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al heeley

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Everything posted by al heeley

  1. al heeley
    I've used the rustins hi-gloss 2-part UF resin lacquer for a couple of projects - mainly because it gives a great tough fast high gloss without the need for good spray equipment. In my view, it is not the right stuff to use if you are after recreating a burst paint job. For this NC lacquer is best if you have the spray gear and the patience (I have neither). The Rustins material will not be compatible with some colorants, you need to check carefully as if they are wrong it will not cure properly (ever).
  2. al heeley
    Paper is pretty inert to lacquers - they coat a lot of magazine paper and glossy ads with a variety of lacquers to make them shiny. i think a map finish would look really cool. Remember that BMW saloon racec car livery based on map images many years ago? Well cool
  3. al heeley
    You're both very naughty boys.
  4. al heeley
    Really enjoyed seeing this come together - lovely instrument, he's a lucky lad. Great work!
  5. al heeley
    Blimey, sounds like you're heading for an awful lot of work - hope the basic guitar is worth all this effort, what's it's origin? Adapting an old 6-string acoustic to 12 strings fills me with fear - there's a lot of extra tension there to fold a less-than-well-built acoustic in half once another 6 strings are added, and also to play 12 strings well you need a wider fretboard than a std 6-string (Ok, it never stopped rickenbacker but they are foul pigs to play)
  6. al heeley
    I hope its just the pic! The dimensions will be a standard 43mm wide at the nut and 62mm wide at the 24th fret. The neck thickness will be about 3/4" (sorry, mixing my units as usual) at nut to 1" thick at the 19th fret where it meets the body. maybe the dimensions look a bit skewed with so much wood left to remove. [update] Here's the headstock shaped and sanded. Wenge fretboard from Simo trimmed and started to shape the radius, which is taking far longer than I hoped.
  7. al heeley
    Neck carve well under way, body thicknessed and truss rod slot routed. Rough shape has been hacked out using a combination of hand saw, chisels, drills, router and jig saw which has taken all afternoon. If I had a bandsaw I'd be able to have done a much better job in a tenth of the time.
  8. al heeley
    Core glued and planed, neck profile marked on ready for cutting. This is going to be tricky without access to a bandsaw.
  9. al heeley
    Witness the birth of a new bass project. A very uninspiring starting picture for what will be my most ambitious project to date, a 4-string neck-thru-body bass using a mixture of maple and walnut. Here's the core laminates just being glued together for the start of the build. Since I've never put together my own neck before, or shaped and fretted a fingerboard, I'm a bit apprehensive about making some enbarassing errors due to poor handiwork and patchy knowledge. The plan is for a 24-fret guitar, body shape sort of resembling a Warmoth Gecko bass, maple/walnut/maple neck+core, walnut wings, wenge fretboard (thanks Simo), passive jazz pickups and very minimal controls - blend pot to mix N&B pups, master vol, master tone. That's it.
  10. al heeley
    Poplar is widely used as a cost-effective wood for guitar bodies - low to mid range priced instruments
  11. al heeley
    I'd wedge a slip of wood under one end of my template to give the correct angle when routing, after having first used the saech function for 20 minutes.
  12. al heeley
    I see a fairly emotive subject is pickup placement. My natural inclination would be to put the bridge pup as near to the bridge as possible and the neck pup as near to the end of the fretboard as possible (by 24th fret) to get the widest possible variations in tone. Now I am hearing I should be placing them under specific harmonic nodes, like the 36th and the 48th, but this surely would only hold true for when you play an open string, unfretted. Looking at big names in basses, Fender, Rickenbacker, Warwick, Warmoth, their neck pups are never right at the end of the fretboard though, more like halfway between the bridge and the end of the fretboard. Is there a good tonal reason for this? Anything I should be aware of before I finalise the plans?
