Pea Turgh

Scratchplate cut/drilled/fitted, found three quarters of a set of strings to make sound with. My wiring loom actually works - absolutely chuffed! Still to do - sort nut (doesn’t sit right and is too high), fit shim, cut & shape a new truss rod cover, route 5mm under the pickup - it sits too high and the strings bash it. Can’t understand how it was ever playable like it was for the past 50 years! Need a short scale set of flatwounds then. Love LaBella LTFs but can’t seem to find any at a reasonable cost. Anyone got any supplier recommendations?

😂. They are actually small - 205mm x 420mm x 220mm. It would look great atop my BF Two10.

You got me looking 😂

Getting close now… just need to cut the scratchplate and truss rod cover, fit the nut and solder the earth ground to the loom. The colour is a little patchy, but sort of emulates a well-worn violin 😂

Hey gang. Thanks for all the useful tips. I ended up using an old hifi interconnect of suitable thickness. My soldering skills are not amazing but it seems to have gone ok. Will hook it up to an amp in a bit and tap the PU with a screwdriver to see if I get a signal. I rewired the PU lead too - the previous job was shonky.

Hey peeps. Usually I’d just get a ki0gon loom, but on my most recent project I thought I’d do as much as I can. Got the CTS pots etc, only a simple volume & tone jobby. My question is, what wire is needed? I’ve got loads of domestic hifi speaker cable kicking around - is there a reason other than aesthetics to use cloth covered or specialist stuff? Or shall I just use what ever passes signal? Thanks in advance.

Oh definitely! That’ll look ace 👍

Muscle mass diminishes as we age, but with proper resistance training you can slow the decline. Use it or lose it!

I’m only 44, and avoided back issues so far (shoulder and knee problems though!). There’s quite a lot of evidence to say that correct exercise and stretching stops you getting issues in the first place, so I started at the gym 9 months ago. My bad knee is better (balancing my quads/hamstring strength), but my shoulder got a lot worse before getting better (overdoing/bad technique on a shoulder press machine). Talk to your doctor, get down the gym!

Cream strat knobs would match well I reckons. Could go cream PU covers, too.

I have a Barefaced Two10 (flawless) with an Ampeg PF350 (minor issues). Nothing that stops a performance, but there is some weird super-low level self noise, and the pots have gotten scratchy recently. Been gigged lightly for a few years. Will likely carry on for another few years too! The Ampeg does have the baked-in Ampeg sound though, so not really neutral. I’ll go with something else when pushed to do so by amp failure. Though if I could go back in time I’d have just picked a Rumble 500 combo.

Do you think there will come a time when interest in old instruments will decrease, and the value these “investments” will plummet? What is the allure? Or is it just that age genuinely makes it play and sound better? Someone will probably pay the £26k asking, and it will go in a special display case or climate controlled cupboard. It ain’t getting played again!

I popped in to PMT Cardiff today, just to see how light is light these days. Fender Rumble, Ashdown Studio, Blackstar Unity - it’s just nuts how light they all are! I had to ask if there was a driver fitted!

They do look ace. Nice colour, too! I didn’t realize they were that compact - even more tempting….

Great score!

They are a bit big. And I just chucked them on to get a sense of the final look. The scratchplate isn’t even marked out for cutting yet. When they arrived and I opened the package up , a friend said “oh are they for your cooker?” 🤦🏻‍♂️

Been a busy couple of weeks in work & family life, but had a couple of hours today, so got the body sanded to a good grade then experimented with the two stains I bought. On the website, the amber looked brown enough and the brown tooled too dark, so I ordered both just in case. However, they look exactly as you’d expect on my scrap of ply, so the 50/50 mix I was thinking necessary was not. Managed to stain the whole body without making any mistakes. It will need sanding back again as the water based stain will no doubt raise the grain. Assuming it’ll also need a second treatment to make coverage more even and the colour deeper. Might pop a layer of amber over that if the colour isn’t warm enough, but will experiment on my ply scrap to see before applying to the body. Couldn’t resist a mock-up then! I had pondered altering the pickguard shape, but will likely stick with the original. I had to make a template as the original plate had shrunk quite a bit. Also might wire it with volume only (I always play with the tone wide open). Looks alright, don’t it?!

Mistakes are just learning tools. You turn up to a gig with that, you’ll be everyone’s hero!

Oh that is nice. Bonkers how colours can make such a difference to a familiar shape.

I had the soap bars, and accidentally broke the active circuit. Popped a Ki0gon loom in to convert to passive, and it was perfectly adequate.

What’s a bodge sauce gun? 😂 Re that Cort- I’d be tempted if I wasn’t already committed to another project. Also love the Hohner Jack basses - great for strolling around the house playing without bashing doorframes. Very ergonomical.

The pictures aren’t great - the wood grain and laminates are beautiful, but the finish itself is streaky. I naively thought a wipe on finish would soak in evenly leaving a lovely flat surface. Doh. *Note to self - before doing anything, re-read advice already given by the kind people of the Basschat collective. Applying the finish with wire wool had already been suggested. The product states cure time is 2 weeks, so I will have a pop at flattening it off then. If no joy, strip and try again. I really want to do this thing justice, not just end up with another version of what it was when I picked it up!

Got the neck sanded nicely to 320 grit. Received an order of Crimson Guitars stains and wipe on finish, so did the neck (just finish, no stain on that). There is surprisingly little in the way of instructional videos on the application of this stuff. Which is a shame, because it looks like I’ll have to sand it off again! I wiped it on with paper towel, then buffed it as per instructions. Damn stuff is streaky. Anyone have any hints & tips as to how to get a uniform finish with this stuff? Go up the grits with wet n dry?

Nice! When it’s done, it will be awesome. Also not too many of them about, so that’s also a plus. I’m concerned about the pickup in my very old Japanese bass that I decided to strip and refinish before checking out the pickup, so I may need those House of Tone details from you in the new year!

Ooh, dats nice! Pop another Thunderbird pickup in place of the split P and that would look tasty.