Prostheta

Agreed. We use vinegar for all manner of cleaning purposes, especially for running through the coffee maker. It's an excellent cleaner.

That's a very laudable project. If you'd like to open a discussion on that instrument (remember to @ my user name in) then I'm certain that there's a lot to discover and learn. If there's one thing I enjoy, that's a puzzle....and as I'm sure you'll agree, having one isolated example of a historical item is not representative of the wider varieties of them from that time, or indeed where it fits into the evolution and development of that instrument.

I'd dislike very much for alien archaeologists to dive beneath the waves, only to recover a Gibson Corvus and state that it represents our highest point in instrument making.

I can't say that I have heard of a hearpe before....a Google Image Search using the term "English Hearpe" only produced images of cold sores and a tr-ex.me image translation from English to Finnish for "I have herpes". Clearly not research grade. Wikipedia was more forthcoming on their Anglo-Saxon Lyre page. The first thing that struck my eye was the (decorative?) inlaid spots around the edge, the second being the join around the peghead. I wonder what form of joint they used in that time....

I digress and am in danger of derailing this thread....

It's a pain in the arse for blunting tools though. It takes up silica from the ground, so it's gritty stuff. Poplar is an easier alternative, even if it isn't as commonly available. I love the pistachio type mineral staining in Poppeli. It would make a nice top.

Truly Finnish problems.

Very cool Henri. I've been working designing and fabricating in the shipbuilding and public space industry over here in Raisio the last few years. What's your own design area?

Haapa is an interesting choice of wood. Matchsticks! The tension isn't huge on that though of course, plus it's not like a small cross section in a guitar neck. Very minimalist design you've got going on....

Nice companion build to your black and white.

Slinky. The top reminds me of a laminated top semi and the back an Ibanez Radius. Very comfy no doubt. Does it anchor over the thigh or can it be a little slide-y?

Clean and clear! Very cool, and late is always better than never!

I think it's a trick of the inlay.

Carbon is probably the saving grace here. Black is rarely ever black, as you say. It easily goes brown, purple or any other weird shade.

It's probably an illusion with the fingerboard inlays being smaller diameter and wider-spaced than most, but the neck feels wider to my eye than most. Is that a deliberate specification, or just me?

It's also important to consider the source and quality of the light, much the same as how high-end car paint manufacturers formulate their blacks for differing levels of jet by biasing the colour. IIRC, Mercedes usually bias their jet blacks to blue for the proper high end stuff, which I presume has something to do with outdoor colour perception.

This is partly why I was drawn to this burst, because the residual warmer tones of Maple are often hard to overcome in order to achieve flat or colder colours. You usually end up with stray brown or even green. It's still possible to identify the Maple-ness of the wood in the centre of the burst, but it's not overwhelming. Spot on.

Bleaching wood with oxalic acid or other chemicals is a possible path, and I've not seen many people doing that of late. Back in the first decade of PG, this was a very popular method of whitening browner Maples without destroying their appearance.

Most likely you are only getting a signal in passive mode, which is one of the two positions of that switch. This can be proven by checking for continuity between the pickup signal hot and the central wiper tag of the 500k half (upper, at least in the diagram) of the volume pot. If this is the case, then fault-finding quickly becomes very complex with the active side of the circuit. I'd first trace the signal from the pickup as it comes to the switch pole, out to the relevant line on the preamp board which looks like the far left white wire. That lets you know the preamp is getting signal.

Also check that the preamp is getting power, which should be +9v, 0v and -9v over two series PP3 batteries with a central tap being that virtual ground of 0v. Measuring from the union between the two batteries (0v), measure the voltage at the preamp with the long connector. The first one (blue) should be -9v. The third (red) should be +9v. You should also have continuity between the junction and the fifth wire (black) which is the 0v, or "earth" in that diagram.

Yeah, that's definitely crossed over the line from the "merely standard". Grey is always a hard colour to pull off with Maple due to its natural warm cast, and the slight blue tinge to the outer areas (esp. around the neck area) of the burst pull your eye and create interest rather than flattening the effect. It's more attractive than a lot of the bursts I see kicking around these days. Mediocre bursts should be outlawed under penalty of being kicked in the shins repeatedly.

Stay well. I worried as soon as I read, "succumbed". Less of that!

Yeah, rattlecans get expensive very quickly and have a lot of disadvantages. I could do with a friendly paintshop as well really. With string-through locations, it's worth completely ignoring them lining up. As long as you can locate them top and back, drilling just over halfway through and accepting any slight misalignment as a given is fine. I usually recommend using a twist drill run backwards to smooth out the transition between the back hole and the front so that strings don't hang up on insertion. That's hardly ever really needed though.

No problem - get back to us with good news!

15 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looking forward to getting some gloss on this one over the weekend.

You and me both.

Fantastic news. Let's see her in GOTM for definite. So, what did you take from this one in terms of upping your game, build on build?

Shot of the preamp circuit....

....and the obverse....

....so it looks like the LED is being current limited by R1, however I can't find a photo of that component's value and I haven't traced this circuit out to a schematic (yet). I would suspect that the Mitsubishi SIL IC (N1, Mitsubishi N5232L) is being powered at the full 18v supply, so the LED will be running at I=(Vcc-Vfv)/R; I'd suspect that the resistor colour coding is red-purple-orange (27kOhm) which would make the current something like 6mA or so assuming a 2v forward voltage drop over the LED. Let me know if you can eyeball those values on the component and I'll redo the math. That's about right for a typical "standard" LED but a lot of waste current....a low current red LED consumes something like 1mA-2mA for reasonable brightness and is kinder on the batteries. That would require changing out the resistor though, but that's your call. In principle you should be able to put any standard 5mm through-hole LED there and it'll work.

I've never been much of a fan of these "modern" preamps and wiring harnesses as they were made down to a cost rather than up to a standard like the original SB-1000s out of the Matsumoku factory. It isn't to say that it's bad by any means....when up and running this bass will be a beast. It's like comparing engine blocks that came out of a factory during a period that were known to be ultra-reliable and/or tunable....that Japanese SB-1000s were unreal like that.

I digress. Hopefully this should get you across the finish line?

It's celluloid tort binding....it must be matte from being mid-sanding or something. 

I'm unsure of the orientation with that circuit. I presume the current limiting resistor will be on the PCB. Generally I'd locate the resistor, identify the supply voltage behind that and replace it with one suited to whichever LED I selected. Bear with me till this afternoon....

Okay! So this one is slightly different. It looks like a SB-1000RI (reissue) which is a modern model, not one of the 70s/80s Matsumoku models.

The preamp circuit isn't quite the same as the originals, but in principle it does the same job. This is the schematic you need. It looks like the LED has been cut off for some reason, which corresponds to the red and grey wires. This acts differently to the original "dumb" LED blinker in that I think it blinks when the power is low. This long Mitsubishi SIL chip is a low-power alarm IC for that purpose.

When routing for the pickup, bear in mind that if this bass was an SB-CB then the footprint of the original pickup may not match the repro from Veijo. Some of the reissues had weird soapbars instead of original MB-type pickups. If that's the case, I'd go by the new pickup's size adding a mm in size. No more since there is a draft angle on the case moulding that exaggerates perimeter relief after a point.

How does that help?

Damn, should've given me a shout! Did you see my adventures in casting resin with luminescent powders? Tomasz in Poland at chaostrade.eu has tons of different grades that can be bought to suit the end purpose. I have a bunch of his M-JNW450 aluminium strontate which is bright as all hell when fired up with a blacklight, however the L-JNW500 is probably as strong as you can get without significant crashing.

https://chaostrade.eu/Comparison-table-of-luminescent-pigments