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5-String Aria Pro II SB1000/R150-ish bass


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Okay, so after the 12,7mm bushing and 8mm bit cut through, I did two final passes on the headstock end with a 6mm and 4mm bit in the smallest bushings that support the bit size. This leaves a couple of mm to remove in two passes with an 11mm bearing-guided bit. Zero fuss and no tearout or chipping. Sweet. A final job was to cut the bottom of the truss rod access 2mm deep using a 6mm bit and 3/8" guide bushing. This was part of the original template design and worked very sweetly. Now it's off to the spindle sander to cobble together a headstock thicknessing setup....

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Easy enough. Several passes brought this down to a hair over 16mm. Depending on what I decide to do with the headplate, this needs bringing down to less than the absolute 18mm that Gotoh GB-707s require. I'd considered recessing the bushings, however I don't think this is entirely in keeping with the look of the original basses. A total thickness of 16-17mm is ideal. On that basis, it looks like I need to get re-thicknessing that headplate to about 1,0-1,5mm. Bleh. So much can go wrong with that.

I've written about this before, but what we're looking at here is a right-angled fence for introducing the headstock into the spindle *against* the direction of motion (it's "pushing" it out rotating anti-clockwise). For a neck through, this is weighty and difficult to maintain good balance. I take less than half a mm at a time, watching constantly that the headstock stays flush to the fence and that sideways pressure is directed mid-headstock face, otherwise it happily tilts into the spindle. This is a lot of feel for the weight of the piece. Once your fingers have to be drawn back "this" side of the nut angle, the introduction of pressure against the fence becomes a matter of practice.

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Whilst on the subject of headstocks and tuners, the Gotoh GB-707 spec is as follows:

GB707-Dim.jpg

 

In terms of how to drill the headstock we have a couple of options. One would be to obey the ferrule dimension of 14mm all the way through the headstock. This is the most common approach, but the the most ideal as it leaves the tuner body with slop in place that is kept in check by the screw, the tuner post within the ferrule and clamping pressure from the ferrule drawing the body flat against the back of the headstock. It's adequate, but there's always a better more complex way!

Firstly, I'm going to drill through the face of the headstock with a 14mm Forstner bit to a depth of 12mm. That's about 1mm more than the 12,5mm ferrule collar minus the washer thickness. The rest of the headstock will be drilled at the 12mm or however the threaded section's base measures out at. I just noticed that I have a mix of Gotoh GB707s and discontinued GB70s on hand, so I need to order more in to make up a full set. Balls.

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The cavity covers on the bass consist of two halves; one covers the electronics that never really need to be accessed, and the other is for battery replacement. I'm planning on making these from 2-3mm sheet brass which can be cut on a router....carefully. The problem herein is that brass is conductive, and a bit of a risk if it gets into an upended router's internal gubbins. On that basis, I will do my best to use somebody else's router. This makes sense.

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Uneventful! So this was the setup for re-thicknessing the headplate.

Two lengths of straight wood of known equal dimension as rails plus the workpiece stuck with small tabs of DST. Plywood was wiped clean of dust, as was the wood.

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I switched to this base for the router, fitted with a 25mm diameter cutter. Depth was initially set so the cutter rested on the workpiece, then locked off. This is to do a skim pass to check that the bed is flat.

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The rails were set to be "naturally self limiting" as the handles prevent movement beyond the extremes of the workpiece.

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A couple of passes brings the plate down to about 1.5mm (give or take a couple of tenths). A quick two second blast with 150 grit doesn't do any harm.

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....back to the 6mm cutter and 3/8" OD bushing, and we have ourself an outline and truss rod access cut.

IMG_20200602_143613.jpg

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The headstock veneer is being fitted with hide glue since the "grab" of this is more desirable than PVAc. It's currently sat tacked, so once the last of the potential for slip disappears it gets clamped. Liquid hide glue is very nice in this respect, plus when working with woods at veneer thicknesses with open pore structures there's far less likelihood of glue bleeding through. With PVAc this can be disastrous for finishing when it soaks into the wood itself, whilst hide glue scrapes cleanly off surfaces, and is compatible with most finishes.

The way I clamped the headstock was to use the acrylic templates for the headstock as a caul, the truss rod cover template as an alignment shim (wrapped in tape for protection) between the headstock and the plate opening, and the waste piece that was left between the truss rod cover and headstock template. There's a laser line's worth of kerf between these (tape brings that up) but overall they line everything up sweetly. The headstock is currently under an estimated 3000lbs of clamping which is adequate for a non-mechanical join. Hide glue leaves better glue lines than PVAc anyway, but I'm not worried about this.

