, but just carrying those pieces around made my arm ache... so theres a hell of a lot of material to still be removed before this thing is at a reasonable weight. also big thanks to andyjr for the tips on gluing up the cocobolo, ended up doing it with some ultra strong araldite, and it seems like that worked pretty well... again my missus was overjoyed at the smell of me mixing up epoxy in the kitchen. she is a very patient woman. also meanwhile, my electrical maestro has been hard at work with the CNC, and got a first test board for the preamp milled out: this just being the first mockup, its just done on a spare piece of the board. the final one will likely be long and thin, and use 2 dual op-amps instead of the one quad op amp for the benefits of packaging. also worth bearing in mind the idea is to get the circuit board printed by a company on the final one, its likely we can make the whole thing a little more compact with some clever design. im really looking forward to finding out how this sounds. once we've got the test board put together, the plan is to remove the ACG eq-02 preamp from the purple buzzard, and hook this up to test as the new bass will have the same MEC humbuckers. this will let us make the adjustments so it matches up well with the actual pickups that will go into the bass. speaking of which... they arrived yesterday! very exciting. (the missues is even more even more pleased that she keeps having to get up and sign for packages while im out of the house) the plan is to use the spare pieces of cocobolo from the top piece and make up some book matched cocobolo pickup covers for these, with that nice dark bit of wood grain running down the centre.

well the inlays arrived, and wow they look stunning, the pictures don't really bring out the colours but they really loads on the pressure a bit to get it right... but a bit of pressure is probably good. in other news - i managed to get the fretboard off the old neck with no major hiccups, as well as doing some research about the preamp that is going to hopefully go into this bass steamy steamy... as for the preamp, the idea at the moment is to go with a setup along the lines of the "anderton super tone control" from craig anderton's book "electronics projects for musicians", albeit with a couple of modifications. (anyone bored by electronics can switch off for this part) its an SVF based preamp, wired up with 6 controls: High pass, low pass, band pass filters, frequency control, resonance control (basically Q control) and a high/low resonance switch. in the config above it also has a volume control wired in, but this is either going to be omitted completely or replaced with a trim pot that is just set and then left alone. there will have to be a couple of changes to make this work well as an onboard preamp though. the circuit in the original book was rated at 7ma power draw, which is a little more than i would like. so "IC1" which is the quad op-amp is the low noise version, but there is also the TL064 available, not as low noise but much lower power draw. i guess we'll see, im going to build one of these things outside the bass and test it first, then make any of the necessary changes after that.

Ok, got some good pics of the cocobolo pieces: Its hard to see from the picture, but the piece on the left has a gorgeous dark streak running down the centre, so thats what i'm going to use for the top i think. these pieces are about 9mm thick, so along with the wenge centre and the heavy hardware this bass is going to have some serious heft to it. im pretty used to a heavy bass, and i tend to use very wide (4 inch) straps, so i think ill probably be ok if i can keep it somewhere around 10 - 10.5 lbs final weight. the two basses i play at the moment are these two: The Brown Buzzard weighs 10.4 lbs i think, and the purple one weighs 9.5 so theyre both pretty heavy, and my shoulder hasn't given way yet. pickups (the same as the purple buzzard) should be arriving in the next two days as well, so i can sketch out the cavities that will be cut in the wenge centre.