Joe Nation

If it's good quality quarter-sawn timber, especially if it's well-figured, then one piece works great. Three piece necks are a good way to reduce the risk of warping as the timber ages, as you can oppose the grains so any warping will be cancelled out by the other piece - handy to make use of otherwise-nice wood that isn't quarter-sawn. Also you can add a contrast veneer between the pieces for a distinctive look.

If I were building a custom bass, I'd aim for a single piece of flamed maple, but if it was a through-neck I'd probably opt for a three piece for looks.

Check out Tim Sway on youtube, he makes some amazing and weird guitars and basses. He uses only reclaimed or recycled materials and isn't afraid to break a few moulds. His sliding pick-up bass and modular pick-up guitars are particularly cool

I've got my eye on a couple of used Strat bodies on ebay for just this purpose - either using a Retrovibe 30" neck or an undrilled Strat neck.

I did drum lessons for a year at school, but I never carried on - no idea why as I love drumming. 20-odd years later I'm still always tapping away on whatever object is nearby, practicing polyrhythms and stuff. I'd love to take it up again but I can barely keep up with bass at the moment.

Try your local motorcycle repairer, they're usually good with welding random bits like that.

Also this: https://www.submarinepickup.com/pages/submarine-pro, so you can turn certain strings on and off, or have effects on some strings and not others. Kinda cool, but really weird.

I'm curious about how the Bass VI sound compares to a conventional bass (eg a Jazz), a baritone guitar (~27" scale length) and a conventional guitar (eg a Strat). How are baritones and Bass VIs tuned compared to ~25" guitars - an octave lower, two octaves? Anyone know of any youtube vids with a good comparison? Obviously they'll all be very different, but I've never knowingly heard a Bass VI or a baritone in isolation.

Both homemade and the only examples I could find after a 10 second Google. The were apparently plans afoot for a Pino Palladino signature model, seems it never happened. I might have a new direction for my 5 string project build.

Were you being incredibly fastidious by running the string paths with a slight taper to match the bridge-to-nut taper (so each string is truly straight), or are you a normal person and just drew them parallel?

Defo no pickguard.

I'll take it if Jimothey doesn't want it.

Well I never knew that. So perhaps it's not quite such a misnomer after all...

He completely lost me at "I worked for Apple, I worked for Tesla, I drive a Tesla...". Hard pass.

Using the original 4x1 tuners to boot, so it looks ever-so-slightly more rubbish!

Anyone who lists an item with two identical (rubbish) pictures of the front and one of the case, no detail shots or decent lighting, and asks five grand for a bass (even if it's worth that much), is getting a hard no from me.

Someone needs to open a shop called Bass Strings Direct to stop all this confusion.

The parallax distortion of the photos will make the body half look smaller than the neck half, because of where the camera was positioned. But unless the neck is specifically designed for that conversion, it may well be out of whack.

On 25/04/2022 at 13:21, chris_b said:

People like them and order them, so Fender make them.

FTFY: Fender make them, so people like them and order them.

Is it just me or is it odd that the E string is on the narrower spacing but the G is on the wider one?

On 23/04/2022 at 13:19, fleabag said:

digital verniers

*engaging pedant mode*

That's a misnomer - those are digital calipers. Vernier calipers use a sliding subsidiary scale alongside the conventional graduated scale, with a graduation of n+1 increments over the length of n graduations of the conventional scale (eg 10 graduations over 9mm). This allows for interpolation of more accurate measurements. Wiki

*disengaging pedant mode*

Lovely work Andy.

Did you know the Chinese use the same word for crisis as they do for opportunity? Crisitunity!

Caught by the Fuzz - Supergrass

One of the retrovibe necks might fit - the heel width is 56mm, I've no idea how wide the pocket is on a P body though.

That's a good point, glad I didn't waste my time figuring it out! The Fluence has a solder bridge on the PCB to select the default single-coil, but you can wire it to a switch. I doubt my useless ears could tell the difference either way.

I have also just come across - I think - a push-pull 3-way rotary, so I could have the coil split on the same knob as the voices. Not sure if it's worth the hassle frankly, but I think I'd prefer if that way.

@Cato huh, I never knew that. I can understand his guilt.