Wonko

I pulled the frets. I filled the slots. I've sanded her down. Now I need a durable or an easily renewable surface finish. Suggestions? Wax? Oil? Boiled linseed oil? Oh yes: Rosewood. Yes, I searched the archives. Didn't pull up any useful information. Maybe I'm doing it poorly.

Oops. Sorry. I just discovered the "inlay and finish" forum. I pulled the frets. I filled the slots. I've sanded her down. Now I need a durable or an easily renewable surface finish. Suggestions? Wax? Oil? Boiled linseed oil? Oh yes: Rosewood. Yes, I searched the archives. Didn't pull up any useful information. Maybe I'm doing it poorly.

Has anyone tried sanding frets off and leaving the bottom of the fretwire in the slot as a filler/marker? How'd it work? Pitfalls?

OK, I've got my neck (fretless maple bass, fender tele style, NICE!), and I've got my body (Ibanez Roadgear 200 something), and they fit nicely, except that I've got to shave 1/4" off the heel of the neck so that it doesn't place the playing surface (and the strings) 1/4" too high with respect to the bridge and pickups. I need to shave 1/4" and still have the new flat which joins the body be exactly parallel to the flat that's on there now. But how? One suggestion is to mark the final line carefully, turn her on her side, cut near the mark with a bandsaw, and then sand it down to the marks by hand. Carefully. Another is the same, except use a tablesaw. Any better ideas out there? The amount of wood which must be removed is sizable. This 1/4" removal covers a an area of about 2 1/4" wide by 8" long. the rest of the neck is completed, so I can't figure out how to run it through a planer. The truss rod is not in the way. Fortunately there is a backup plan. If I screw this up totally, I can still pull the frets from the Ibanez neck and bolt it on, but that wouldn't look nearly as beautiful as the current absolutely stunning contrast provided by the blond maple vs. that Ibanez blue.

You forgot one important safeguard: wear clean dry sneakers. But that other stuff shore helps. <g> I did figure something out to get around the nylon strings. I can take a single auto jumper cable, remove the insulation a 3 feet from one end, and wire that to the grounded bridge. The long end, when setting up, is connected to a water pipe, like that fire sprinkler over your head. The short end is clamped on to any suitable protrusion on the bass player's body. An ear, the tongue, whatever. After all, safety first! This should go over particularly well with the piercers....

I suppose this has been done to death, but I don't really know how to phrase the question, so my attempts to search the archive have been fruitless. Building a fretless bass to use nylon-clad strings. Want to shield it. Guitarelectronics has one build a faraday cage shield around the control area, and separate the signal ground entirely from this shielding. The shielding is connected to you via the bridge wire and a 33pf 400v cap. (I think this is how it goes. See http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding...eschematics.php for before and after schematics. The problem is that with the nylon string cladding, I won't be providing the contact when I touch the strings. I guess my question is "would it be somewhat effective to build the shielding shown, but connect it to the signal ground? If so, what purpose would connecting the bridge to the signal ground serve? Or if this has been done a lot, how can I look up the relevant archived material?

That looks just like the pair I drew on my banjo skin with perm. marker. Got them by charcoal-rubbing a paper on the top of my wife's mandolin. You can find an f-hole you like and make your template that way.

I bought a pair of new Wilkinson jazz 5-string pickups off Ebay, at a price I think is great (~$30). If they're not counterfeit. I've since seen more offers for pairs like mine (WBJBF Neck – WBJBR Bridge) like at http://www.jhs.co.uk/wilkinson.html#bass where they're more like $100 for the pair. I have to wonder whether someone's counterfitting these. Has anyone heard of this happening? Hope this isn't an old thread. I looked, but couldn't find anything.

Wow. A tool forum? This place has got EVERYTHING! Including new guys who don't know the ropes yet. Sorry. That was a good thread. If I try that "glue grit onto the edge of a feeler guage" idea, I'll let y'all know how it worked.

I was trying to find an appropriate tool for modifying the B string slot on the nut of my 5-string bass for a large (0.135) string. I didn't have anything handy, and ended up winding #200 sandpaper around the handle of a jewler's file until it had the appropriate fatness. It worked, but wasn't what you'd call outstanding. Does anyone have ideas they'd like to share on what they've used for cutting/modifying nut slots for various sizes of strings? (they do come in a wide range, don't they?) Other than those special and expensive luthiers' special tools? It's not something I do often enough to make special tools worth owning. Not at $23 apiece, and you need all six, and even then there isn't one big enough for the B string. (Stew Mac) On my six-strings, I've always made necessary adjustments with a (oh horror!) a triangular jewler's file. Not an elegant solution. Could one cut small saw teeth on the edges of the blades of a feeler guage? You younger guys might not know what that is. We dinosaurs used them for setting the point gap and valve clearance on our cars. How would you cut the teeth? Or you could glue abrasive grit on the edge.... Clearly I need a better idea. Send help.

