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The Twins


Christine

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31 minutes ago, BassBus said:

So you know what you're doing. 😲 

Out of interest, how long did that take to build?

With furniture maybe :laugh1:

it was a long time ago but maybe 6-8 months with a couple of other smaller jobs alongside. That is very uncharacteristic of what we did but I like it, normally I wouldn't have taken on a semi reproduction design like that but it was full of challenges so I couldn't resist

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Evening campers :)

For today's thrilling instalment hold on to your seats :) First job was to glue together one of the headstock bindings and the body binding. After that I set them aside and routed the binding rebate on the bodies, this time I left an extra half a millimetre, better to need to scrape a bit of wood and go through that again. I ran into a small problem while routing the rebate in the bodies: When I made the routing jig some years ago the base I was routing didn't have such a dramatic carved top as the twins but this time the base of the router carriage fouled on the top of the body so I had to cut a bot away to give it some clearance, after that all went well, so if you ever need to make one, bare that in mind :)

Then after some time I took the bindings out of the formers and glued up the next lot before glueing in the new bindings, then once dry I cleaned them up and prepared the headstock for the second lot of bindings which were formed once the former was free again. I cut the mitre joints freehand with a sharp chisel then welded them to the existing with acetone before finishing off by glueing them in with CA. So at the end of the day we have two sets of binding ready to be cleaned up before I can trim the neck before fitting the fretboards and carving the back of the neck

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30 minutes ago, fryer said:

in that first picture, you have a syringe. Are you on drugs ? I wouldn't blame you

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Acetone is for wimps.  For the real hard stuff you need the tube of catalyst from a pack of araldite, forget the syringe, just screw the needle right onto the squeezy tube.

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HTH

 

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Not much of an update today, I have a sore foot, not quite sure what I've done but probably a pulled tendon, I had to give up working today because it was hurting too much to stand on. I'll get it sorted at the hospital tomorrow, going to a gig tonight and I don't want to risk missing that LOL

So I cleaned up and scraped the binding and sided of one of the bodies and that's looking good. I had hoped to get both done as well as the holes for the jack sockets drilled and the jack plates rebated flush but that is going to have to wait until I can get back on my feet. No pics today, I forgot my phone and it hurt too much to walk back into the house to get it, so next time.

 
Edited by Christine
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1 hour ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Hmmmm...sitting round for a while is a great time for sketching out and planning out the next ones ;)

Are you spying on me? :laugh1: No, I suppose we are all the same

I'm pondering Nordstrand DC4 pups for my next build, I think I'm set on them but trying to decide if I should add a preamp to them too or not

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41 minutes ago, Christine said:

Are you spying on me? :laugh1: No, I suppose we are all the same

I'm pondering Nordstrand DC4 pups for my next build, I think I'm set on them but trying to decide if I should add a preamp to them too or not

May we know what it is that attracts you to the Nordies?

The little bit that I have read suggests that the pups are made with differing numbers of windings depending on whether the coil pairs are series or parallel wired.  If I understand the term "hot" when applied to pickups, you might not need a preamp.  Just wire a pair of coils intended for parallel installation in series instead.

From Best Bass Gear's website:

"Series Dual Coil 4 Set

This is a modern design dual coil humbucking pickup.

Pickups like these are usually found on very high end basses. They use Alnico V magnets and the traditional bi-pole layout with two poles per string. It’s almost like two Jazz Bass® stlye pickups in one cover.

These pickups are available in two different versions.

One set is designed to be wired in parallel, and the other in series.

The reason we do this is that a pickup that is made to sound good wired parallel will usually be too hot and dark sounding if wires in series. So, we put less wire on a series dual coil than a parallel dual coil.

In general, a pickup wired in series will have a fuller and fatter midrange with a subdued high end than a pickup wired in parallel, which will typically have more highs and a deeper low end with a cleaner midrange. Series pickups also have more output than parallel pickups. Parallel pickups are generally a better choice for a split-able installation, as there will not be the gain loss associated with series pickups."

