basey

thanks for all the nice comments. It's been awhile since I updated the pics. First off, I used some devcon epoxy to grain fill. help from an epoxy thread guitarfrenzy and drak had. (I'm not sure which thread it was at the moment, but someone should pin that sucker in the tutorials section) anyway, after the body was smooth and ready for primer thats when my problems started. I used some older grey primer I had in the garage and then bought some more the next day to finish after sanding. After spraying the second layer. It all seperated on the original paint like a crackel finish. So I had to strip the whole thing down again. Thats when I found out how good of a barrier epoxy makes between the paint and the wood. Back to the pictures.... pic1 pic2 pic3 pic4 pic5 I still need to drill for the neck ferrules, but they haven't come in yet. after that, its off to get airbrushed and laquered.

well another day of sanding comes to an end. Here are a few more progress pics. pic1 pic2 pic3

A freind of mine plays bass in a KISS tribute band called KINGS KISS. They do kiss covers with a 70's elvis lead singer. KINGS KISS website anyway he asked me to make a copy of the axe bass gene simmons played on tour during the 70's. The neck is a USA BC Rich and the body wood is african mohagany. I've been working on it for two day's now. I'll try to put some pics up at the end of each day. link to pics

hello again, I've made a little more progress on the necks and fretboards. One fretboard is slotted and measured to cut and the headstocks have been roughly cut. picture1 picture2 picture3

I added a couple more pictures of the two necks made from the one lamination block. picture1 picture2 I'm looking at reinforcement rods to put along side of the truss rod. I've found the usual carbon fiber rods, but I've also found a place that sells titanium rods. Has anybody ever heard of these being used for necks? I'm wondering if they might be stronger.

Here's one of my new projects for the next few months. Two 5 string doublecut basses at once. neck thru construction with hard flamed maple and bubinga laminates. the fretboard will be bubinga with some exposed sapwood. The body will be honduras mohagany, hard flamed maple and soft flamed maple for the top and back peices. I'm also going to use madagascan ebony veneer between certain layers. I plan on using just lightwave optical pickups on one bass and lightwaves with the midi output on the other. sperzel tuners brass nuts Here's a link to some progress pics. progress pics

If you are going still planning to go direct into the pa. I'd recommend getting a tech 21 sansamp bass DI. It really makes a big difference in rock and metal tone, and it also does the tube gain sound pretty good. I'd sell you mine but I ebay'd it last month.

anyone...beuller...beuller?

hi. I'm also interested in finding rustins in the US. I emailed them and they said they don't have a distributor over here. Does anyone know of a product that is similar?

the 6l6's cost about $150 or so. and your right, its loud as he**. And has headroom for miles. I love it.

I think I fixed it!! knock on wood. I desoldered the main board hook ups and removed it from th chassis. then I replaced the burned resisters. then I replaced the chewed wires. then while i had the pots taken off of the front panel I hit them all with red and gold deoxit, after that I put everything back together. I flipped the switch and then took it off standby ... POP...red glow... At that point I thought I was going to have to take it in to the tech $$$. But I thought I'd try the old tubes first before I gave up, so I switched them out. Amazingly, it worked great. so I began to replace the pairs of 6l6's one by one and found one of them had failed so I called up Lord Valve and he said he'd switch me for another good one. I have it running with one of the old tubes in it right now. It sounds better now than it ever has, and it doesn't hum anymore. My question is, do you guys think 1. that the tube failing caused all the popping and problems, or 2. something else caused the tube to fail? I'm hoping the answer is 1. I thought I'd ask before I pack it back into the rack case. BTW. Thanks again for everyones help.

Thanks for the help guys. I'm getting there.. I've tracked down a schematic from mesa. here's the part for the power supply section Power supply schematic the resistors that are burnt are r311 and r312. I've also found about 5 wires that look like they've been chewed bare by some rodent or some thing. It looks as though they may have been shorting with each other. I think the resistors are 100ohm but other than that I'm not sure which resistor to replace them with. any help would be greatly apreciated. Paul , Nope on the caps, everything is original except the tubes.

After a little more research, I think that they're the bais resistors. I'm not sure though. Unfortunately, now the amp pops once after it warms up and then the back six 6l6's start to turn red. would a burnt bias resistor have that result?

I've made a little progress. after checking the tubes and cleaning the pots and tube pins. I checked for burnt components and.... There's two burnt resisters ( i think they're resisters) Here's a picture of them I'm having a hard time figuring out what to replace them with they're too charred. Any ideas? I was able to find a schematic for the mesa bass 400 at www.tubefreak.com but that amp only has 6 6l6's and mine has 12.

thank you all for the good info and advice. I'll let you guys know what I find. but right now I'm goin to sleep. I just worked a 16 hour shift!

I am usually a lurker around here, but I've got a quick question for any of the tube guru's on here. I bought a Mesa Bass 400+ used from a gear trade in shop in town. It sounds good but the low end sounded a little flabby. So I replaced all of the tubes with new higher quality ones. (from lord valve). The tone sounds wonderful now. My problem is that now, when I first start the amp up and take it off standby ( after about 5 min) I get really loud pops for about the first 20 minutes. when it pops the volume reduces and then comes back after a minute or so. Any ideas?

