Back to the future...

My first bass - an unbranded Precision finaly went under the knife. It came down to a simple decision: hold on to it as a keepsake that I never really cared about anyway, or turn it into a bass I wanted to play. When you look at it like that, it's not a hard choice.

The only thing I really intend to keep is the body. It's a nice bit of wood - it doesn't look much in this photo, but polished up it's sweet. The neck is a nasty maple thing with the lower edge of the headstock glued on to save wood. ugh... So it all came apart.

However when I tried to fit the new neck (the P neck Mandy bought me for xmas) I ran into a glitch. It didn't fit!!! The DrParts 21 fret necks have a particuly long heel that goes right to the 21st fret, so the first big task was to chisel out an extra 1/4" of neck pocket. Just as well I got lots or practice routing that Sheehan Mudbucker.

I then had do design a couple of logos. I decided to go for a simple "Precision Bass" on the front of the headstock in a light cursive font, and designed a DCTSystems Custom Shop logo for the back (you can see it here on the back of Craig's bass). They were printed onto Laser printer Waterslide, and went on with few problems. I went for "extra thick" gloss laquer so only needed a couple of coats on the headstock (and then had to sand out a couple of runs). That all went as smoothly as expected, as did fitting the machine heads - I HATE that job, but only stripped one screw, and was able to get it out.

I splashed out on chrome covers, red pickguard, new electronics, and a super expensive 50's pinup engraved neck plate (it'll match the one Mandy got me for the Jazz).   Once again fiting the pickguard proved a pain - you'd think it would be easy to make a piece of plastic that just fits! Anyway that's all in, and looks AWESOME. I'm just waiting for the new Pickup (a Tonerider P+) to arrive, and the I can drop that in, complete final assembly (screw on the pickguard, and covers), and we're ready to go.

I also ordered a set of flat wounds... We'll see how I get on with those. I love GroundWound's, but I never used full flats. They're the right thing for a 50's P bass, so that's whats going on.

Pretty in Pink

I wanted to avoid a pickguard in the Pink bass, and as  I was doing some respraying, I decided to try spraying the P pickup cavity with silver paint - seemed like a good idea. I masked off the surrounding area's, and took it outside to spray... Too bad it was a bit more windy than I figured, and... oops a fine mist of silver droplets over half the bass!!!! AARRGGHHH... I only masked of AROUND the cavity, but the spray has gone MUCH further... they're not coming off... Think fast... Actualy that looks pretty cool!!!! OK, lets run with it... The result is my pink bass is now a pink with silver sheen. It actually looks pretty neat. But it's pretty hard to tell in photo's.

The neck for this bass finally arrived, and it's pretty nice too. The neck pocket is a bit big for this neck, but it should be OK when it's all done. I've decided to try a spare Jazz neck pickup in the Mudbucker position - mainly cause I had it around, and wanted to see if it would work. In theory it should have more top than the mudbucker, but because of it's position should still put out a good thump.

Merry Xmas

It's all got a bit out of hand...

Firstly I managed to sort the bridge alignment out on the precision - I shifted the neck a fair way to one side, and now the strings and neck match up well. The pickup is still out, so the real problem was definatly the bridge, but it's pretty much sorted. It's playing GREAT - I used it on a a gig, and have messed around with it a lot at home. It's a really nice bass, and I hope it's owner loves it as much as I do. However until then it's taking up space in the workshop, and also in my head...

I ordered a Jazz neck for the "pink" bass over christmas, but it's not here yet. Just something cheap, but it means I can get the thing put together for not much cash...

The bug news is my Xmas present - a Jazz bass! or at least it will be when I put it together. Mandy bought me pretty much everything I need to make a "classic" J-Bass, including a REALLY expensive body - all new unfinshed wood, in a SINGLE piece. That's right... one of the expensive bodies! It's going to look awesome in some kind of stain, hopefully with a clear pickguard to show of the wood, but that's an EXPENSIVE piece of wood, so it's currently stashed away in a safe place until I finish of a couple of other projects, and get a but more practice.