  13. al heeley
    That's a good idea, I could also use a sandwich construction for the wings with a nice figured piece for the top, along the lines of Mel Hiscock's 8-string thru-body bass in his famous book. Oh, here's a pic of the bubinga p-bass:
  14. al heeley
    The Carvin looks lovely - just what I'm after. Just finished putting together a P-bass with a Bubinga body, I thought my jig saw was going to burn out cutting the body for this. It has a cheap replacement neck off e-bay but the tone is absolutely awesome - only it weighs a tonne! Thx for the Warmoth link.
  15. al heeley
    Looks good to me, can't see any problems there.
  16. al heeley
    Here's a photoshop sketch of what I'm after, the body shape is a little based on Warmoth's G4 shape, which is nicely proportioned. Controls will be JB bridge pup, P-bass neck pup with a master vol, master tone and a blend pot to mix between them. Nice and simple.
  17. al heeley
    You can do a lot worse than spending an hour reading through this, before you decide how best to proceed: http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/tutorial5.htm
  18. al heeley
    Thanks for the feeedback guys. Can anyone offer advice about where I can get pre-shaped and slotted bass fingerboards here in the UK? I like the Maple/walnut idea - see what you're getting at about the different pore sizes. Any other recommedations for good pairings, from a workability point of view?
  19. al heeley
    I've been thinking about building a neck-thru-body 4-string bass for my next project, and have a few Q's I hope you can help answer; 1) Good woods to use for the neck: I'm thinking 3 pieces, maybe maple either side with a dark mahogany in the centre, maybe some contrasting veneers along the join lines. Any other recommedations for good wood pairings? 2) I love ebony fretboards, but I'm not sure I have the skill to shape one well enough and put frets in it. Are there pre-shaped and pre-fretted fingerboards available I can use? 3) How much does the choice of wood for the wings influence the sound, compared to the core/neck? Are you best going for a nice light wood to ease playability and shoulder strain?
  20. al heeley
    You know what? Nothing sounds better at being a tele than a Tele. I would use the guitar to its max character if I wanted diverse sounds. Don't try to make a Tele more rocky, use it for what it's best at. Leave the standard pup configs in - that way it will be faithful to its own strengths and remain very different from the les paul. I would do the same with the strat - for me a strat at its best is the 3 s/c config, not the hot rod HB bridge version - I'd get a different type of guitar for that and leave the strat to do what its good at. Onoly a little mod to the wiring (the eric johnson mod..?) to use the tone as a master on all 3 pups to take the brittle edge off the bridge pup, its only a 1 wire resolder, then leave as is.
  21. al heeley
    It is safe. the battery will eventually slowly discharge and the LED light will fade. It will not blow up. After some time the battery termainals will start to corrode and there will be a build up of corroded and oxidised metal at the cathode and anode. This will not kill you if ingested but ingestion should be avoided. If you had a small cat that licked it, it may have a poorly tummy for a day or two.
  22. al heeley
    Strangely that did occur to me. The loingest bit I have found (and bought) is about 10 inches long and 6mm wide, too wide and not long enough for my job, hence the post. Drak's contrastingly useful post was great advice, I bought a piece of copper tubing from B&Q and superglued a 3mm wood bit into the end of it, and it worked a treat. Dilemna solved.
  23. al heeley
    Simple but brilliant! But if the drill bit is only just over 2" long and I need to drill though about 4.5", I guess I need to drill the first 2.5" wide enough to accomodate the extension tube diameter so the thinner drill can then make it all the way through....did that make sense?.
  24. al heeley
    Scariest part after routing the neck cavity, for me, is drilling through for the earth wire to earth the bridge to the rest of the hardware & pots. I'm building a p-bass type guitar but there's just not enough angle to drill through from the bridge to the ctrl cavity. The only drill bit I have thats possibly long enough is 6mm wide and thats a big hole for a little earth wire. I really only want a 2 or 3mm hole if poss. Are there any tricks/methods I could use to run a thin channel up so i can wire in the bridge?
  25. al heeley
    tru-oil wiped on with a rag, allow to dry a day then apply again. When fully dry, buff with scotchbrite pad: lovely hard, protected satin neck with a really nice fast feel.
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