TemjinStrife

I've played quite a few Gibsons and a TON of epiphones, and the QC on each is about the same... always try before you buy!

If you can find an excellent sounding, feeling, and playing Epiphone LP and replace the important bits, though, I think you'll easily have something that is 99-100% of a good Gibson.

Honestly, my Epi Korina Explorer smokes any real Gibson Explorer I've ever played... and it's totally stock.

Upright electric bass?

geneally the necks are so huge on them they dont even need truss rods... the things wouldnt be able to move that much wood

Depends on type of string and several other factors. I play upright bass and cello and let me tell you that my cello could certainly have used a truss rod as the action gets quite high due to neck flexing from the mediumweight strings I use.

Alright, figured it out.

The sleeving had been accidentally soldered to the black output wire of the humbucker... it's impressive that we got any output at all. Now that that's fixed, the thing works and sounds great!

Thanks for your help everyone!

Upright electric bass? Long-scale electric bass?

Pickup seems fine... around 17.2k of resistance, which is close to my 6-string JB. I'm now checking for bad solder joints and/or shorts.

Don't worry about it. At least you didn't do something like order the wrong neck for a bolt-on project or something. *whistles innocently*

If you have a Radio Shack near you, they have some decent braided wire that comes in a convenient 3-pack of colors (black, green, orange) that I've been using for my wiring projects with (mostly) good results... and I'm pretty sure the one "bad" result was due to my own mistake and not the wire itself.

Alright, so any old glue works. Two dots of CA sounds good though.

jmrentis, the only problem with searching something like "nut glue" is the board software hates the word "nut" because it lacks a fourth letter...

IMO a properly fitted nut should not have to be glued in at all. So no glue at all is my feeling, but if you must, use an extremely small dab of yellow glue to keep it from shifting. You don’t want a permanent bond. The strings should be doing most if not all of the work of holding the nut in place.

Not being glued in at all may well work for a Fender-style nut, but the Gibson-style end-of-fingerboard nut has nothing to really hold it in place when the strings are off, so I'm gonna have to glue it.

And now I have two conflicting responses. I assume CA glue can be heated or something to make the nut removable... and will yellow glue adhere to the Graphtech material well? I guess I'll have to wait on further advice.

Bridge pickup has an extremely low output and very bright percussive sound, which is odd considering it's a JB clone.

I'm confused. Is it an actual Duncan PU or a clone? You mentioned before that you installed a Duncan, then you state it's a clone. If it is a clone, are you sure that the wires are color coded the same as a real Duncan? I mean, you may have the same colors in front of you, but they may represent different leads. Might be your problem.

Cheers

It's a Duncan Designed JB-7. Basically, a Korean or Chinese or something-made pickup that's based on the JB design and uses the same wiring scheme, just is made elsewhere (and thus cheaper) than the USA-made Seymour Duncan range. The neck pickup is a matching Duncan Designed Jazz that works and sounds fine and was soldered in the same way with regards to the leads.

Thanks for the response.

I have a Graphtech Gibson-style (end-of-fingerboard) 7-string nut that I need to glue into my current 'rebuild' project. I don't have any of my literature handy where I am right now... what sort of glue should I use? CA glue? Something else?

I just finished wiring up and setting up a Dean Evo 7 that I picked up off of ebay completely stripped of all parts except for ferrules, the bridge bushings and bridge ground wire.

After installing a pair of Duncan Design 7-string pickups (also off of ebay) I've run into a bit of an issue that I'm not sure what to do about short of rewiring the whole thing... based on the information below does anyone have any idea?

The setup is as follows:

2 4-wire humbuckers (Seymour Duncan wiring colors) into a 3-way LP-style switch and a single volume/tone. The volume knob pulls to split both pickups.

Seymour Duncan Wiring Diagram

The symptoms:

Neck pickup works fine, splits fine. Tone and volume work properly.

Bridge pickup has an extremely low output and very bright percussive sound, which is odd considering it's a JB clone. Splitting this pickup only lowers the output even more. The tone knob seems to act as a volume knob for this pickup only.

Any ideas? Would any other information be useful to you electronics gurus out there to help?

I wired an LED with resistor into an EMG active circuit and the guitar sounds great... even better than a similar EMG-equipped guitar sans LED. I wonder if it has an effect on the tone...

Cool. Thanks guys, and great pics and bass, Wez!

Looking at some of the custom basses and guitars I've seen, I've noticed that some luthiers build singlecut instruments where the upper bout of the body extends to the 12th fret or beyond (up to the 8th on the Teuffel Tesla!)

When designing this sort of body with a set neck, would it be easier and/or better to leave a sort of "side ridge" on the neck to attach to the extended horn on the body, or would it be better to cut the upper part of the body so that it matches the neck's taper?

LMII has some. I don't know the cost. Apparently it's longer-wearing than standard fretwire but less than stainless steel.

GFS also carries mini-hums. They're pretty nice, a friend of mine has one in the neck position of his tele and it's like a powerful Strat pickup with no hum.

That is a very beautiful table.

:D

Seriously though, it looks awesome. Amazing piece of... walnut? Macassar Ebony? for the wings...

I honestly like your pickup ring design a lot more than the standard rings.

Remember, we guitarists are a conservative lot. Most of the stuff we design, build, and play hasn't really seen much innovation since the 1950s.

While I don't usually like "german carves" I also don't like the Mosrite aesthetic. Yours might well be different... indeed some of the other pics I've seen of this guitar look very nice. I think people are just put off by the dramatic nature of the carve...

Legitimate concerns. The fact that you're in the UK may make it prohibitive for my friend to order a one-off... but we'll see about the production model(s). I figured I'd ask anyways... I'm not a big 8-string fan myself but I had someone ask me if it was possible to make one.

I'll probably show him Soulmate instead... but I'm very interested to see how your models come out!

It's very Mosrite-ish and unique. Not quite my cup of tea, but a number of people on this forum do like the German carve on Mosrites.

My question for you would be this: would you be willing to sell necks or prerouted body blanks? Or, perhaps, create a standard neck and rout setup for custom blanks? I know some people around here who might be interested in such...

Hey, I play a table with strings attached to it! I'll skip to the answers of the most commonly asked questions to save everyone the time on this subject that pops up on a daily basis.

8 strings.

With my hands.

Yes, it is heavy. But I guarantee it weighs less than your Ash body telecaster.

No, I don't use every string in every song.

Yes, you may hold it.

Heh, the Chapman Stick-style two-handed tapping play was the only way I thought nine strings would make sense. Where do you get your string sets?

Ugh... Call me conservative, but I can't see any use for a bass with more than six strings (that aren't doubled like a 12-string guitar) unless you're into the Chapman Stick style of playing.

It must cost as much as a new guitar to string one of those things up! I have flexible hands, but geez... a neck that wide must be like playing a table.

Just make sure you have space for a neck pickup if you want it...