rwillett

Ah, good job I asked. Still need to ask Zoe, but shes in York for the day.

Will love to come though.

Thanks

Rob

Hi

I'm trying to embed a countdown timer to the NW and Scotland Bass Bash 2024 into my signature.

Two questions please:

1. Am I allowed to?
2. If so, how do you do it? https://countingdownto.com/?c=549883 is the web page. The website has generated an iframe and I thought that putting it in the signature would automatically call it as I see other people having links to websites. I suspect the ones I have seen are basschat links and not 'external' sites and so what I am trying to do is not possible.

Thanks

Rob

Let me have a chat with Mission Control. Would love to come.

Is this at the old railway station on the sea front?

Rob

30 days.....

Ah, now I see what you mean.

Not planning that. I just wanted the pickguard to have a subtle line around it. I'd love to print some decent patterns but at the moment my focus is getting the bass body finished, pained and shiny. The new pickguard is the first step.

I assume from your comment that some people put fake bindings around guitars?

Rob

@Richard R Not sure what faking bindings are? Can you explain please.

These are the two pieces joined. I've filled and sanded and am down to (upto?) to 240 with the wet and dry. The surface is dulled, the join between the two pieces looks OK, there is a thin line of filler, and other bits of filler. These are going to be spray painted so I'm not at all worried about how they look at the momen, though I have to say my ability to take photos that look bad is wonderful

A primer/filler coat will get rid of most of the ridges, but my intention is to spent another hour with more wet and dry to get this as smooth as possible.

The back shows where I joined the two pieces. Played about with different papers on the back before the front. Just about all of this will be covered with copper tape, so not concerned about the looks.

<Sigh>

The filler experiment continues, it does appear that a wood filler works best at the moment. I don't need a lot but PETG is quite difficult to sand down, it's pretty tough.

Did a lot of filling yesterday, let it dry overnight and if I find an hour today, I'll have another go. It turns out that PETG fills the sanding disks very quikcly, even though not a lot comes off. Its a funny material.

Also been experimenting for the first time with multi colour printing. As my printer is limited to 220 by 200mm (or so), I assumed I would have a pickguard made. The pickguard I wanted is below

Currently I have to print this in two pieces, but I wondered if I could print it in two pieces, join it together with a backing plate and sand it down. I then wondered about putting a layer of white in the black. I've never bothered with multicolour printing, but set it up in PrusaSlicer, put a roll of white PETG and ended up with this. Quite pleased as the white line is subtle. It's a sandwich of 1mm black, 1mm white and 1mm black. There's a chamfer around the edge as well.

I'm not too concerned about the top as I'll sand that down, spray paint it and then either lacquer it or epoxy resin it. The finish is still to be decided. I'll print the other half of the pickguard during the day and glue them together. A tiny amount of filler along the seam and I suspect that it will be invisible. If this works, then larger multi colour pickguards are an option.

Rob

The bass is sitting in a corner of my office. It plays well though still has the tug boat cables for strings. Not set the strings at all.

Focus for the last week has been, filling, sanding, priming and learning about PETG with a sander.

PETG is the material I have chosen for the body of the guitar, it's stronger than PLA, significantly more rigid, glues/welds well and is fairly inert. It also handles heat well, though at the moment, it needs to handle water well as the weather in North Yorkshire is wet, wet and then even more wet.

However PETG isn't as good as taking paint, I also have no idea about filler on it. So I'm trying various fillers, various sandpapers and various primers to see what works and what doesn't.

I'm also experimenting with joining stuff together to make a single pickguard as opposed to two separate ones.

So lots of wet and dry papers, lots of head scratching and not much progress

The aim is to have the bass finished for May 17th, painted, lookimng good and ready for the NW and Scottish Bash.

Rob

That is absolutely gorgeous. Never heard of J&D guitars before. Looks a bargain as well.

45 minutes ago, Pow_22 said:

Love the look of this over at Bass Direct, decent price too as he usually gets very giddy with vintage Fenders price wise.  However, that weight!?!

 

https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/product/fender-jazz-bass-gloss-black-1977-pre-owned/

Or you can have my Jet Black one (thought it is home made). In another 40 years it will be vintage

@Reggaebass feel free to contact me if you ever want to sell one of your basses at a big loss. Always happy to help

Rob

That's interesting. I will look closer into this. Suspect it won't be this year though. 

@SpondonBassed

I earlier contacted a specialised carbon fibre manufacturer and asked them about replacing the aluminium backbone with a slimmer and lighter CF backbone. They were really quick and helpful, I paraphrase their response below.

1. CF is about as strong as aluminium  (a little stiffer) but its approx 30% lighter.
2. The current thickness of 15mm will probably need to stay but the replacement would be lighter.
3. The CF piece could be made stronger by going to Unidirectional fibres, but multiple test pieces would need to be made.
4. Structural calculations may help.

So thats not an option here.  The CF rods will be less stiff than the plate (unless they are bigger), so need to put the thinking cap on again.

I include one of their futher comments as its very helpful and really explains it. As I don't have permisison to use their name, I'll hold it back, but they were very good.

"A lot of people hear comments about “carbon being stronger than Steel” and although not untrue, its very specific - eg in reality “weight for weight” carbon IS stronger than steel but the volume or dimensions of a carbon part replacing steel would be bigger but the low density means it is still much lighter overall. Certainly we have seen people use carbon rods etc in instrument necks but to replace what you have, you are likely going to need to bond a lot of pieces together which is not so practical."