Time for some food before I pull it out of clamps and trim it back....

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There's a bit of parallax going on here, however that measures 17,5mm. I'll take it. Block sanding the back of the headstock and finishing the front will take a few more tenths from that anyway. As long as we're this side of 18mm then it's all good.

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20 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

It was just one of those whimsical things. No function that I can recall....

My thought was it might help keep the bobbin square to the shaft under pressure. A tight fit of the shaft in the bobbin goes the furthest, of course but there will be some wear with use.

SR

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Not sure if it would. They all work fine as is though, both the ones with and without the recess. I presume you mean the washers and not the recesses? The former are functional, so yes. The rest was just me on a Saturday morning, likely with a hangover and wanting to see something nice come out of my work that day 😉

Edges of the headstock sanded. Still a bit more work to do, however this will stand for the moment. I can still see some slightly darker areas of end grain that need care. I don't think spraying DNA over my DEROS was a good idea. That TPE covering will react poorly with alcohol....ooops....

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Alrighty guys, I'm going to need a bit of input on how I'd best handle a few things logistically here.

  • The fingerboard needs inlaying, and I don't have sufficient inlay material on hand. Recommendations on a good source of MOP in the EU (worldwide shipping is sketchy right now) would be good. I had a bunch of samples from Galaxy Plastic in the US (who I believe Doug West uses?) but not sure if an EU equivalent exists. A good MOP alternative would be just as good as the real thing.
  • I'm short on 57110 Evo fretwire and really not sure if I like the prices from ToneTech in the UK. They're really on the high end; any other sources I don't know of? I have some extra hard NS which I can use, however I have inlaying to do first.

This afternoon, I should have a clearer view on what I can and cannot achieve before we move into our new home. We've at least a calendar month in this place, so if I can get the inlay in within a couple of weeks I can probably manage that and mounting the board to the neck. I usually fret on the neck anyway. The wings won't be mounted until after the fretwork has been dressed, mostly because I prefer to have equal access over the fingerboard when possible.

In the meantime, I have to see if I can get this truss rod cover finished without losing a finger.

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Well, I figured that if I slotted the board I could at least do the inlay pocketing. It's perhaps somewhat less than ideal but still, you do what you're able when on a limited schedule!

Every time I use my slotting box, I go through @Andyjr1515's setup tutorial to ensure everything is square squarity, and that it's in good general working order. Storing under the bench is very out of sight, so I'd hate errors to impress themselves on workpieces out of a lack of care. Having all the setup tools on the tool itself always helps! These are: Allen keys for the box, a machinist's square, a block of stearine (candle paraffin wax) for blade lube, a brush for keeping eyeballs on the target and junk out of the playing field, plus an additional clamp to provide secure two-point retention.

Ideally I would have a pair of triangular wedges either side of the board within the box itself as the very far frets hang out in the wind a little. Still, keeping the blade waxed (one light run down the block) every once in a while prevents binding in the cut. Very important when it comes to the zero fret where there's only a few mm of wood ready to chunk out.

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8 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Alrighty guys, I'm going to need a bit of input on how I'd best handle a few things logistically here.

  • The fingerboard needs inlaying, and I don't have sufficient inlay material on hand. Recommendations on a good source of MOP in the EU (worldwide shipping is sketchy right now) would be good. 

I got some from Small Wonder recently (during lockdown) :

http://www.smallwonder-music.co.uk/

How much of what size do you need?  If you have an issue and your inlays fit within 25mmx25mm blanks, I can send you up to 5 pieces from that order...

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Hi Andy! That size may work. The inlay dimensions are:

  • 1x 33,5mm x 9,5mm eye at 12th
  • 3x 20mm x 10mm eyes at 3rd, 7th and 17th
  • 3x 16mm x 8mm ovals at 5th, 9th and 15th
  • 3x 12,5mm x 5mm ovals at 19th, 21st and 24th

Tilting a 25mm x 25mm square at 45° leaves it super tight:

12th.jpg

 

....planning it out....would you believe this? 😀

inlays.jpg

 

I'll PM you and we'll organise. Nothing works better than the collective power of the group!

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I recall having been to that site once before a long time ago. The last time I bought pearl of any consequence was from an eBay seller called Pietra Dura, however they seem to be selling off what they have. Likely down to issues restocking or simply financial crisis. It's going around, that's for sure.

