Dom in Dorset

It's been a good news/ bad news day. The bad news is that the neck (that I already had doubts about) is now firewood. I broke off the truss rod nut, I do have a spare truss rod and partly removed the fretboard to see if it would fit. The original truss was housed in an aluminium box section thing that meant the new rod wouldn't fit . No major problem as the neck was to put it mildly "dubious" The good news is that the body has moved on :

Not entirely sure as I'll have my children with me that day, however it will be my birthday and they'll have to indulge me! I'll post a wish list for present ideas on here nearer the time

My story : I had agreed to stop when my wife was pregnant, I didn't want to stop and intended to go through the motions for a couple of days until she got so pissed off with my foul temper that she'd give up on the idea. Day one I came down stairs and lay on the sofa sulking, she popped out to the chemist and got me some patches, I put one on and ten minutes later it happened! I didn't feel any need to smoke, I realized what a hold smoking had over me. Until then I had to make sure that I had enough tobacco for that day/night/first fag of the day etc. I would do late night trips to the shop to buy tobacco ect. Using the patches broke the hold it had over me. That was 2000, haven't smoked since.

gorgeous! How is it for neck five? (sorry to drop a potential negative in here)

I'm glueing bits of the upper horn into the control cavity, I'm going to re-rout it to take a tele style metal plate. I'm also trying a cut down precision scratchplate.

The neck is pretty shoddy! It looked cheap and nasty.The fretboard was coming away and it had a nasty kink towards the nut. I've glued it together and managed to adjust the truss by putting a nail through the holes and turning it with mole grips! It was massively bent and stiff (ooh er!) but I think it will survive. I buffed the headstock today, it's looking like a seriously worn relic.

Ok, it's moved on a bit, I still need to re-rout the neck pocket and get sanding before I get the spray paint out: Incidentally, this is the junk bass I bought as a donor for neck: after removing the neck it became obvious that the body was in fact made from wood and not ply as I had assumed. A bit of stripping revealed this: So I may have two bases to make.

It will have a regular modern P pickup, the one that came in the junk bass seems to be really good, nice powerful output and a surprisingly wide range of tones. I have no idea what it is but it has white casing. Talking of the junk bass, more on that soon, I bought it for the neck and hardware but the body turned out to be better than I thought...

A previous owner of the body added a control cover to the back, I presume so that they didn't need to remove the scratch plate to access the electronics. I have the plate , I may keep it or cover the hole permanently.

I bought a junk bass on ebay as a donor , the neck needs some attention , someone really didn't want me to know who made it because they chiseled of the trade mark! As it's going to be a bit of a relic I can live with it. Tomorrow I'll take it to work and give the lower horn and headstock a trim.

Looks like sapele to me (I think it's a relative of mahogany)

For a thousand mothers -from the Stand Up album.

Probably my favorite player, sad news indeed.

So extreme heat treatment of a wooden neck doesn't turn it into graphite?

Isn't graphite just a form of carbon?

It probably was a bit thin , it's no longer possible to say exactly how thin ....

I seem to spend a lot of time depping for a country band and fancy some sort of (at least cosmetically) telecaster bass. As usual I'm on a tight budget and so I'm using uo a few bit's I already had: A Precision body I bought on Ebay while drunk a few months ago, I used my Squier tele as a template and I'm reducing the thickness a bit to take out some of the contouring and make it more slab like. It will eventually be given a distressed blue finish.

Thanks, I'll get some regular maple soon. Anything to look out for in a truss rod?

I'm starting a new project soon and may attempt to make the neck myself. I did this once before and found the result hopelessly unstable. The possible reasons : I used a cheap truss rod. - any recommendations? I used birdseye maple - is that ok for necks? I still have some but should I get some good straight grained stuff instead? I thinned it too much - I'll be paying much closer attention to my fender neck this time.

maybe...

A definite possible maybe, it bit out of my way but I may come if I'm at a loose end.

Thank you, I'll start a diary as soon as I have enough materials and parts.

How thick is the body? At the center and the wings, Epi or Gibson. I had an Epi a few years ago but sold it to fund my Jazz bass, I'm thinking of building my own tribute.

My background is heavy rock/ folk rock/psychedelia/prog.... I've ended up depping fairly regularly for a country band....I found country fairly easy to grasp, generally there are no hidden depths melodically, everything is bang on the beat , the main thing I get out of it is working closely and tightly with drummer and rhythm guitarist - a joy when it really clicks and starts to chug along by it'self. After a gig last week I was asked if I'd play bass in a reggae band for a one of charity gig next month, I just can't say no!!! I'm loving it, complete opposite to country , everything off or on or around the beat, more hidden depths than er a secret coal mine (I'll work on that simile) I'm learning a few Jimmy Cliff songs a few old ska numbers and of course some Bob Marley. The bass in the Marley songs is interesting, rhythmically and melodically it sneaks past me at every turn. I don't think I've managed to anticipate anything he does so far. Oh well , three weeks to go... Aston "Family Man Barrett" I salute you.

A lot of locals make a lot of money (camping/glamping/hotels/selling cider/ a friend of mine rented her house out for the weekend for a four figure sum) Most of Pilton is off limits to festival goers, every house along the road through it has 24 hour security outside. If I remember rightly most of the objections came from one person who has long since gone.