rwillett

That's a really good parody site. They've put a lot of effort into it and it sounds so convincing. It's a bit cheap though, I would expect it to be a lot more expensive than this. Its a bit like the person who was selling fake bomb detectors https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29459896. The more you charge the more people believe it. I'm now going to look at a bass string conditioner, it gets your bass strings in just the right condition to allow you to play like, well anybody. You'll be able to tune the strings (pun intended) to whatever playing style you need. It'll use a combination of special Yorkshire electricity, phases of the moon (as we all know we play better late at night), a special plectrum that anneals the string (sorry can't provide anymore information without an NDA), and some very unique herbs from the garden which will be used to coat the freshly annealed strings. Not sure if I should charge £5,000 or £10,000 for this super new development in bass playing, suggestions welcomed. Thanks Rob

And as if by magic....

I wonder if the zero nut is a bit like directional audio cable? I know that when I was slightly more interested in audio as opposed to music, there was big movement in copper interconned cable that cost a fortune and sounded better in one direction than another. I also know that somebody was selling directional fibre optic cable for audio as well. I do know a tinybbit about fibre optic and shifting large quantities of bits as I have designed and built a number of data centres and server rooms. Some of these may shift petabytes per day. Never once had a directional fibre cable there. Anyway have read loads more and still struggle to see what the advantages are.

If you press any string down then doesn't the string press on the fret you target AND the nut. So if you hit G you get pressure on the 3rd fret and the nut. Therefore the zero nut gets pressure for every non-open note played. Wpild that explain it? Rob

Would love to see and know more this. I keep hearing about the zero nut and have read the Wikipedia page, but I'm still not much wiser TBH. I'm struggling to understand what the value is. Happy to take this off topic as we are hijacking Sam's thread. Rob

Your dedication to physically checking and confirming the health and safety information does you credit.

It doesn't say it makes an excellent job of finishing speaker cabs on the tin though....

I think I've been very lucky with my choices when I did my headless. I'd like to say it was due to careful design, extensive modelling, widespread use of computer analysis, focussed user groups, iterative prototyping design but basically I guessed. I suspect the fact that I've broad shoulders and big hands (rugby must be good for something) means I've got away with it. I will be honest and say that I never gave the position of the bass across the body even a cursory thought until this point in time, as it had never occurred to me. I think this is due to the fact that as I'm not a very good player means I don't know any better or worse.

@itu that's a very nice piece of machining. Far beyond what I can do with metal. Is there a nut behind the lock or is the lock the nut? Does my question even make sense? Thanks Rob

I thought the CoG stuff was all paid so never even looked for it in F360. I will now look, but suspect I'll have the same problem as you over getting to know it. This is where CAD helps, Cardboard Aided Design. Cut it out to shape and see how it fits on the headstock. I've printed some round shims for tuners as a stop gap whilst I procured some metal rounds shims so the tuners sit properly, and then promptly forgot about them. They are still in and working well. The biggest lesson I learnt was that 15mm plywood as a backbone is no match for round bass strings, never mind flats. A 15mm T6 series aluminium backbone certainly is a match. The T6 aluminium is the stuff that's readily and cheaply available. However you are then into machining aluminium, which might be nothing more than drilling holes and taking an electric drill with a sanding plate. Mine moved from simply drilling holes straight thorough using a printed drill guide to printing holes that go through 80% and then tapping the holes so that there are no external screws. I can't seem to stop and always get annoyed at my poor design. Got the hang of it now, but took a few goes. The aluminium backbone acts as the strength and the body is there for eye candy and for holding the electrics in place. I can also advice you NOT to go for Carbon Fibre as I'm pretty certain your mind will shortly move that way. I looked at using CF and the people who know about CF strongly advised me not to. Its in one of the build threads about the discussions I had. That looks great as a headstock. That allows you to chop most of the headstock off and having a very small surface area to worry about AND excellent access to the truss rod. I like that very much apart from your luthier seems to have cocked up the spacing for a four string, rookie mistake Rob

That's very impressive for household emulsion. I love the colour

Yes I am late to this. Yes that is very, very, nice. Where did you get the blue covering from please?

