rwillett

This is a topic that I've been wondering about for a few months and the picture above clarifies it for me. Just so we are clear, I'm a pretty rubbish bass player, I dabble for my enjoyment and thats about it. if I rated my knoweldge of the bass guitar from 1 (clueless) to 10 (God like John Paul Jones etc), I'm coming in at about 1.5. I've been thinking about what was the simplest bass guitar I could make. I am not a luthier at all and the last piece of decorative woodwork I did was over 40 years ago at school, a letter rack for my mum. It wasn't very good then and it's not much better now. No idea why she keeps it. My thinking was that the essential elements of a bass guitar are: 1. Neck - I have a 97 MIJ Fender Jazz that has a wonderful neck. When I brought it the pickups weren't very good, but I thought that electrics are cheap to solve, so brought it anyway. A new loom from Kl0gion and it sounds great. I also have a Fender Mustang MIM which also plays great and sounds great. We'll not talk about the Ibanez Mikro The neck holds the tuners, nut and frets. 2. The bridge - The strings have to end somewhere. There appears to be lots of different types of bridges, but the ones on each of my fenders appear to be quite simply made with bent metal. Thats not a dig at Fender, it works for them. I am also aware that there are far more complex and higher mass bridges, but I'm not clear what value they really offer. They may make a massive difference to an expert player, the Fender ones seem to work for me. See my value as a bass player above. 3. Something rigid needs to hold the neck and the bridge apart. 4. Pickups and something to hold them. The rest appears to be not that important. Looking at the guitar above, it's clear that there is no wood body to resonate. No idea how the metal resonates, but I'm sure it's wholly different. Stuff like strap buttons and controls can be put in different places. I'm happy to take @BigRedX statement that it plays well. The guitar above doesn't have a body so whats actually important. I have seen acrylic guitars, both bass and 6-string, played by guitar hero's, so I'm assuming they are happy enough it. On the counterside, we have the money paid for the guitars from Eric Clapton, Dave Gilmour, Peter Green. Whilst these have provenance, who wouldn't like a guitar played by EC, people seem to think they play better and sound better. We've had this argument over Stradivarius for centuries about how wonderful they sound and no one understands why. So is the bass guitar body really needed? There is enough evidence to make the answer blurred to me. Perhaps I need to build one to find out Thanks Rob

This one looks similar to yours (for some value of similar) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325784004555?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=fiyFn5zpR12&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=70h8JO93TH6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY The knob look like the ones I have on my 6 string so guessing this is fairly original. I'm no expert though so take this with a pinch of salt. Rob

I understand a bit more now. You want to keep the originals. That's OK. Pictures would help to confirm though. I can easily and quickly print two hemispheres to go inside your custom printed hollow balls. I am assuming that you don't have any flat sides on the balls which would complicate things but is doable. Filling with epoxy would work, but it will take weeks to cure and cost a lot. Epoxy resin isn't cheap and if you made enough to fill the spheres in one go, it might take a very long time to cure. You also can't make a single mistake. Epoxy is very unforgiving. Printing two hemispheres to fill your originals out is pretty simple. The design takes about 60 secs, printing is a function of volume but none of the printers are doing much this week so I'd just put them on and let them run. I have loads of filament anyway, so am more than happy to set them running and bang them.in the post. No charge.

Send me the CAD file and I'll print them for you. Or I can design and print them again

My suspicion is that the material on the balls is probably not amenable to glue so glueing stuff to the outsides will probably fail unless you use an epoxy resin AND carefully align everything AND leave it to cure. I was going to try PLA and PETG just to see if it works for those two materials. Filling the balls with epoxy resin would probably work. Also if you knew the internal diameter of the balls it's relatively easy to print two half spheres to fill them. Glueing these together once they are in the balls should work A 40mm hemisphere takes 24 mins to print. Happy to print a couple out and post them to you if you tell me the right size. Rob

Bert, Apologies, there are two separate conversations going on in this thread in the guise of 3D printing. One thread is about printing nuts and is it feasible. The second thread is yours, how to glue stuff together. I haven't done anything with that. Just ignore the nut printing messages Sorry for the confiusion. Rob

Here's the printed verison of the Ibanez nut, the original is black and my version is white. I printed it at 100% in PETG (as thats on the printer). I then put in the Ibanez and had a play. As far as I can tell, it has made zero difference, neither better nor worse. The design is now parameterised so I could do another just by taking a lot of measurements. These are not all of them either. If somebody wants one printed, you would need to do a lot of measurements or better still, the nut. Rob

I've never really tried to glue anything I print face to face. We do use glue, Gorilla glue and super glue to make some of the finger bolts, but we use it differently. Here's a cross sectional analysis of one of our finger bolts. Here you can see the outer part of the finger bolt and a void between the outer part and an inner part. This is where the bolt fits. We used Gorilla Glue in small amounts and we now use Super Glue as it's slightly easier to manage. This works very well but it's all enclosed within the fingerbolt. Never had any issues to date. What I'll do is see if I can glue two pieces of PETG together using Gorilla Glue and a super glue and see what happens. I strongly suspect that it will be a fragile bond. I'll do it this evening and see what it looks like Rob

I'm playing about with Fusion 360 to make a replica of the Ibanez nut. The Ibanez one is plastic, probably nylon or ABS. The design of it is quite complex, it's very organic in shape, the back is higher than the front. The slot holes are different widths for the strings (not so bad), the slots aren't parallel either, I've got digital calipers out and am measuring everything. The printing will be 15 mins, the design will be longer. Rob

I assumed 100% infill. I have PLA and PETG on the shelf so that's easy, I'll knock one up for the Ibanez Mikro. My issue is that I'm not sure I'd know if it wasn't working well. I'm stuck in various meetings all afternoon so may well go on mute and have a play. Somebody must have done this before though. Surely?

