mattharris75

Thanks Tim. As far as the wood pickup cover, that was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. Of course the second time around it would be a lot quicker. I put the first coat of black stain on the pickup cover last night, and will probably do one more coat tonight, then sand back a little and start tru oiling it. I made a few mistakes on the cover, cutting the holes for the pole pieces was quite tricky. You won't have to worry about that on a bass pickup, so it shouldn't be that difficult. One thing I found that made doing the slight roundover on the edges easy was those flexible foam covered 'sandblaster' sanding blocks, definitely worth trying when you make yours.

Jon, just to clarify. When you wet sanded, what did you use as your lubricating medium? A water/soap mix or something along those lines, or did you use the tru oil?

Heh, whoops. Thanks. Sometimes it's hard to remember where you read information.

I believe Cake recorded nearly every part of their last album with SM57's. I believe there may have been a few exceptions, but if it's good enough for them, then it's good enough for me. Of course their guitar player uses a $50 Fender amp too. But I would guess you're not going to beat the SM57 with anything close to its price range.

Well, after a lot of head scrtatching and even more measuring I managed to get the neck pocket routed. I chizeled the corners square and chizeled out the small recess for the spoke wheel. I still have a tiny bit of chizeling on that to get it 100% square. Everything fits up very tight, I can hold the whole guitar up by the neck. I also got the pickup cover finish sanded and the holes drilled on that. That was very difficult to do, and unfortunately I misalligned the two outside holes for the pole pieces. But I drilled the holes small initially so once I drilled them full sized I was able to make up for that somewhat. I'm still not happy as those two holes are slightly oblong. However, it is barely noticeable, once it is tru oiled and sitting under strings i'm likely the only person who will ever notice it. But I'm going to tru oil it before I make a decision on whether or not I want to use it, as this will effect the routing of the pickup cavity. I'll post a picture of the cover once it's completely finished and see what everyone thinks. The cavity cover now fits and sits totally flush as well. So, i'm making good progress, got a few more little things (like bridge placement) that i'd like to get knocked out this weekend.

After playing everything I could get my hands on I decided to go for the Vox Valvetronix AD30. It will be a birthday present. My birthday in a week and a half, so i'm looking forward to giving it a go! Another thing, it was cheaper than the $300 price point I was initially thinking of, so this will leave me a little birthday money with which to buy fretting tools so I can finish my guitar.

Looks good, have you wet sanded it yet? Looks like a little 'orange peel' type of thing going on, but I bet it will look awesome once that's taken care of. What procedure of coating/sanding/etc did you use for the tru-oil on your bass?

Oh my....you've got a lot of reading and researching to do. First, get Melvyn Hiscock's Book and then check out stewmac.com. After you read the book, do a search for any topic that confuses you or anything else you can't figure out. And if you're still stumped, post up your questions here! But to be specific to your your question in this thread, the stewmac.com thing will help you out. But it would be a good idea to learn the terminology if you plan on figuring out what you need.

Alrighty, I'll give that a go. Thanks Wez!

It's a hipshot hardtail, so no TOM to worry about, should be pretty straightforward. Hope to get it placed and the holes drilled for it this weekend.

So when do we get to see your son's finished short scale?

No, I plan on drilling the placement as accurately as possible. I'll just put my saddles 3/4 of the way forward to determine that placement. So, if the placement does end up a hair off in the wrong direction I won't be screwed by having the saddles adjusted all the way forward.

Thanks for the info guys. That jives with what I was thinking, so that makes me feel more confident in that.

I'm getting close to the point where i'll be positioning my bridge and drilling holes for its placement. Alas, Stew Mac doesn't have mounting hole placement for my bridge, otherwise this would not need to be asked. But either way this would be good information to be certain about. I've searched for this information, and what i've found is really a variety of opinions. Some say that the saddles should be moved all the way forward when placing the bridge, some say 3/4 of the way forward, and others say 1/2 way forward. Obviously each method has worked for somebody. Having the saddles all the way forward just doesn't sound like a good idea to me, just in case there is a small error in the placement of the bridge, but of course I could very well be wrong. In any case, since opinions on this seem to vary, I was hoping to hear from some of the more experienced guys with regards to where they place the saddles when determining bridge position.

So, when are we going to see an update on this build? I was really loving the neck woods/laminates on this thing.

Yeah, like Jon said, i'll be doing my walnut body soon. I really don't know the 'proper' technique, but Jon posted a link to a tutorial the other day that he's going to follow. See if you can find that. As for myself, i'm doing a test piece right now, and it currently has 12 coats on it. As far as prep goes I just sanded to 320. I put the first coat on and then used a piece of 1200 grit micro mesh paper on the second coat, wet sanding with the tru oil as a lubricant in order to try to fill the pores. It may have helped somewhat, but it didn't fill them entirely. So I continued to put coats on it, and then for the 8th coat I repeated the wet sanding with tru oil process. Now it's got an additional 4 coats on and starting to look pretty good. I'll probably wet sand it again after another coat or two, and then once i'm up in the 15 to 20 coat range and it's looking really good i'll wet sand up all the way to 12000 grit micromesh and we'll see what we get. I'll post a picture in my build thread of it once I get the test board done.

That light spot in the picture is probably from the light reflecting off the painted glue. It will definately handle light differently than the painted wood. Anyway, the stain looks nice. good color choice thus far.

I believe that's the one Jon's referring to.

Well, i'll post a pic in my build thread when I get the finish on the test piece done, along with the procedure I used. (Assuming it turns out well )

Gotcha, that makes sense. You're right about tru oil looking sweet on walnut. I'm doing a test piece right now, got 8 coats on it so far, and it's looking pretty sharp! What kind of finish schedule do you use for tru oil? I figure i'm going to need somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 coats to get the look I want. I've wet sanded with the tru oil for the 2nd and 8th coats using the 1200 grit micro mesh paper, and i'll probably do another 2 or 3 coats, then wet sand using tru oil all the way to 12000 grit with micro mesh. Then i'll evaluate and see if I need another couple of coats and a wet sand depending on what it looks like.

Thanks, organic is really the look i'm going for. It's a shame too, because I really like my pickguard design. I think I may have to make a short scale electric for my wife one day in the future (After I build my bass, which is coming up next) and i'll use the pickguard design on that. I'll probably mock it up just for kicks, it's hard to tell with just a quick photoshop rendering.

Just out of curiosity, why are you doing the neck and pickguard with poly instead of just doing it all with tru oil. I know tru oil is as popular, if not more so, for necks than it is for bodies. And I have no doubt it would look great with all tru oil. Either way, it's looking really cool, love the contrasting wood pickguard!

I haven't decided for sure, but the further along I get the more I think it would be a shame to cover up this nice looking walnut. When I get the pickup routed and the bridge holes drilled I will probably mock one up and see what it looks like. I ended up spacing my knobs a bit further down, which could make it tough to put them in the area covered by the pickguard like was originally planned. So we'll see...I'm leaning toward not doing one, but i'll know one way or the other after it is mocked up.

He heh, thanks Alan. I don't imagine anyone will mistake it for your craftsmanship when i'm done, but I think it should end up being pretty nice for a first build.

If you use the search and look around on this site you will see numerous examples of people making laminates of all shapes, sizes, and configurations to use as body blanks.