I also am looking for exactly what the OP wanted. Something small and not headphone based, I have a NUX headphone amp which is OK but sometimes I don't want to wear headphones. I won't derail this thread though and will lurk. Interested in what @Phil Starr recommends for an amp for his self build as well. Thanks Rob

Just to let you know I tried the Positive Grid Spark with bass and then send the unit back. I brought it on pre-order and it was pointless for bass. Not so bad for guitar but useless for bass. I even made a video for Positive Grid as they were being difficult even though their website said it could be returned. No bass, no power at all. Just my 2c Rob

@SamIAm You're going through the same process I did for my headless bass. My thoughts are/were: 1. Taking the head off and the tuners will dramatically change the balance back to the body. My headless bass has zero dive. Your balance point will move back a fair way when the head and machine heads are gone. One way to check is to use a thin piece of picture framing wire between the two strap points and a tiny skateboard bearing to see where the balance is and how it changes. I have a <ahem> larger body mass due to good living, plenty of fresh air, lots of rugby and significant amounts of alcohol and chocolate, so that helps me stop neck dive. You may not be so lucky as me 2. The Nova kit is very good, and the bridge is quite light. So that won't adversely change your balance point. 3. You need to think carefully about how the Nova string clamp is going to fit. @JohnH89 modified the neck he kindly gave to me. He put a backplate on the neck where the Nova string clamp which is a very good idea. You need to think about filling the large holes left by the tuners, the backplate and front plate hide a lot. Cleverer people than myself (a disjoint union of 1 person and everybody but one person on Basschat) advise people to fill the holes with cross grain plugs which I struggled to find anyway and is one of the reasons my Aria Pro II neck is still in one piece. 4. My headless bass is slightly longer than standard to accommodate the bass tuners. I decided to make the body the right length so they didn't stick out. However other people did suggest that they did stick out and add some design features to protect them. Horses for courses and both ideas are in production by proper guitar makers. I decided to keep them inboard as I'm clumsy and would break anything not significantly protected. I just sketched out the scale and bridge positions in Fusion 360 to see what it looked like. 5. Your new body and choice of material will make the biggest difference. Fusion 360 is supposed to be able to make the calculations for balance points or centre of gravity. I don't have that version though My headless bass is now 3.99Kg, the neck is circa 1.8Kg (https://shop.rall-online.net/Fender-Standard-Series-Jazz-Bass-Neck-Maple) so this means the body is around 2.2Kg with everything connected up. The aluminium backbone is probably 1.3 to 1.4Kg from memory. The printed body paret is very light. Don't know how you want to do the body, but if its small, it may need to be dense. At the end of the day, you have a long lever attached to a smallish body so "you canna change the laws of physics cap'n" whatever you do. I'd test, test and test again. Duct tape may be your friend here. I'll happily weigh and measure things for you, but I'm in Italy on holiday with family until Weds. Rob

Pictures please.... I can imagine something like Grizzly Adams with a bass that Lurch would play in the Adams family

But the very slight upside for you is that if I ever have the cash for a good bass, I’ll know exactly where to come to for a sensible deal.

The current exchange rate £:$ is around 1.25 (ish). So £349 is approx $436. Take off VAT at 20% and we're back to $363. That's approx a 75% uplift. A bit more than a little extra profit. There are other costs as well but not a bad increase (for the seller) Rob

Relatively speaking

Now that is a great picture, small, medium and large (relatively speaking) I like the way each Musicman has its own stack.

I can also assure you that Microsoft will still dump your email even when you have SPF/CNAME/DMARC setup correctly, have checked every sodding blacklist under the sun, have jumped through every known hoop to please them and still have no idea why they reject my emails to hotmail.co.uk. I’m old enough to have configured sendmail by hand so i figured i knew what i was doing. Anyway unless your business is IT or you get a kick out of reading large amounts of online manuals, find an onsite presence and buy it in. The only system I'd avoid is WordPress unless you like living on the edge about what the next exciting critical vulnerability will be and how quick you can patch the system. Friends don't let friends use WordPress. Rob

How the hell do you lose something that big and heavy? Given the weight of it, perhaps it just collapsed into a black hole and is now orbiting Jupiter...

Tremblap donated a rather nice EMG active pickup for my 3d printed bass guitar. Very nice and generous. Thanks Rob

Wow that's a great rabbit hole to go down. Be back in about six months 😊 Thanks. I'll dig down in there and learn. All the best Rob

Ah! The symbol for registered trademark. That's the sort of detail that really helps Thank you for the informative response. Rob