Banjo guys been doing this forever. Search on "Scruggs Tuners" to find his book wherein he details how to make a set of his original string stretchers out of a pair of ukelele tuners. I couldn't find the actual plans, and I haven't seen a set of plans for this in 30 years. and "Keith Tuners" like here Keith tuners Or Schaller tuners (copy of the Keith type.. much cheaper. Not as well thought of in the banjo world.)

I'm trying to figure this out too. Obviously different types and sizes of strings are differently intonated, but I'm seeing wierd stuff. The roundwounds that came on my bass 5 were intonated from short on the G to long on the B, as you'd expect, but the B saddle wouldn't go long enough. So I was thinking of moving the bridge a quarter inch farther away. Then I put on nylon taped rotosounds. These were able to intonate within the range of the bridge in it's original location. (Haven't moved it yet.) Then I put on flatwounds (roto 88) last night. The B can't go long enough, and the D almost can't go short enough. B through G show a normal progression from long to short, except the D, which wants to be a lot shorter than the G. I wish I knew more about this. Can anyone address the physics in some detail?

>I would find it hard to believe that some of the top luthiers and repairmen are adjusting truss rods improperly. Do you have any idea how long doctors bled patients for mos' any ailment? Centuries. >if you point of departure is .03" into the nut, then you scale length will be slightly longer, but bridges have adjustable saddles, so can move the saddle to get you intonation set correctly. ? The situation you describe will mean that if you tune the string open, when you fret it on the first fret, the string will be noticeably sharp. Unless you are fretless, in which case, never mind. >If you are playing a song that you hold a note for several seconds you are not going to continuosly pick the string. So why tune like you would? Because most of the notes that I play are held for a very short length of time. If I was going to play and hold long notes, I would tune accordingly. >Unless you are on a continuos shred fest and running the length of the neck all night where your notes are held for a second or less, you are never going to sound like you do when tuning. What about rhythm guitar? Not everyone plays lead. I suppose that if I were to hold a long note, and noticed the flattening, I could bend it just a mite. I probably do without thinking. But my point was really about accurate intonation. The stuff about how I tune and play isn't important at all. I don't play that well anyway. Forget it. But if you intonate really well, you'll like your guitar more, and it'll sound better. Note to all comers: I'm done defending my POV. I accept the correction about adjusting the neck under tension. I can be taught. Good point about lubing the threads. I'm right about tuning in a repeatable manner for intonation, and about insuring proper departure at the nut before intonation, though, as stated above, for most of us it probably didn't need to be mentioned. Someone referred to making an intoned nut, (here http://www.mimf.com/nutcomp/ ), which sounded crazy to me at first, but I went home last night and checked my 5-string, and found that the concept has tremendous merit. Strings 1, 2, & 3 were fine. 4, when tuned open, was a bit sharp on the 1st fret, and 5 was wayyy off. Like I said, I can be taught. I'll probably start modifiying that puppy this evening.

1. waste of time. never seen a truss rod break or strip from correct usage I have. 2. kinda dont understand the reasoning with this one. Its like saying: be careful when you go around a corner in your car, cause the wheels might not be on properly, and it will never turn like you want it to if they arent on tight... make sure your wheels are on tight!! Yep. Unless you understand that I was referring to a step by step set of setup instructions which don't include that step, but are leading toward intonation. For anyone who needs such a list, that's a necessary step. 3. so you prefer to tune your guitar so its in tune, for all of one second, before dropping in pitch so slightly its almost not noticable, unless you have an extremely keen ear? The difference is so small, i challenge anyone to hear it in a band situation (let alone a single instrument). SURE! But we're talking about intonation here. The difference between, say tuning the open string a second after plucking, followed by checking the tuning at the 12th a few seconds after plucking with a view toward bridge adjustment will be noticable. To me, anyway. It's the difference between getting the bridge in the right place, and in almost the right place. But I'm picky. I don't use the 5th fret/7th fret harmonic trick when tuning, because it's a little off. (Do the math.) And I never, ever tune a string down. I go flat and tune it up. For reasons that seem good to me, though most would consider laughable. On my classical, I even tune it across a fret somewhere in the middle of the range I'm about to play in, vice open strings. Sounds better that way.

