Phil Mailloux

I checked out a course here, in Holland, by a luthier. He teaches classes of 4 people only, the course is 6 months long and is one day a week on saturdays. It takes up the full day. They do everything themselves, including sanding, lacquer and final adjustments. I agree with idch, I think you should offer the lacquering part too. As for sanding being given as homework...I don't know, people who never touched wood in their lives before might very well be able to screw that up too without supervision. It doesn't take much to sand a bit too much off the edges of a neck to get something thats not wide enough to fit all strings and making your neck useless. I did this mistake already and I knew what I was doing, I wasn't totally clueless like some students might be.

I studied carpentry and furniture building in high school back in '86 to '88. Almost all the stationary tools we had were General and they already were at least 10 to 20 years old. They still worked like a charm. I'm sure they must have suffered a lot of abuse from having to deal daily with about 60 students but still performed great.

You definitely gave yourself a hell of a lot of work for a first project. Working with figured maple, semi-hollow bodies and sunbursts are not exactly recommended for beginners. But hey, if there's a will there's a way. My first build also has a sunburst but I had to redo it at least 8 to 10 times. Not easy at all when you don't know what you're doing. Even after getting all the books and videos on the subject I still had to redo it several times before it was good enough, meaning its still not Perfect in my mind but only good enough. Just be extemely patient with your project and don't rush it. I'm now into my 12th (and last) month on my first build. Give yourself LOTS of time for this.

Like Wes, the 4 first ones and Garage Days Mechanix was on Megadeths first album. It was played about twice as fast as four horsemen and DID have lyrics, which were totally different than horsemen.

Oops! I misread here, I thought he meant electronics cover and not pickup. Well, anyway I will build a pickup cover in wood anyway. The bass was finished this week I only need to build the pickup and its cover and the preamp now. I'll take some pics of the building of the cover if you want to check back again within 4 to 7 days. Devon, that is my first build.

As a project or a thread on the subject you can look at my webpage. The one listed at the bottom of this post. You'll find all the details of the build of the bass and pictures of the wooden cover but no pics of the building of the cover itself. There's nothing extremely challenging there. I took a leftover piece of my body and shaped it to fit in the rout. My cover is 4mm thick (about 5/32")

I always thought that was a weird name but then again I figured you were a guy since 98% of the people here are guys

other way to do it is to adjust/intonate the bridge the best you can and then gluing in the bridge.

JFC, dude thats great!!! Can I ask another favor? Can I have thinner less cartoony letters? EDIT: I should've looked at the coreldraw file before posting a reply. The first and third images are perfect for what I want. You da man! You earned yourself my eternal gratitude and a christmas card!! Thanks a lot. This was seriously frustrating for me.

All right I give up! My body is now finished and laquered, my neck needs only to be fretted and lacquered and this should happen this week-end. I've been working one year on this bass and I STILL can't make a proper logo for it. I've tried coreldraw and all kinds of other crap. I just don't get it! The logo is the last thing I need to do. Is there a photoshop / CAD superhero-champ out there who could make me a logo in 5 minutes (or more)?? I want the logo to look like what I drew but as shown on the right side so I can color on the inside myself with coreldraw, in vector format please. Is anyone cool enough to do this for me? In compensation for your time i'll be eternally grateful... and send you a christmas card

PM Clavin and ask for a quote for this. He might be able to help.

Well said. As you can see from all the answers in this thread: Ask 6 guys what they think is the best head and you'll get 6 different answer. Sound is subjective, find your own sound.

I'm in love with my SWR rig. A Workingman's one-sixty head (older model) with goliath II jr. cabinet (2 X 10")Any head from SWR is great.

Cool! I've been wondering the same exact thing for at least a year I was starting to ask myself if I was blind because I had never seen this tutorial before until I saw the little green "New" next to the title

Woah! Thanks for all the links Lovekraft. The only one I found myself was the Kreuzer one but it doesn't really suit my needs. With my limited knowledge of electronics I probably never would've known the other ones where good enough for a bass. Thanks again

Lovekraft, do you have schematics or a link to a good 2-band preamp I could do myself?

