Christine

John Entwhistle, I appreciate he is no longer with us but he was at the conception of the roundwound string. The roundwound brought bass playing or at least the sound into the forefront of rock in a way that is hard to imagine these days where they are common place. So in a sense, John is still here with us today ringing out on every note of a roundwound string and it would be very nice to see a limited edition of Swing bass' strings with his picture on the packet as they did in the 70s

Then there's 8, 10 and 12 string basses? Answers on your BC resignation

2 minutes ago, BassTool said:

 WOW, absolutely beautiful workwomanship! 😲

Can I recommend brass for a nut in future builds Christine? I'm hoping you'll notice the difference 😎

Those look superb  

Thank you, I'm very pleased with them, they are my first builds in quite a long time and a lot of new techniques for me in there too.

Brass, well yes I have seen brass nuts (behave!) but never heard one; I have brass saddles on a Hiphot bridge on my Fender and they are very good compared to the stainless ones I also tried, I suppose it might sound more like a fret?

6 hours ago, Geek99 said:

Four string. Fivers are the work of Satan

This is the undisputed truth of the universe

2 minutes ago, bartelby said:

But that's a Prime item isn't it?

Yes, I showed the wrong one

2 minutes ago, bartelby said:

But then you have to pay for delivery, and that's where the seller makes the money back. Unless it's free delivery that takes a few days.

I've never found a non Prime item to have an overall cheaper price. Unless it's used, which doesn't count.

Not always

I completely missed this build, what a fantastic looking piece of pine, where did you get it?

I love Jazz necks, good choice in my book and maple with black will look great with that pine

44 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

I'm sorry, but whaaaaaat?

Many things on Amazon have a notice under the price saying something like "available for less without Prime delivery". Have a search for stuff, Prime and non Prime and compare prices, loads of it is cheaper without

The thing that annoys me about Amazon Prime is you pay for Prime but then you have to pay more for the items that are Prime. Next day delivery is handy sometimes as well as the buy with one click that saves you filling in forms every time you buy something. To be fair to every dedicated guitar store I've used I've always had excellent service. Ironically the only one who I've had bother with is Bass Direct that let me down badly

According to that ball end to silk is 939.8 so my old strings must have stretched, either way the extra longs will fit fine too @ 33.5" - 36"

Thank you again, I'm a daft bat

3 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

No worries. Just measures the E string and its 950mm from end of ball to taper if that helps.

I just measured, from the back of the tail piece to the middle of the nut is 950 so there's about 6mm extra inside the tailpiece so that should be good. I'm wondering if the strings I measured had stretched or something?

That looks brilliant, a lovely even fit too, it really looks the part

27 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Just had a quick look and the sets I have that don't have silk are DR Fat-Beams, Skjold and Rotosound Roto Bass RB40. All are long scale round wounds if that is any help.

Thank you I was actually thinking of trying the RB40s got to be worth a go

I fitted the pickup risers to one of the twins and fitted the pickups, put the pots in and the knobs etc but they haven't been soldered yet

I made some truss rod covers using a little jig for the router table.

Roughly made the nut, I got the approximate fret height buy splitting a wide pencil as below and used that to mark a line, I undercut the lead a little to make the line a little high. I filed it to shape and then cut the slots with nut files before.

I decided on the final machine head positions, I flipped them over and had them straight. Lastly I put some strings on but that's about it for today, it's nowhere near set up.

I have one small problem, i think I have put the tail piece of the bridge a few mm to far back as the silk of the strings is sitting in the nut, any ideas how I can sort that other than trimming the silk slightly? Longer strings are an option I suppose

I had a minor fiddle with my red  Firedragon, did a fret job, made a nut out of black perspex, I wanted black and it has a zero fret so I hope the perspex will make no difference, I put a set of strings on it and adjusted the neck and bridge to being very close, the intonation needs doing but it's not far off as is. I put some strap locks on it and gave it a whirl. Absolutely no hint of neck dive and it's feels so light.

I'm pleased with how it plays already, I was a little worried about the neck angle and how that would affect playability but it feels great to me. The angle is 4.5 degrees if you remember which means a high bridge, I had initially though I'd need a thumb rest with it but my arm/hand is supported nicely by the body

That's about it now with this one until the others are ready to work on again

8 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I do know several people for whom £250 is a really huge amount of money.

But would they have bid that on a bass they didn't want in that case?

Have you thought of spraying with something like a water based acrylic lacquer? It will preserve the pale colour of the wood with minimal yellowing over the years rather than nitro, poly or any oils

19 minutes ago, bassgurumonster said:

Great styling !

It's just a direct copy of one of JAE's

Screws aren't what they used to be, when I was an apprentice my boss had a huge store of screws and fittings he'd collected over the years, after he died I acquired them. To compare those with what's available today in an eye opener, the modern versions are either brittle or made of cheese, snapping a screw or chewing up the drive is so easy to do but on old screws you would have the be a idiot to do the same.

Lucky save @Jabba_the_gut that would have been a nightmare if it snapped below the neck surface

6 hours ago, durhamboy said:

Nice to see things are progressing, it must be frustrating having to wait months for the weather to improve enough to spray again. (Having been born in Durham I can remember real winters, but here on the south coast of Australia I reckon I'm hard done by if I loose a week to cold and rainy weather. Today is 17 degrees C and down to 7 overnight, though we do get a few cold fronts with overnights of 4 or 5 and days that only reach 11 or 12 during winter.) Anyway nice to see things happening, your work is so very top class. 

If I didn't love Wales so much I would have been tempted to move to Oz, the weather has been the bane of my life as a woodworker, when I had my commercial workshops I spent a fortune installing heating and dehumidifiers to keep conditions stable through the year. I could use other finishes like polyurethane or even precat but I like nitro as a guitar finish, it's just got that little something about it, almost like French polish. Our house is up for sale so when it finally does go I'm going to have a super insulated workshop built so I can keep working all year round

16 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

Sweet Jesus!  

It will be for sale soon

This is where we're at, all sprayed and waiting for the two ebony ones to harden

This is the surface as is now before sanding back, thankfully they came out pretty good in the end

Mine

This is my only working black bass, I made it in 2016 I think

7 hours ago, claustra said:

@b7l4s  Regarding the finish,
I am hesitating between tainting the wood pores of the ash with walnut coloured filler to enhance the contrast or keeping it natural.
I have a couple of days left to set up my mind before the finishing work starts.

Honestly, when a piece of wood is that pretty why do anything other than keep it natural? I love coloured grain filling but I couldn't do it on a piece of wood like that