Primal

The dash symbol on the side is actually the negative symbol, and the arrows you see point to the negative side.

I highly doubt that string tension alone would provide enough stability for the neck. Just think about how easy it is to change the pitch of the string by pulling the neck back or pushing it forward, and thats just the neck wood itself bending! You would have FAR more flex than on a regular design. You also have to think about the sheering force produced by string tension. If I understand you correctly, the ONLY thing holding the neck tenon in place is a string through bridge+ferrules. Those strings are gonna do their damnedest to push that neck out the end of the body. Now, to address some of these issues, you could always implement some maple dowel rods (providing that the tenon is thick enough) along the point where the tenon meets the body woods. You could either leave these glued or unglued, as most of the surface area in contact with the tenon will still be bare wood. This, however, would require some very precise drilling for the dowel rods.

Yes, they both have a shared ground.

I hope you don't mean actually angling the bridge rather than just the saddles. Bass bridges (with the exception of those designed for fanned frets ) are not designed to be angled. The saddles should give you more than enough room to work with. Now, if you are talking about a TOM-style or acoustic style bridge, then yes, it should be angled.

What exactly do you mean "double the tone"?

...yea, open it up. If the wiring is really that fragile, it won't last long anyway. When you open it up, make sure that your bridge is connected to ground. When your bridge is grounded, it won't hum when you are touching the strings.

Although LMI and Stewmac may not have the best prices, if you are buying from them anyway, it may actually be cheaper to pay a bit more from them than to buy from someone else and incur more shipping costs. You've got the makings of one heck of a guitar, davee5! Do keep us informed of your progress!

The guy who runs that site is a member of this forum, though I haven't seen GuitarFrenzy around lately. From what I understand, they are very high quality templates.

1. I've only heard it used for special effects. Take a listen to some Primus songs (John the Fisherman intro comes to mind) and you are sure to get an example. 2. Some major routing. 3. You really shouldn't skimp on quality. Buy from either Warmoth or Stewmac. Bass trems are already very tricky to keep in tune (so difficult that you would probably find yourself rarely using it), and that would only be compounded by a cheap knock-off.

1. Careful with using aluminum foil as its is extremely difficult (read impossible) to solder to it. You will have to sink a screw into the wood and foil and solder to the screw. 2. I'm not sure why you are so concerned with faulty current, but I don't think a capacitor is the way to go. Why not try a fuse?

Oh, I definately like connecting the dots, however, when it comes to coloring outside the lines... well, lets just call that artistic expression. What I meant, though, is that IMO its easy to "trace" the signal going through a circuit when you are looking at a schematic rather than an assembly diagram.

Does anyone else find these hybrid schematic/component layout diagrams confusing to read? :-P

I dunno about question 1, but 2 is an easy one. Here is what I did on my bass: 1. Set the saddles to the middle of the adjustment range. 2. Determine what the the scale length is (if you are buying a neck, you must use the scale of the neck, however if you are making your own neck, you can make it to whatever scale you wish). 3. Once the neck is in place, either by gluing, bolting, etc, measure, from the nut, the scale length of the neck. I.E., if you are building a 34" scale bass, measure down the center of the neck 34" and mark the body at that point. 4. Line up the bridge with the marking you just made. Since your saddles are in their center position, this will give you room to both shorten and lengthen the string to set intonation. Hope that helps. If I hadn't just woken up, I'm sure I could have given better instructions.

http://www.tabledit.com/ That is software that you have to pay to get the full version. Are you sure you know the name of the software?

Multiple posts in different sections of this forum aren't much appreciated, either.

I really don't think you are going to get a good driver by putting the coils on their sides. Thing about how a solenoid works. When you wind a coil around a magnetic (not magnetized) coil and run electricity through it, it moves in either one direction or the other. This is the same concept behind the driver. With these drivers, the magnetic field is strongest at the top and bottom of the coil (i.e. the open ends). If you put the coils on their sides, you are going to be putting the strings in a very weak (coil induced) magnetic field, thus you would need to run the whole sustainer at a MUCH higher power, thus negating any EMI advantage (which I'm skeptical of anyway) not to mention having to figure out how to power it. One more thing about the magnetic field, the magnets are just there to provide a latent field for the driver to work against.

Yea, you definitely shouldn't be asking for pirated software on here...

Robert, you do know that there is a picture posting rule here, right? Those are WAY too big (almost fill up my 1440x900 19" monitor) and you are only allowed to have one picture per post.

Col, I potted my coil in wax and it works perfectly.

Pete, it was most likely just a bad component. I'm holding off building a new circuit for awhile in hopes that col comes up with a circuit that he likes (I like the ideas behind his circuit, and I know I have plenty of room for a larger circuit like that in my guitar).

When you are boosting the treble in this way, you are only cutting the bass. It is all relative, but strictly speaking, you can't "boost" anything with a passive setup (as boost indicates amplification).

Yea, with passive circuits you can only cut frequencies.

That (not-so-subtle) fuzz is the problem I had. I cleared it up by turning the gain down on the LM386 chip. That is the distortion I was speaking of, which is why I find it hard to beleive that psw has had such success with using a distorted signal to drive the strings.

So, I've run into a problem with my circuit: it magically just stopped working. I think the transistor blew, because there is some white power between it and a resistor (maybe the resistor heating up overheated the transistor?). Anyway, since I've got this all out of my guitar, if anyone is interested I can post some pictures of my actual circuit board so you all can see just how small you can get it (and it could be made even smaller if you work at it). Col, if you could post your circuit, it would be great. I'm using the Fetzer/Ruby amp, and I don't think that its powerful enough because it distorts too easily (my gain is at about 1/2 just to keep it from distorting, which was coming through the amp and making a horrible sound).

Hmm... just goes to show that I need to pay closer attention! It seems to be a new model, one that I haven't seen before. Since its so new, you'll have trouble finding reviews. IMO, go to your closest guitar store and try some basses out, then buy from MF if you can't afford to buy from the store.