I've been using Clou lacquer, which is from Germany. Unfortunately for me all the info on it is in German. It was sold to me as Nitro-cellulose lacquer. I bought it along with the nitro thinner. I just saw in a book that Clou makes different kinds of nitro lacquer and the one i've got doesn't seem to be the traditional one. Could someonde translate the technical sheets of this product to me? At least tell me in general whats the most important parts of the sheets. Most importantly to me is if this is "ready-to-spray" lacquer or the regular stuff. Here's the datasheet in pdf format.

Hi, First off, are you french or just in France right now? If you speak the language, check out this french guitar building forum: http://www.lutherie-amateur.com/Forum/ They'll be able to answer most of your questions. If you don't speak the language just PM me a list of words and things you need. I'll try to translate that for you.

You forgot the option "EQ on the amp". I hate tone knobs!!! The one tone knob on my P-bass is annoying enough, I don't understand why people would want a whole parametric equalizer thing with 10 knobs on their basses (where's the "puke" icon??) you spend more time playing with the damn buttons then playing bass

I THINK I remember seeing a new one here in holland for 800€, although I wouldn't quote me too much on that. It's definitely a nice bass, but personally i'd take that cash and build myself one instead. My guitar buying days are over. Maybe you'd have better luck with this question in a bass chat site like talkbass.com or something.

Best place would be... Stewmac. I also live in Europe and order everything from the states. Shipping is not that expensive. The advantage of stewmac is you can check in advance how much the shipping costs through their website. You don't get bad suprises this way. You might pay also a bit of taxes at the border but unfortunately thats life! I can give you the website of a Dutch luthier who sales what you want but the prices are 100 to 200% higher than stewmac. It's MUCH cheaper to get the stuff from the states.

Hey ya'll, I got around (again) to finish my bass with that sunburst I keep screwing up. The sunburst is starting to look quite nice now but I keep getting runs Whats the deal with that??? I've got both stewmac videos on finishing and their book too. I'm following all the direction a finishing newb should be doing: I'm spraying at 35psi, the needle is practically in closed position and i'm trying to mimick the spraying pattern I saw on the videos. I also hold the bass horizontaly after spraying to let the nitro set but thats when the runs develop on the sides My lacquer is 60% nitro 40% thinner (and black dye) The front of the bass looks fine. (here's a pic) But I get small runs on the sides of the bass. Why is that? Is it because my corners are too round? I've tried sanding the runs out but then I reach the wood and respraying that tiny part makes it worse looking. I've also wiped the lacquer of with thinner in the ugly parts but respraying it makes really ugly lines between the parts (and I still get runs anyway) I'm getting pretty annoyed i've already sprayed and removed the lacquer at least 4 times this week because of those runs and this is only the black band of the burst, I still haven't sprayed any clear or any other colors yet Anybody´s got any tips?

I also read lots of good reviews of them on the EB MM forums. Most people seem to think that the MM pups sounds as good as the original and much better than the Seymour Duncan ones. Note that I haven't tried any yet. However, I think they sell them around 150-200$ !!! I've got a hard time understanding why I should pay that much for 15$ worth of forbon, magnets and wire. That's also the reason why i'm building my own pups, it saves money. God knows how much I already spent on my bass. I'm saving where I can and pups is a good place to save. 150$ for a "commercial grade" pup buys you LOTS of magnets and wire for experimenting.

I like the second one the best. It looks the most comfortable to play. I also like the look of it a lot. It reminds me of Carl thompson's basses.

' One-way IS good enough for most jobs anyway If you're in it to save a few bucks you can make youself a 1$ truss rod by just making a compression rod out of a threaded rod a nut and some sort of anchor. That's my plan for my next instrument.