Thanks

Rob

3 minutes ago, Aidan63 said:

Daisy Tempest, Tempest guitars, she is on all the socials @daisy_tempest and has a YT channel

 

Useful 

58 minutes ago, Aidan63 said:

one of the alibaba boys will be able to make you a cheap short scale 5 string neck , or try making friends with Daisy, she might be up for broadening her portfolio, making just necks a lot easier and quicker than making acoustics and she's in a shared workspace place where there might be a cnc woodworker or she might know one, and she could make a YT video or two and it all snowball.....

Who is Daisy?  She sounds like a good person to know

14 hours ago, SamIAm said:

IF I had access to a large enough CNC machine I'd definately have a go at making some necks!

 

Sam x

I had a large CNC machine that I built, it would do 800mmx600mm, theoretically I could have made a bass body with it. A neck would be a challenge as it would too long.

Also just looking at every guitar neck I have and all of them would be tricky on a CNC machine. There are 3D objects and whilst the heal would be easy, the head would be non-trivial (as far as I can work out). 

As I've never made a neck and have no idea where to even start, I could be talking complete tosh and will certainly bow to other peoples greater experience in neck making. I'd be happy to tackle a body, certainly a slab body wouldn't be that difficult, but I reckon using a hand router and a set of carefully designed templates, I'd make a reasonable stab (probably bad choice of words) at it. Then again, I couldn't easily do the lovely Veroni shapes with a hand router easily. For one offs I suspect printed templates, a careful eye and a hand router would do a good job. Wouldn't want to make a hundred of them like that. Might be an interesting project for a group to take on and make 4-5 guitars at the same time.

Rob

Good question...

I don't think that moving it to the top would make it much less succeptible to bending. I suppose that it would reduce the leverage as the height connected is lower. 

However it would significantly complicate things as a lot of stuff connects to the printed section that sits on top the aluminium backbone. 

Other ideas have included L shaped aluminium sides that would reinforce the current backbone. Not investigated this idea yet..

Carbon Fibre seems the obvious option to try. 

2 hours ago, Paul S said:

What is the weight, do you know?

At the moment it's 4.2Kg, however I'm not sure I trust the scales, so it's not light. 1.2Kg (or more) is the aluminium backbone. After saying that, it doesn;t feel any heavier than my 97 MIJ Fender Jazz.

I am a little surprised as the printed bits are 1.2Kg, never weighed the neck, but there's 2.4Kg+ on the neck and body, there's the bridge, pickups, controls and the tug boat strings. I reckon a carbon fibre backbone would take 0.75Kg off that easily.

Rob

1 hour ago, Jackroadkill said:

She's looking great, Rob.  I really like her.

Thanks. I'm quite pleased but already thinking of the next version. Too many compromises and not enough thinking in advance for my liking. 

I've learnt a lot though so that's good. 

2 hours ago, Paul S said:

What is the weight, do you know?

Yes thanks 😊

Feel free to hijack. If this thread gets people talking, then that's good. Also I'll learn soomething along the way 

@JohnH89

Plans now are now to try and work out what the finish on the body needs to be. I have my V1 six string body in the garage, its full of filler, primer, has been attacked by various sanders and tomorrow will be attacked with wet and dry paper to work out how to make the body look good. I still have the V2 body and neck.

Even after thinking about what to do for a long time, I still made a load of mistakes that I won't make with the next one. Whether I go headless or not is something I'm thinking about. If I go headless I want the body to look good, so thats a big driver. I have thoughts already....

The bits I want to change for the next guitar mean every single piece has changed. I will also make a glue fitting tool to let me glue bits together safely, quickly. Glue works, but even a 0.1mm alignment issue is noticable. So I may be in touch about your very kind offer.

I wouldn't have a clue about making a neck. To me thats the heart of a guitar and its as difficult as heart surgery. IIf I can control it with a computer, I'm good. Power tools and me are not a good combination. 3d printing is easy, trust me, I know

All the best

Rob

4 minutes ago, SamIAm said:

The question is how wide is wide enough?

I've been looking at this, which looks like I could loose 98% of the 'paddle' leaving enough space to mount the headless string retainer and is affordable at about £60.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184628868144

 

I need to figure out of its 65mm heel will result in sufficient string spacing at the bridge, I'd like 18mm ... I really need to draw up a design to check angles, spacing etc.

 

And, despite 97.4% +ve seller feedback, I'm a bit wary of a made in china ebay neck ...

 

Sam x

If nothing else works, you can always buy a canoe and have a trip round Brighton pier.

For this I'd draw it up in Fusion 360 and really check stuff. I'm happy to help with that bit, but no idea what the ideal measurements should be. One of the things I learnt from the bass was that the pickups, bridge and nut all need to be thought about at the start, rather than what I did, towards the middle I made so many mistakes that I am already thinking about V3 Not sure if the headless comes before or after V3

Rob

Sam,

To me the neck is the most important bit. I can change the pickups, I can do a new body, replace the tuners etc etc, but I can't make a neck. I've seen the one with an aluminium truss rod and it was OK as an intellectual exercise, but would Geezer play it? Probably not.

Thats why I made the design to handle just about any neck, because I couldn't make a neck.

Now your problem, finding a headless five string is tricky. Necks seem to attract a lot of money. I was very lucky with the MIM Jazz neck. I also have a lovely Aria Pro neck as well as a decent Ibanez neck for the next bass projects. One of these, probably the Ibanez will be the headless bass, simply because the shape of the head makes it easier to convert to headless. Mind you I'm probably wrong as normal. I have four eBay searches setup for guitar necks and most of the results are rubbish, but occassionally one pops up thats worth a punt.

I am assuming that a wide four string neck can't be repurposed to a five string neck with a new nut? Its going to be headless so the number of tuner holes is immaterial.

Rob