The neck that she bought was a P neck, which is really lovely, but I think it would be nicer on another bass. My "first" bass - bought for £40 back in 1989 is a nice piece of wood but not something I really WANT to play. The plan is to take the body, which really is sweet, put a new neck on it, and add some trimmings to make it a real retro bass... Should look great.

Then there's the "secret" project I can't talk about. I got a neck for it, and chris at CHGuitars sorted me out with some special tuners... It's another custom cut headstock. I've got all the parts for the neck now, so I'll probably get that done before buying the body. The body is also going to require some serious reshaping.... Can't say more... Hush hush... 

Meanwhile Trev has been on the case and has almost sorted the artwork for the Sheehan bass!!!! Oh yeah - that's what I'm writing about... He gave me a rough printout at the gig last night and it looked great. It needs a bit of resizing, and it's good to go, so we should have the finsl transfers in a week or so.

As you can imagine it's getting tricky to keep track of everything. When I had one project, I worked on it. With 6 on the go at once, it's a bit of a mess. I need to put some of them away, and work on one or two others, or it'll end in none of them getting done.

Take it to the bridge...

Another non-Sheehan entry - Trev is still sorting the final artwork that I'm missing on the Sheehan project, so in the mean time I've been putting together a quick P/J hybrid for Craig. It was supossed to be a quicky - grab a J neck, and throw it on my spare P body.

All was going well, I found a nice neck and the only work that needed done was to replace the low end logo with something more classy - a 70's fender precision. I sanded the old logo of, got a new logo and sprayed the two in laquer ready to go...

The next day when I went to apply the logo there was a disaster awaiting me - more white laquer!!!!!! the headstock was white and flaking, while the logo was a crusty mess. There was no option but to sand the headstock down, and start over (with a new waterslide logo - back to ebay...). AARRRGGHHHH!!!! Lots of swearing followed...

The problem of course was that to refinish the headstock I had to remove the machine heads. Normally you'd apply a logo before fitting them, but I was lucky enough to find a cheap neck with the tuners already attatched. As fitting the tuners on the last bass was a pain in the neck (lots of small screws), I was glad not to have that job. Now I had the worse job of getting them OUT.

Three out of the four screws on each tuner were no problem, but in each case one of them jammed, and stripped the screw head. More swearing was involved. Eventually I got two of the tuners off. The other two I dismantled in place, and was able to rotate them out of the way. 

Once that was done the refinish was easy. I sanded, then gave the headstock a couple of coats. Wait till the next day, and apply the waterslide. That was a bit tricky as the logo is much larger than the tele logo on the last bass, but it came out OK in the end. Then another overnight dry, before a whole load more coats.

The laqure dries pretty quick, so I only had to leave it a few more hours, and it was dry enough to drop the machine heads in, then bolt the whole thing together (nice and easy as everything was pre-drilled). Then all that was left was to string it up...

At that point I noticed a problem - the strings were off-center on the neck, and were only just over the pickups... The neck seemed pretty square, and the fact that the pickup is so far out means that the problem is probably the bridge. It looks like the bidge is about 5mm to low on the body!!!! Ouch. That's just a pain.

The options are to find a different bridge that lines up with the screw holes, redrill the screw holes, or just live with it.  The only way to decide is to play it and see:

Powering it up, it actually played pretty nice out of the box. The action is still settling in, but it felt really good for a first fit, and while the strings aren't over the pole pieces it didn't seem to affect the balance of the strings. The G string is nearer the edge than the E string but it doesn't really matter. I guess I'll live with if for a week or two and see how I feel.

Meanwhile I've been looking out for more parts. Bodies have been going for silly cash this week - a tanglewood body (like this one, but without hardware), that was described as badly needing stripped and refinished (it way worse condition) went for £45, when I got the loaded one for £23 a few weeks ago. However tonight I got a win... A Pink generic P Body - for £13 (including shipping). At one point it looked like I was going to get it for a penny + £10 shipping, but someone started bidding it up in minimum increments with 2 minutes to go. I was STRESSED watching the clock run out, but I got a great deal... remember the very first post in the blog (go back and check). I wanted to build Billy's PINK bass, and considered reworking a P body. Guess what I'm doing next!!! Well not quite - it's not going to be identical, so maybe I'll put a Jazz neck on!