Hot and dark sounding eh?  I could go for  that.

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1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

May we know what it is that attracts you to the Nordies?

The little bit that I have read suggests that the pups are made with differing numbers of windings depending on whether the coil pairs are series or parallel wired.  If I understand the term "hot" when applied to pickups, you might not need a preamp.  Just wire a pair of coils intended for parallel installation in series instead.

From Best Bass Gear's website:

"Series Dual Coil 4 Set

This is a modern design dual coil humbucking pickup.

Pickups like these are usually found on very high end basses. They use Alnico V magnets and the traditional bi-pole layout with two poles per string. It’s almost like two Jazz Bass® stlye pickups in one cover.

These pickups are available in two different versions.

One set is designed to be wired in parallel, and the other in series.

The reason we do this is that a pickup that is made to sound good wired parallel will usually be too hot and dark sounding if wires in series. So, we put less wire on a series dual coil than a parallel dual coil.

In general, a pickup wired in series will have a fuller and fatter midrange with a subdued high end than a pickup wired in parallel, which will typically have more highs and a deeper low end with a cleaner midrange. Series pickups also have more output than parallel pickups. Parallel pickups are generally a better choice for a split-able installation, as there will not be the gain loss associated with series pickups."

Hot and dark sounding eh?  I could go for  that.

Well yes, "Hot and dark" for a start LOL.

It's a long story how I got to that decision and it's largely an uninformed decision at that! The short version is many years ago in some guitar magazine there was an article about some super dooper new boutique guitar that I liked the colour scheme of or the principle of the colour scheme at least. It was a transparent red over rippled Maple, a maple fretboard and gold hardware; the fretboard had been sprayed with a yellow tint that ridged the red and gold nicely and I thought then I can improve on that but I never got around to it. The magazine has long since been thrown out but the idea has been festering ever since, over 20 years. Since then my love of Thunderbirds has escalated to daft proportions and what I'd like are gold Tbird HBs but they aren't readily to be had. I suspect Mojo who's pups I'm using on this build might do them as they are using a standard cover that can be had in gold but I just find the way I have to order them difficult.

 

SO! The easy option is to use black pups and gold hardware, simple :) I like buckers and Nordstrand have a very good reputation and I've heard some samples on Youtube which sound as if they are close to what I'm looking for sound wise but it's youtube... Mike Lull uses DC4 and DC5s so they must be quality so I won't go far wrong. I also want to use a pickup I can order on any day of the week or month without any complications, I don't mind waiting but I like to get that order in as soon as the decision is made, just a quirk of mine so I'm thinking I might use Nordstrand exclusively (perhaps) if I really like them. They can be had from Bass Direct so the annoyance of importing is avoided, I pay just once! (another pet hate of mine, you can see I'm a deeply flawed person LOL)

The preamp, well here I'm out of my depth and maybe I'm being too hopeful that they will give me the chance to eat my cake and eat it? I want that dark sound but I also want a brighter bouncier sound as well especially when played with a pick and I hope (totally uninformed) that the preamps might just give me that option along with the option to run passive. My knowledge of pup preamps though is almost as bad as my knowledge of prosthetic limbs for hedgehogs.

Almost totally uninformed and full of dreams but they have the reputation of being cracking so I hope I won't go far wrong and I have plenty of time to become informed and change my mind :)

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It was a lovely day here so I hobbled out into the garden and decided to do what I could with bits on my knee, which wasn't much but still it all helps.

I finish sanded the faces of both headstocks and sprayed them with nitro sanding sealer from a rattle can, I couldn't have got my spray gear out to save my life but that is fine. After a couple of coats I glued the fret boards on. Finally I pulled the tape off the second body and scraped the top of the bindings flush. I have already fully scraped the first but I couldn't do the second as I would need to have the body secured in a vice and that means standing and I can't do that.,

That's me now until after the weekend I suspect, we're off out on Friday until Saturday so maybe Sunday depending on how I feel

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Edited by Christine
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