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Acrylic basses from China


bottomfeed

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My action was high and the relief was none, although I still gigged it and it sounded fine. I did the neck releif but there is no way the action is going down without a shim so I need to do that. then I think I will do something about the LEDs, I might replace the bottom LEDs with multicolour ones and have a bit more of a sound to light thing going on. i mean, if we are going for tacky here, might as well go the whole way!

 

94club-gig-photo.jpg

 

The drummer was impressed, but then he has a green acrylic drum kit, so the only dissapointment was that it wasn't green LEDs!

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I've got a shim coming - set of three from Ebay for £7 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166313960606). The 0.5 degree one should be right (carefully calculated with what I remember of trigonometry from 50 years ago). Fret ends are fine. All seems pretty good apart from the neck angle. There's a replacement neck with all of the LEDs working coming at some point too.

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Get you with your fancy measuring - I always just lobbed something in and see how it went!

 

I had a look at the LEDs in the body, it is just 6 LEDs wired with their leads in series, with a 9v battery across. I would prefer a less direct light, so thinking of putting some LEDs behind the pickups and bridge, where they can light up the back. and maybe turning the leds on the neck down a little bit!

 

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They are not the easiest basses to make playable...shim needed, bridge is a bit cheap but I'm not going to replace it.. the strings it comes with are utter pants! Pups are actually not bad, although they look & feel cheap.. action down to something playable.. string spacing is a little narrow for my liking ... but it is quite fun! Got a photo shoot for a 'Space Rock' band coming up... it's got to be part of that! 👽🤘🕉️

Edited by bottomfeed
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...I hope one (or more) will be appearing at the SWBB?

====

 

IIRC Blue LEDs operate around 2.8V +/-  which suggests 2 strings of 3 in serIes across a 9V PP3 in the body (assuming no voltage converter circuit)

 

Just adding a series resistor into each string of 'N' LEDs across the PP3 might not work well - you may find it's better to connect all LEDs currently on a battery to be in parallel (difficult in the neck?) and then connect one 10K ohm, say, trimpot in series between the LEDs and the battery. Sounds like fun 😉

 

Edited by sandy_r
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Yep, mine will be there. 

I will put a resistor to the neck circuit (obviously no idea what is going on in there, there are leds at 3, 5, 7, 9, 12x2, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24x2 so 12 leds in total. The ones in the body are series, but I will probably put some kind of circuit to make them do something more interesting (and maybe add a few)

 

1 hour ago, bottomfeed said:

They are not the easiest basses to make playable...shim needed, bridge is a bit cheap but I'm not going to replace it.. the strings it comes with are utter pants! Pups are actually not bad, although they look & feel cheap.. action down to something playable.. string spacing is a little narrow for my liking 

 

String spacing is a bit wide for my liking, a bridge is a bridge and the pickups, although they are low level sound ok. Yeh, strings not great but I played it live straight out of the packet so it will be better when I can actually adjust it!

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I've just shimmed mine with a .5 degree shim. Without tuning up and adjusting the bridge saddles the angle seems just right - with saddles fully lowered, B and G strings are just off the fretboard and E, A and D are flat on it. After tuning up and adjusting the bridge saddles, it's not bad - slight fret buzz on a couple of strings at the 11th fret. Original strings still on it, they're not very nice so I'll change them in the near future and see if I can tweak the truss rod enough to mitigate the buzz.

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Mine still have the original strings, which seem ok at home, but on saturday, when I switched between the bongo (because I couldn't see the fretmarkers) and the acrylic, the tone was pretty weedy and rattly. I know, it isn't exactly a fair comparison as the bongo tends to out gravitas most things, but it was so weedy that I thought that maybe either it is because the strings were rattling - when I shimmed mine I had to raise the middle strings as they were rattling about the middle somewhere) or just the strings were no good.

I should actually just put some decent strings on it really - I have played it at 3 gigs so it has earned me £315, which is £90 more than it cost, so I am up on the deal!

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