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Rickenbacker Bass


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Touché! 😆 

I got a memory overflow issue at "pooping", not being able to store anything past that...

Edited by Bizman62
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The binding route on the headstock was about 1/16" too deep.

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shit

Well, nothing to be done about it now. On to damage control. I took some binding and split it with my beloved scrollsaw. This will give me much "shorter" pieces to mess with. 

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All I could do was glue the pieces above the other and TRY and make up the height. Then I bathed the join with acetone and binding "sawdust", hoping to melt the shavings into a slurry and jam it into the line. Success was spotty.

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An error this glaring eliminates it from future GOTM contention. cest la vie

Some judicious sawing, chiseling, and filing gave me a pretty decent shelf for the plastic nut.

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To be 100% clear, I don't actually use a nut per se. I use a zero-fret. This is a fret placed where the traditional nut would be. This makes any un-fretted strings ring with the exact same tone as the when fretted, making the nut material a moot point. The plastic nut then becomes a string guide rather than a true nut.

[voodoo] So much is made of the nut material influencing tone. Once the string is fretted, the nut is out of the equation. Therefore a zero-fret makes a consistent tone regardless, eliminating the nut material question entirely.[/voodoo]

Next up is gluing on the fretboard. Here's the mandatory "march of the hammers" shot.

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32 minutes ago, avengers63 said:

The binding route on the headstock was about 1/16" too deep.

The fix was awesome, but wouldn't it have been easier to get a piece of wider/higher binding?

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16 hours ago, avengers63 said:

I'm a cheapskate.

That's a valid reason. Although my wife and I prefer to use the word "economical" in cases our decisions are made to minimize monetary losses.

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I got the neck 99% shaped today. The heel area still needs some real "by hand" love. 

Normally, I'd have all of the shaping done before attempting any finishing. BUT.... I start a new job next week. This screws with everything because I'll be on the road M-F, only home on the weekends. Clearly, this significantly cuts into my available time. I'll be using my "away time" to let the finish cure, then finesse the heel when I'm here. I'll be finishing the heel shaping before I buff out the top, and putting a towel down so I don't gouge it on the table.

I'm also using poly on the top instead of lacquer. No, poly doesn't need that long to cure. but why wouldn't I let it sit when I have the opportunity. It's water-based, so I need to get some linseed oil into the top first, so it still has that "warm oil glow" we all love so much.

The oil is still wet in these pics, but y'all get the idea. 

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13 hours ago, avengers63 said:

This screws with everything because I'll be on the road M-F, only home on the weekends. Clearly, this significantly cuts into my available time.

Welcome to my world. Although I'm not on the road, the course providing the workshop facilities is wintertime only, five hours every Saturday. 12 Saturdays before Christmas, another 12 before May 1st. My current project has been in the bag for the last few months.

Back to the real matter, she looks great!

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Little by little.....

And I'm now out of shielding tape.

It turns out that I don't have the proper screws to mount the pickups. Alternatively, the route is pretty tight in the corners. So tight that I really don't think the pups are gonna move willingly.

In other news, I don't think my 1/2" brad point bit can get any more dull.

 

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