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Okay, after a few sweaty sessions of fret slotting in this heat we're 25 slots in. These will all need re-visiting with the saw and a depth stop anyway, especially if the radiusing finds any shallow slots. Talking of radiusing....

My preferred working method for radiusing is to use the G&W router sled. This really makes ultra-short work of routing in a single radius down a board. The only problem in the design is that it is limited to a few mm under the width of a 5-string bass such as this. That said, minor modification of the side plates is all that is required to make this work. Beyond this size however, it becomes a little more specialist and hence worthwhile considering making your own radiusing jig. I estimate that G&W updating their design to accommodate 8-string guitars and 5+ string basses would be a significant increase in overall jig size and cost, mostly to the deficit of builders who make the most common 6-string guitars and 4-string basses.

Anyway. The problem as it presents itself:

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All this needs is four small cutouts making in the sidewalls in order to allow the fingerboard to pass through. The lower edge can remain as-is since this is the guide along the sled.

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I have an old pair of digital calipers which I truly hate. In fact, I hate virtually all digital calipers since 99% of them are the same unreliable cheap crap anyway. I keep them purely because of the ability it has to lock in a measurement with a thumbscrew and hence be a reasonable measurement transfer scribe.

Take the depth of the radiusing sled's base platen, lock it off.

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Scribe a line from the bottom.

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I then did the same depth measurement as the platen with the board on (around 15mm + 8mm, 23mm) and a width offset of around 4mm. That brings the capacity up from 71mm to about 79mm. My board is 76,5mm at the very end. This modification can only go so far as the sled itself is limited in side to side range. Thankfully this seems to be slightly in excess of the opening's capacity so we should be good. Until we're not.

IMG_20200605_114316.jpg

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This is going to take some time and patience. 4-5 mins each, but the heat sucks today. Not entirely Clickspring levels of quality, but that much is not required. The cutout simply needs to be wider than the scribed lines so that it clears the fingerboard surfaces, nothing more.

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Done.

IMG_20200605_124955.jpg

 

I re-assembled the jig, then set up the radiusing sled base. The fingerboard is held in place by four pieces of 3M DST and pressed firmly along the centreline.

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Absolutely perfect fit.

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Four depth passes and we're radiused. The slots will need re-visiting and taking to depth as mentioned. Otherwise, I think we can look at getting this into the pantograph for inlay pocketing. Certainly a completely different approach for inlaying to @komodo's ongoing Cthulhu project, that's for sure. The main thing I see is that we're looking for geometric accuracy and repeatability which is definitely where a pantograph excels.

IMG_20200605_132800.jpg

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Okay, let's get pocketing!

This is immediately prior to be deciding to do these inlays left to right on the pantograph's cutting area rather than front to back. Sometimes one way is more appropriate than another, and this may change as I work around the board. I've decided to start at the 24th fret to get an idea of alignment. The pilot has diameter of 9mm, or 3,0mm at the cutter. My roughing passes are being done using a 2,5mm cutter, so I'm left with waste to remove using a finer pilot and matching cutter.

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Yep, that aligns alight. Maybe a little left of centre, but that looks like my line than a problem with the pantograph.

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Yeah, a little left of centre but that can be fixed since this isn't the final size cutter.

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I found a few tiny scraps of pearl sufficient enough to make two of the smallest inlays. My concern with the pantograph is that the Dremel's runout is such that the pearl doesn't cut cleanly or to size. Sure enough, cutting an inlay using a 3,0mm pilot and 1,0mm burr resulted in an inlay that was just too small with a less than ideal outline. This might not be limited to the runout, as cutters this small happily deflect out from the workpiece, or into it during captured cuts. The second test with a 9,0mm pilot and 3,0mm burr left me with an oval with a 4,5mm minor diameter which is equal to the runout I've encountered previously.

So the takeaway from this is that my setup just won't be adequate in cutting detail into pearl or other "positive" workpiece. The pockets on the other hand are perfectly fine, as I already knew they would be....especially for Ebony which fills in almost invisibly. The error margins here also correspond to the spindle runout of half a mm, however I'm far less concerned about this than the pearl. Having done larger test pieces on the pantograph, deviations in size are far less obvious than on very small inlays such as these. This was my entire reasoning for starting this end of things. Normally one would do a test cut, however I'm perfectly sure on what my pantograph can and cannot manage at this stage. Certainly, it needs to be upgraded or made from scratch!

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