Christine

That is rather nice, Nordstrand pups?

3 hours ago, RedVee8 said:

Gday mate, 

Carlo showed us a pic of the FireDragon which lead us here. Great to see that you kept up with the good work.

hope you are going well.

cheers

I'm well, making the most of the summer as I can, it is nice to see you both and I hope all the rest of the crew are all well too

3 hours ago, Peter Maxwell Wright said:

Thanks - do you know if that's on fretless, as well as fretted basses?

It was a fretted Jazz bass, identical to mine, that was the only bass he had with him

It's not what you're asking but in 77/78 he was using roundwound RS66

39 minutes ago, RedVee8 said:

Looks great Christine. Just looked over this thread and the LP twins thread. Great work!

Hello stranger where have you two (CB) come from?

11 hours ago, Geek99 said:

I’ll have to look out for some suitable shim material since I need to lose at least 2mm

credit card slice ?

A slice of credit card will save you some money (pun intended) but it will leave a gap between the toe and heel of the neck joint which will tend to isolate the neck from the body. what you need is something like this ideally

7 hours ago, Count Bassie said:

So good to see you're at something outstanding Christine!  And right, what else would you be at, of course.  

Always a treat to see your work. 

Good Lord, fancy seeing you here!  How are you?

6 hours ago, Geek99 said:

It’s about that - think my bridge is too high then, or I need a shim

preferred materials ? 

So you're neck relief is fine then I take it, just your action is too high? I must admit I like a high action, I tent to be a bit aggressive and sound like I'm auditioning for a door buzzer contest.

Personally I would shim, it's totally reversible and makes the bass more comfortable to play. Stew Mac sell some purpose made shims but any wood like Mahogany, Beech, Maple etc. will do; just try and get the taper as even as possible to get the best overall contact you can for better energy transfer neck to body

8 minutes ago, Muzz said:

Fantastic...they're that good you'd better watch out for Cease and Desists from Gibson... 😕😀

I hope they're that far removed from a real T bird that they won't be bothered, the basic shape is there but that's about it. That really annoys me, there's few more Gibson fans than me but why do that, Fender don't, I think they have the sense to see it does them more good than harm. I would really like to have thought that my builds would have made people consider buying a Gibson rather than something else. Anyway, that's my hissy fit over

Just some pictures to show what I'm wittering about

The bass side has had just a light sanding with 600 grit, you can just see the gloss bits left

With just a tiny bit more sanding the surface is evenly sanded, a position I've been in twice already

So after a coat of lacquer (excuse the orange peel) the surface is like this, near perfect

Fingers crossed even with shrinkage I hope this is just about there now. I'll give it a couple of days hanging then I'll give it another sand down and a couple more coats just to be sure. I think a lot of the problem has been that the very gentle but even curve of the top along with the gloss just highlights the tiniest imperfections. Whereas the twins with their heavily shaped top just hid them, flat surfaces are dead easy. The moral of the story is that I should have gone satin or kept it flat.

15 hours ago, Slappindabass said:

I did a one day set up course. However the neck were adjusted under tension

Did the course organiser also repair broken truss rods?

If you adjust a truss rod under tension you have to by default move the nut under strain, that will cause some wear and tear on both the nut and the rod. If the nut is brass the wear will be more and we all know how easy it is to wreck a thread. OK if all goes well the wear will be slight but every time you adjust it will happen and eventually will become  a problem, look at how many classic instruments have truss rod issues. Remember you will need to apply more strain to the rod and it's anchors including crushed wood fires) to move the neck under tension that it needs just to hold it there

Welcome, getting "demoted" to the bass happened to Paul McCartney too, poor sod, ruined the man!

So let me get this right, your band "demote" you to the bass to make way for some young guitar hero and expect you to fork out for an amp? Come on now, there's space for emotional blackmail here

Well shoot! That puts pay to an otherwise rather brilliant idea, bullet proof Rolls Royce cancelled

I've started cutting back the third this morning, I'm not totally happy with the flatness, the gloss really amplifies any slight unevenness that you can't even feel by hand so..... Back to the spray gun for another eight coats or so, thankfully I'm not in a hurry to get this one done as I can't afford any pickups for it yet

There's some seriously good work here, I'm more than impressed!

9 minutes ago, claustra said:

Thanks for the examples and tips for natural / non chemical finishes.

I'll stick to the boring natural coulour and satin polyurethane finish on this one, but this gives ideas for possible spare part assembling that could be tempting some day !

 

You won't regret it, that piece of wood is gorgeous

Actually thinking about it more, when inserting the threaded insert, tap it in a couple of mm then run superglue around the base before driving it home and use a spare m3 screw not your actual one

Put a drop of water in the hole and if you have one and one tat will fit stick a warm but not up to temperature soldering iron tip in the hole. The water should boil, this will reinflate the crushed wood fibres. Do that a couple if times ot 3 or 4 if you don't have te soldering iron. Leave it to dry overnight, run a little medium or thin superglue over the hole sides and tap in the insert with a screw with some wax on it so it doesn't accidentally get glued in or the threads clogged. Should do the job as good as new or even better

3M is good tape, I've had a lot of success with the last lot of tape I bought, green stuff called Frogtape but tape is a subject for discussion in itself

A nice effect with scorching on something open grained like oak especially quarter sawn is to wire brush it, scorch it black, wire brush it again and give it a final light scorch then seal with sanding sealer and apply a white grain filler (or any other colour)

It's amazing how much pressure tape can put on something like that with a good stretch

That's extra long you need

Do you think I could copyright the fret? Everyone uses them so I suppose no one ever has, I could single handedly screw the whole music business over and become so popular everyone would want to buy my guitars!! 🤑 I know that isn't actually possible

It also helps if you gently flex the neck from the middle in the direction you want it to go to relieve strain on the nut

21 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Gibson my be shaping up for a battle with the big boys if they decide to make a big fuss around the 'LP' shape...

 

But it's only a Florentine cutaway, a shape that predates Gibson