Has anyone printed a nut for a guitar. I acquired a really, really crappy Ibanez Mikro bass a few weeks ago. The truss rod is pretty difficult to turn, the bridge was setup wrong and it looks as if the body was used as a hammer (that’s not a joke). I managed to get it more or less setup but as the neck isn’t fantastic, string height was an issue. I wanted a slightly higher nut to compensate for the lack of adjustability elsewhere. I started looking at it and it’s dead easy to design a nut in Fusion 360 and parameterise every measurement , by wondered if anybody had tried it and found it simply doesn’t work. Thoughts welcomed rob

Got the loom from Kl0gon and fitted it. Dead easy. Good quality work on the soldering and wiring, I’m no expert but it looked nice and shiny. Very tightly packed as well. some <ahem> user issues on earthing but I sorted that out. Now have a proper jazz bass and am very happy. thanks rob

Now that is a thing of beauty. Is that the 66 Mustang that you had modified?

Speaking as someone from the Yorkshire Dales, I love a couple of faggots at midday and sometimes in the evening as well. The more the merrier. Rob

Just brought a loom from John. Arrived quikcly, he answered my dumb questions quickly. I now have a Jazz bass that growls. Really helpful and a pleaure to deal with Rob

Hi, I've brought a Apple Magic keyboard for my iPad Pro and so the existing cover is no longer needed. Brought from Amazon April this year, its this model in red https://www.amazon.co.uk/JETech-Magnetic-10-9-inch-Charging-Attachment/dp/B09NSCHMNV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=JETech%2BMagnetic%2BCase%2Bfor%2BiPad%2BPro%2B11%2BInch%2BAll%2BModels%2C%2Band%2BiPad%2BAir%2B5%2F4%2B(10.9-inch%2B2022%2F2020)%2C%2BSupport%2BPencil%2B2nd%2BGen%2BCharging%2C%2BMagnetic%2BAttachment%2C%2BCover%2Bwith%2BAuto%2BWake%2FSleep%2B(Red)&qid=1692556255&s=electronics&sr=1-1&th=1 It has a few minor marks but no rips, tears or any defects. Your ipad just slips in and magnets hold it in. It works really well, but I needed a keyboard so the Apple keyboard has a case and this is no longer needed. The Apple keyboard case was significantly more It's only a few months old and is free to a good home. I'll even pay UK postage and simply ask that you make a donation of your choice to the North West Air Ambulance. if you wish to swap the case for a 1962 Precision, free free. I'll come and collect It only fits the models below. Please check back bottom of your iPad to find the model number Designed for iPad Air 5/4 (10.9-inch 2022/2020) and iPad Pro 11-inch (2022/2021/2020/2018 model). Fit iPad Models: A2759 A2435 A2761 A2762 A2588 A2589 A2591 A2324 A2072 A2316 A2325 A2377 A2301 A2459 A2460 A2228 A2068 A2230 A2231 A1980 A2013 A1934 A1979. Thanks Rob

I like the Beedster Custom Shop body very much indeed.

Don’t buy individual ones, buy a roll. A roll will come with clips and simply cut to length. We pay around £5 for a 10m roll. suspect Alibaba does it even cheaper rob

Have you tried a midi sniffer program on something higher level than an Android device e.g. A pc or Mac? Actually work out what is being sent as opposed to what you think is being sent. I’ve got the same Chocolate as @Smanth and spent some time trying to get my head around how it worked. I love a puzzle as much as anybody but trying to work out the Chocolate device was hard work. The docs are useless and you need to really understand the model of how it’s put together. I’ve seen your posts so I know that you know what you are doing with IT, but I would go back to first principles, connect to CubeSuite, set it up, connect back to your desktop/laptop, check what’s actually being sent. i ended up buying a MIDI programming kit for the Mac that allows me to capture the commands, transform them based on some logic and resend them to another app. It’s basically a midi proxy server, similar to Nginx. It’s called https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator. Worth the money in my opinion. currently on holiday in north wales so can’t look at the one I have , but if you haven’t made progress by the weekend, let me know rob

Whoops. Misread that one completely. If you have a cheap 62 Fender I’d still come to Canada for it. The price of the airfare is probably negligible on that sort of bass😀 all the best and sorry for the confusion rob

If you have a nice short scale, let me know. Happy to make the trip back to Croydon and Bromley 😀

Brilliant but the editing drove me up the wall. Constant flicking from one instrument to another. I stopped watching after a while and just listened. I thoroughly enjoyed it once I stopped watching rob

Thanks for the update, appreciate it. I’ve ordered a CTS based loom from Kl0gon and have a control plate with 10mm holes already. Whilst my heart wants to experiment and tinker, my head says “just do the loom and keep practicing”. I easily get distracted with new ideas 😀 I have a little Ibanez Mikro for experimenting with, very , very beaten up and worth almost nothing. In biking terms it’s a “rat axe”, that’s where I’ll play with stuff.