I don't have any new sound clips at hand. but I do have a track off the cd my band just recorded. If your interested (It's deathmetal) http://www.local81.com/bass/07 My Pain.wma I'm no sound expert by any means. but when I say the sustain is better, I mean the character of the note stays not just the frequency. It sounds more powerful. Don't mistake what I've said about bartolinis. They sound great. They just don't sound as hot or hi-fi as the lightwaves. Of course I have the gain turned up all the way on every string in the lightwaves motherboard. Right now you have to buy them directly from the company in california. last year I got they're 5 string bass kit with everything excluding the midi converter for $415 shipped next day. I looked around the net for bartolini pups and they're about $130 for one pup and $150 for a active preamp with a mid sweep. Which is somewhat cheaper than the lightwaves. but with the lightwaves you don't have to buy a bridge either. So it's pretty close. They're Midi 13 pin kit is an extra $100 dollars. Not too bad. I'm not saying they're the "end all" in pickups. But they do a real respectable job in my opinion.

I just thought I'd put a couple things i've noticed about the optical pickups. I built a 5 string bass with lightwaves last year. One thing that really stands out is the low end. The low B sounds as defined and real as the A. Also You can really tell the difference in strings (Ni vs steel). The Ni sound more midrangy, and not as tight. I prefer the sound I get with steel strings, its more crisp, hifi sounding. Anyway I've played it through almost every amp I could find, SVT, Bass pod, sansamp, Mesa 400+,Carvin,marshall. It sounds every bit as good as a music man or a warwick and way more adjustable tonally. I like the tone and sustain better than any other bass I've played. You can really here the difference in the sustain. BTW My other bass has p and J Bartolinis on it with a bartolini 18v preamp. It sounds like a passive bass comparitively. Unfortunately, If you like the sound of vintage passive basses you cannot get that sound. (i've tried) I don't know what it'd sound like on a guitar. I guess guitarists have a different list of requirements for they're tone. Maybe acoustic or classical? I think putting them on a bass with a magnetic pickup would cancel out all the benifits of having them in the first place. alot of the highs and the character of the strings would be "pulled out" by the magnet, along with the sustain. I've already started working on two more optical basses. I plan on putting reinforcement rods in the neck so I can experiment with different string tensions and possibly piano wire.

I used to have a hartke 3500. I really liked it. It has a good preamp section, and a lot of punch. I replaced the 12ax7 with a groove tube ecc83 and it sounded noticably warmer. The only problem I had with it was when I plugged either my SansAmp or Bass Pod into the power amp section it "colored" the tone. So I ended up going with a straight stereo power amp. the hartke was a great amp though, durable as *&^% The funny thing was, I drove to chicago to try out and buy the SWR 4004 stack for around a $1000. (I was not impressed at all) I ended up buying the 3500 for about $200.

very nice design so far. It reminds me a Guild B301 bass I used to have... with a ric upper horn. How many strings?

bump

Hello, my buddy in california just sent me the body and the neck of his baritone Ibanez rg 470 guitar to use as a refinishing project. He already has a john petrucci (sp?) model with the face images on it. My idea is to put a figured veneer on the top and make the same face design with dyes in the wood. Also I have some flat silver ribbon I would like to inlay as a small border between the different colors. I don't quite know whether I should inlay the silver first? Is there a type of glue that would be less likely to seal the maple so it will take a dye? Any advice would be helpfull Thanks.

I'm not sure how different tube amps are from solid state, But I do know that 350 watts is not overkill on a bass amp. It takes a lot more power to get the volume on a bass amp comparable to a guitar amp. It's not unusual for a guitar amp to be 50 to 100 watts. A 300 watt bass amp could not put out half the volume of a 50/50 guitar amp. The idea is to have more power than your going to use, so your signal doesn't clip as much and ruin your tone/ speakers. I use a 450 watt mosfet amp currently with the preamp volume at about half. the signal is always clean and the tone is never compromised. I hope that makes sense. I've learned about this the hard way.( $1200 in blown/ damaged speakers from clipping) The reason i'd like to build a tube power amp is to get the (warm tones) but I don't want to have any preamp on it at all(svt, mesa) If the wattage in tube amps works differently, that would be great, but I was not aware that they were. I think you guys are right though. Maybe its too ambitious of a project. I probably better leave this one to the pros. Thanks for all the advice, and concern.

I have almost no knowledge of how tube amps work. But nonetheless I want to try and build one from scratch. I have been looking on line for a kit or step by step instructions (for dummies) but I can't find anything that is even close to the wattage I need (350 - 500) Does anyone know where I could get plans for a amp like this. It doesn't need a preamp, just a poweramp. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Is it for you, or for the school. (just curious) If its for the school I would make it as close to the standard jazz size as possible, (fender, modulus) I tried a lot of basses out for playability before I decided on a size to build. I ended up using the string and neck width of a 5 string Warrior bass (which it quite wide, but thin). I took the measurements right off the bass. I did change the scale lengeth to get a more defined B though. The distance between strings at the bridge also may depend on the bridge you want to use.