I've been looking around the forum and have not found reference to what I consider two important setup items. Maybe three. 1. I've seen reference to adjusting the bow, but with dangerous advice. How many broken truss rods occur because someone was tightening it... with the strings tuned? OK, you'll get away with it 99% of the time, but a broken truss rod or stripped allen hole aren't worth the odds. Loosen the strings, make an adjustment, then tune up again to measure. IMHO. 2. GREAT advice in an earlier post about adjusting the bow, using a capo on the first string to adjust the bridge height, then adjusting the bridge height, all before adjusting the nut height. But missing from this is adjusting the point of departure of the string from the nut. If the nut was filed by a hack, it may have the point of departure far enough off so that if the guitar is in tune with the strings open, it's noticably out of tune when fretted, especially on the first few frets. You'll never intonate the guitar properly until this is taken care of. OK, 3. The sound of a string decays in apparent pitch during its sustain period. I suspect this is due to the decay of the higher harmonics to below the audible or measurable range. You can watch this happen on most tuners. If you want to tune accurately, you have to tune a string which JUST GOT STRUMMED. I've noticed less decay of apparent pitch when the string is strummed toward the middle of its length, but my solution has been to continually pick the string while I'm tuning it. You can't intonate or tune accurately unless you sample the note repeatably with respect to time since you picked it.

Can anyone speak to the quality/feel of the Cort headless bass' tuners?

You forgot an item in the spreadsheet. Any guitar worth spending this much time and money on is going to NEED a good hardshell case. That's part of the cost.

Dang! That's one cool guitar. But on a bass, it sure would be one long, unwieldy SOB. I think I have enough room to make this modification to my Martin solidbody. I'll have to measure. <g>* I'll be thinking of some reasonable way to make bass tuners without adding to the length of the bass, and looking to score a Steinberger unit on the cheap, but until then, this project looks like it's on ice. The BC Rich bich might just do the job, if I put pulleys below the bridge and tuck the tuners up under my armpit. Of course, it would take two more elbows on my right arm to tune the thing, or the help of a friend. *(Some may not know that Martin made 3000 flatbody electrics in the mid-60's. They are truly wonderful guitars, and I probably wouldn't cut mine up.)

I want to build a headless bass. I don't know of any way to tune it other than to get a set of Steinberger tuners. Has anyone ever figured out another way of doing this? Did I mention that price was an object? The only way I see so far is to find a Steinberber that got run over and buy it cheaply. There's got to be a better idea....

Thank you very much. It seems like you know most of what I was looking for. Good point on the top maybe not being able to respond the the very low frequencies involved. What extra tension? Each string, tuned to it's designed note, should have (roughly) the same tension as its fellows, shouldn't it? I'm new to the bass world, but I know that on my guitars that that has always been the idea for any balanced string set (ingeneral). That's how we avoid warped necks ~ right? Then again, I allow that you may know something I don't.... Educate me some more, please.

With some soft or brittle woods, tape only helps a bit, and a cracked edge (wood or paint) is likely with any standard drill bit. There are bits made for this. They have spurs on the outside of the cutting faces designed cut the circumfrence of the hole BEFORE the center of the bit puts any real pressure on the wood. It's the only way to go, if you want to be sure. Mine are brad-pointd to keep the spurs from dancing across the work.

New guy here. If this topic has been done to death, please just refer me to the correct part of the archives. I looked, but didn't find it. Does anyone here know mos' everything about intonation? I've got two issues where it will be critical for me soon. 1. Cheap acoustic Washburn bass (4-string with frets). I want to change to BEAD strings (flatwound), but getting the B string will be so hard (must be33.5" - 34.5" long at the thick part) and costs a bit, so I want to know the answer if possible beforehand. The acoustic has no intonation adjustments. It does have a typical angled bridge to sort of put you in the zone, but it's always off some. Question (a): do flatwound strings require more intonation offset than roundwounds, in general? By "offset", I mean the difference between the adjusted string length and twice the distance between the nut and the 12th fret. If there's a regular term for this, I'd love to know it. Question (: do fatter sting sets require more offset than skinnier strings? 2. I'll be building a strat-style 4-string bass soon, and I'd like to put the bridge in exactly the right place (unlike my current 5-string, which has it about 2mm too close to the nut). Is there a way of predicting what your intonation range is going to be for a particular type/size of strings, so that you can set the bridge in the best place?