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The Twins


Christine

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27 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Just had a quick look and the sets I have that don't have silk are DR Fat-Beams, Skjold and Rotosound Roto Bass RB40. All are long scale round wounds if that is any help.

Thank you :) I was actually thinking of trying the RB40s got to be worth a go

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3 minutes ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

No worries. Just measures the E string and its 950mm from end of ball to taper if that helps.

I just measured, from the back of the tail piece to the middle of the nut is 950 so there's about 6mm extra inside the tailpiece so that should be good. I'm wondering if the strings I measured had stretched or something?

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On 08/07/2019 at 18:27, Christine said:

I fitted the pickup risers to one of the twins and fitted the pickups, put the pots in and the knobs etc but they haven't been soldered yet

I made some truss rod covers using a little jig for the router table.

 

Roughly made the nut, I got the approximate fret height buy splitting a wide pencil as below and used that to mark a line, I undercut the lead a little to make the line a little high. I filed it to shape and then cut the slots with nut files before.

IMG_1628.thumb.jpg.54958a589601695184fd13a72a56d7d0.jpg

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IMG_1630.thumb.jpg.b9f3c7a2b0bd3c418952a02fe9665b3d.jpg

I decided on the final machine head positions, I flipped them over and had them straight. Lastly I put some strings on but that's about it for today, it's nowhere near set up.

 

IMG_1633.thumb.jpg.7aa989f36c985addc439a7e38a681c19.jpg

IMG_1632.thumb.jpg.ded8f0095792df36d066e5a9cf949944.jpg

I have one small problem, i think I have put the tail piece of the bridge a few mm to far back as the silk of the strings is sitting in the nut, any ideas how I can sort that other than trimming the silk slightly? Longer strings are an option I suppose

 

 

IMG_1626.jpg

 WOW, absolutely beautiful workwomanship! 😲

Can I recommend brass for a nut in future builds Christine? I'm hoping you'll notice the difference 😎

Those look superb ;) 

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2 minutes ago, BassTool said:

 WOW, absolutely beautiful workwomanship! 😲

Can I recommend brass for a nut in future builds Christine? I'm hoping you'll notice the difference 😎

Those look superb ;) 

Thank you, I'm very pleased with them, they are my first builds in quite a long time and a lot of new techniques for me in there too.

Brass, well yes I have seen brass nuts (behave!) but never heard one; I have brass saddles on a Hiphot bridge on my Fender and they are very good compared to the stainless ones I also tried, I suppose it might sound more like a fret?

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I always use brass saddles on Telecaster type guitar builds, but no brass nuts these days, unless someone asks for it, though I used to cut my own brass nuts when I started out building electrics, but that was back in the late 70's, and brass was a big thing then. My first few builds had brass bridges, saddles, string retainers and nuts, some even had brass knobs! (Though necks, natural finishes, DiMarzio and Bill Lawrence high output pickups and brass hardware, pure 1970/80's.)

There's an opinion that once a string is fretted any possible effect produced by a brass nut is taken out of the equation, that any effect from having one will only be apparent on strings played open. That sounds logical to me, but the main reason I stopped cutting them was fashion moved on and people stopped wanting them, plus they are a fair bit of work especially if you start from scratch with brass rod.

The terrible old Kodak 'Instamatic' camera pick is of the first two guitars I ever made back in 1977, All Tasmanian native timbers, Mountain Ash, Blackwood and Myrtle and plenty of brass...

1 A. First Electric Guitars.jpg

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Big day today, not a nice one from my point of view, soldering, I really hate soldering. with the freeway switch there was more wires than normal and it was very fiddly. Anyways it got done and plugged in for a test and boy does it sound good even with the silks on the nut. One small problem is that in VT bridge and neck mode the neck pup isn't working but it is in every other position so I'll check my soldering tomorrow. Always a good day when a bas you've built makes a noise :)

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I rewired it today but I'm still in the same situation so I suspect the switch is faulty. While trying it the direct from pickup to amp sounded exactly the same as pickup through the pots to the amp. Now that was unexpected and if that's the case I've decided to scrap the switching between them idea and just go with a standard 3 way switch so I've ordered a Swithcraft one

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