Christine

I'm so sorry, I nursed my mum and dad through cancer too, very painful times.

16 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

If it's a second, I'll happily take it off your hands Christine.

It will have to be a second, I couldn't let that go as a perfect

It worked out OK in the end, not perfect but a lot lot better, there was four of the things when I checked closely, this id what they looked like before the first dose of thinners but after cutting back along with my mini sanding block (an offcut from a nut )

I left them for most of the day to harden off and continued with other bits, fitting the hardware, making a nut setting the neck. I also fitted the Lull pickup, I have to admit to not opening the bag it was in until today and had a shock when I saw it, it was covered in some sort of thick stuff for want of an idea what it was. I can't imagine it was shipped from Mike's place like that, I assume it got there at the dealers. Thankfully it came off with white spirit

At the end of the day I removed everything again and sorted out the repairs and reassembled it all again, soldered in the electrics and gave it a whirl, nice is what it was everything a T bird should be and more. I've still got a few jobs to do, the pickup isn't adjusting in height smoothly and I need to set the intonation and fine tune the bridge but that can wait for a week now for everything to settle down. I was surprised how little I needed to use the truss rod to get the relief low, the carbon rods give quite a bit of stiffness, I'm interested to see how it all is on the other ebony one as that has that super slim neck

I've gone down the route of dribbling in some thinners, that mostly welded it up but left a small indentation so I used a micro brush to paint a little thinned lacquer into the cracks. That sat proud so I will be able to use a tiny sanding block to level down and polish again, I doubt it will be 100% invisible but close enough for rock and roll. I'm somewhat relieved

I've got Dunlops on all my basses, never had an ounce of trouble, then I'm hardly the most active players of all time but they get the occasional swing around

I rewired it today but I'm still in the same situation so I suspect the switch is faulty. While trying it the direct from pickup to amp sounded exactly the same as pickup through the pots to the amp. Now that was unexpected and if that's the case I've decided to scrap the switching between them idea and just go with a standard 3 way switch so I've ordered a Swithcraft one

A disaster appeared overnight, some water crept under the veneer by the volume knob hole and the bridge resulting in a slight swelling of the veneer and in turn a tiny crack in the lacquer. Mostly it's invisible but if you look they are there, I'm not sure what to do now. My options I think are to leave it, try and weld the crack with thinners or fill the crack with either lacquer or superglue/respray. I don't understand why that didn't happen during the intercoat cuts. 

All in all it's not been a good day

After a de solder a clean up and a thorough check and a re solder I'm in exactly the same position. To be honest the difference in sound between direct and through the pots is indistinguishable so I think I'm going to use a standard 3 way and chuck this freeway thing, I suspect the switch is faulty now

Thanks very much for your help

1 minute ago, Dov65 said:

Christine, what do you use for cutting back prior to a final polish ? One bass i have looks as tho theres a bit over spray when the light catches it...cheers 

I use wet/dry paper whatever it's actually called. Depending on how well I've sprayed I'll start with 400 - 600 grit, sanding with slightly soapy water, just a little then wiping the surface down until it is just flat, then down through the grits, 800, 1200, 2000, and finally 2500/3000. After that and when it's really dust free I have a foam disc I attach to my random orbital sander on direct drive with Farcell's G10 polishing compound (like a fine T-cut). You don't need the sander, you can do it with a cloth by hand just it takes a lot longer. You could try T-cut, I never have so I can't comment on how good it looks, Gibson also sell a small bottle of polishing compound that could be used afterwards

Are you seeing spray spots on the surface? If so I'd say start with 800 with a small block of wood as a pad if it's on a flat bit or just fingers if it's on the neck

15 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Epoxy mixed with wood dust:

I'm so glad it's not just me but that is still some accurate routing. It's not quite so easy to hide small gaps on paler timbers as it is on the black I use

The nut is higher towards the bass side, the nut slots need to be abut half the thickness of the strings so by default it gets higher there. It does look like it could do with a bit of tweaking looking at the pictures. Have a google at bass setup and go through that

With me having problems with the wiring on one of the twins I thought I'd check how these two were getting on hardening and low and behold they were pretty good so I've cut one back and polished it, have to admit I'm pleased with the result

Thanks for your help, it's very very much appreciated. It will be a tomorrow job but I'll report back as soon as it's done

No, still the same. Would it help if I desoldered it and went through it again? I'm sure there must be a short somewhere, I did use shrink wrap on the conections but maybe there is a stray strand touching something? It's so hard to see as the cavity is quite small and there's a lot of wires in there

20 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

Ok, if not, do it. Looking at the second schematic, it's mandatory.

No, I assumed that the blobs on the diagram was where the solder should be, I guess if the line crosses the connections then they should be connected? I'll link those up now with a bit of wire so it's reversible

1 minute ago, Hellzero said:

Ok, got it.

Did you solder B2, M1, M2 and N2 to the ground ?

I'll check straight after lunch

Thanks

1 minute ago, Hellzero said:

What do you mean by VT ?

Volume and tone pots, so one half of the switch sends the pickups through them and the other half straight to the jack

I've found this diagram of the switching if that helps

I'm having problems with the wiring of my new build using this switch. I have used the wireing diagram below

The problem I have is that in the bridge and neck mode in both VT and direct the neck pickup is silent whereas in neck mode it works perfectly. I'm afraid my electric knowledge is lacking, I would be grateful for any ideas

Thanks

Now that's nice!

I can just see that with a transparent royal blue lacquer on the body Only kidding

I must admit I do use Amazon Prime quite a bit, the strings above I bought Prime because I wanted them asap despite them being 5% more. I find the whole interface easy (too easy) to use, the buy with one click. I have had quite a few things I've ordered Prime that should have been with me the next day not arrive because the seller did not ship them (I guess) in time to be transferred by the courier to the distribution hub, I suppose they let the delivery people know but too late to be collected.

Given a choice I would prefer to use a high street shop because if we don't one day they'll all be gone and I love shopping

But it's still more expensive regardless, they're both sold on Amazon

2 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

But the delivery times are different so not quite the same thing. 

No but you do have to pay more for prime delivery seeing as how you've supposedly already paid for it

Just found this one as an example of Prime costing more, both have free delivery

Big day today, not a nice one from my point of view, soldering, I really hate soldering. with the freeway switch there was more wires than normal and it was very fiddly. Anyways it got done and plugged in for a test and boy does it sound good even with the silks on the nut. One small problem is that in VT bridge and neck mode the neck pup isn't working but it is in every other position so I'll check my soldering tomorrow. Always a good day when a bas you've built makes a noise