Ancient Mariner

One thing you can do, if you use the soft matchstick approach, is to glue them in with PVA, drill the pilot hole after they've dried and screw the strap retaining screw in once, then straight back out again. The run thin cyaonacrylate adhesive into the hole and let it set. The cyano with strengthen the threads in the matchsticks and also bond the lot together better. This technique is used in model making, where you need threads in balsa wood to withstand repeated insertion of screws.

looks really good - again! Is that fingerboard a veneer or did you de-bond and replace the entire board?

The old stuff came in a lot of varieties - can you be more specific?

Is that body a 3 piece? I think mine is, and not too carefully matched.

I too like the look of the thundergun. Also interesting to see they've borrowed their headstock design straight from Sue Ryder.

When it comes to guitars I generally like maple necks for tone and like the feel of a maple fingerboard better than rosewood. But a guitar is more than the individual woods it's made up from,: my maple-necked strat is very warm, fat and rounded, while my rosewood-boarded (veneer) strat is much spikier. But most of that is down to the bridge and saddles + pickups, rather than fingerboard material.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1195608' date='Apr 11 2011, 12:37 PM']Mmmmm darker. Ideal for a fretless conversion. [/quote] Hmmmm. I have been considering this. But given my relatively meagre bass ability already, I'm not sure that having infinitely variable pitch without any kind of fixed intervals is really a good idea. If you know what I mean....

Loaned mine to a friend last week, who took it to compare with another friends (bought a while back at full price). He thought mine sounded very dark and a little muffled, despite the maple fingerboard. Compared to my J type, when the Ryder is on full treble it's as dark as the neck of the jazz with the tone rolled off to about half. Anyone else find theirs dark, and those of you with several, did they sound different to each other?

[quote name='gelfin' post='1194111' date='Apr 9 2011, 10:28 PM']Well, by the time I noticed this thread there seem to be no more available in the online shop. Just won one on ebay £40. Happy days [/quote] Great score - hope it's good for you. I've been really liking mine, although I want to make some mods already and wish I had a couple more so I could try different things out.

I love it when you find yourself in the company great musicians and it all just flows - such a good feeling.

I don't get the almost rabid anti-guitar vibe of some in the thread. Don't you generally play with guitarists - so why the hatred of the instrument? I dislike acoustic guitar sounds, and would not choose to listen to acoustic music, but I'm certainly not at the level of wishing they were all firewood.

The key thing with cases is to make sure they fit the instrument closely so that it can't slide around, and that it offers strength in the appropriate directions, so that something dropped on the headstock end can't snap the neck. I've seen plenty of horror stories of guitars shipped in loose-fitting cases with snapped headstocks and only minimal external damage to the case, usually through the instrument being dropped headstock-down and moving under it's own inertia inside the case. In that situation slackening strings can only make things worse. But I'd agree that carrying as cabin baggage is best of all. I once brought back 2 guitars (a strat in a gig bag and a Heritage Les Paul in a hard case) from the US, carried them both onto the plane and had them both stored in suit lockers for me. There was a band in the plane at the same time, and all their guitars and basses had been stored the same way. Post 9/11 too.

I'm really a guitarist that pretends to play bass. I've actually been really enjoying the bass outings, but I've always had quite a strong feel for rhythms, so it's possibly much less difficult for me to get a feel for bass than if shredding were my normal style of play. Preference is still electric guitar first, then bass. Acoustic guitar languishes at the back with tramps, vagrants and drunks.

Just be aware that scanners and printers can slightly distort dimensions, so something which someone *said* was a perfect match might not be when you try it. Also it's not at all unusual to have a bit of slop in a neck joint, but as long as the neck is seated all the way to the bottom of the pocket then it shouldn't make any real difference. Good advice on the wiring and pickups. Make sure your soldering iron doesn't get too hot if it's a cheapie - I had one (from Maplin) that was so hot it caused the solder on the tip to oxidise & turn yellow quite rapidly. Over-heating with an iron like that (and you'll know if it does because the tip will quickly become yellow and flakey) will damage pots & burn insulation on wires. f you've not soldered before then remember to heat the job and melt solder on that - don't melt solder on the iron tip because it won't flow into the joint.

[quote name='Brave Sir Robin' post='1189047' date='Apr 5 2011, 02:33 PM']Not a mudbucker, although can output masses of bass. Stacked humbucker series / parallel / single. The preamp can coax a lot of range out of it.[/quote] Thanks BSR

I've always been happy with stringbusters too.

Frank - I think you may have a very good point. The various basses linked here all have PUs in different places and all are considered to sound good to their owners. I'm starting to think that the old maxim 'if it looks right then it is right' may well be applicable.

Fantastic, thankyou.

Thanks for this. I'm considering bunging a lipstick (guitar) pickup in that Ryder P that I got a coupe of weeks back, but wasn't sure how it would sound. Still thinking about it, but any routing could be easily hidden with a new PG if it didn't work out.

I'm thinking about adding a pickup [b]close[/b] to the neck on a precision. Can you tell me how far away from the bridge your pickup is placed? I'd like to use an intelligent distance, rather than just plonking the pickup in a place that 'looks' right but doesn't sound so good. Thanks guys.