All that Jazz...

Craig came round a few days ago. He tried "the bass" at the weekend and wanted me to do a setup on his bass! I guess he thinks I know what I'm doing (he hasn't read the blog obviously). It all went really well, and he went away happy with his bass a lot nicer than it arrive (I hope).

While he was here he noticed the spare body I bought and never used. His regular bass is a Fender Precision Special/Deluxe or something - basically a P body with a Jazz neck, and an extra Jazz pickup. All pretty standard parts, but not common when put together in that layout. He sugguested that if I put a Jazz neck on my spare P body he'd be interested in buying it. Well that sounds like fun!

Turns out Jazz necks are hard to find. Eveyone sells replacement P necks, but Jazz necks just don't exist. Fortunarly I found a cheap Westfield Jazz neck on ebay, and grabbed it. It arrived today, and looks great on the P body. I'm still waiting for a neck plate to fix it all together, but I can't wait to try it.

I also want to upgrade the pickup before passing it on. Last year I picked up an SD quarter pounder P pickup cheap from the US, but over the last few weeks the exchange rate has taken a dive, and the nice cheap american pickup is now 50% more than it cost me last year, so I think I'll look elsewhere. Top of the list is a "Tonerider". They'd nice and cheap, but reports are good. I guess I need to ask Craig if he wants to pay the extra for the pickup, or if he just wants to take it with the stock PU. It can wait until it's all put together anyway, so there's no rush to make that decision.

OK - that had NOTHING to do with the Sheehan bass, but it's pretty cool that someone played the "BS1", and was impressed enough to order a custom build from me!!! 

Live... in the heart of nowhere...

The bass did it's first gig! The band had a quiet gig out in the New Forest (at The Wheel - nice place, just to far from anywhere there are people. Especially at the end of November), so it was an ideal chance to try it out on a low key gig...

Well almost - a lot of people treked out just to see the gig. It was still quiet, but quiet a few of our regulars were there, and quickly noticed the change of equipment. One was the bass player for another local band, who gave it a quick spin, and was obviously impressed as he asked me who did the setup (huh? setup? I just threw something together!), so now I'm setting his bass up some time this week.

Sound wise it worked GREAT. I ran the line out from a baby marshall into one of the power-in's of my bass amp, and then to my 1x12", so I had a dirty channel for the P-pickup. However as the gig progressed I did realise that I was lacking a clean, or even edgy sound - the marshall only had one channel, so I had either the full "sheehan" sound, or just the EB, which is barely usable on it's own, as it's pretty much all bottom end - even mids are non-existant.

So, the bass itself was a great sucsess, but I need to figure out a decent amplification system. That was always the plan - the rig last week was just to get by.

My immediate idea was to replace the Marshall with something more flexable - I've got an old ART rackmount guitar fx unit that I'm definatly going to try, which would give me some fx on the P pickup, and channel switching on the distortion.

Plan B should work fine (and will make a nice mini-rig), but it's not the "FULL" solution, so I spent a couple of days trying to figure out an ultimate rig that I could put together with the minimum of new gear. I considered stuff like the Marshall 9004 pre amp, as I remember they were cheap when they came out, but apparently they're "vintage" now, and very rare.

Then it finally clicked!!! I'd been approaching it all wrong. I'd been considering the EB pickup, as "bass", and looking for ways of processing the new "lead" P pickup. In fact the P pickup is where the regular bass sound comes from, and the EB is what's new.

With that cracked I realised I already have a bass rig that can drive the P pickup - my Blue Thunder should be able to handle all the distorting I need, and it's fully programmable, so I can go clean, edgy or whatever I need. It also means that my main rig remains unchanged (handy for gigs with a different bass), and I just run the P through it. The trick is what to do with the EB!

Well all the EB really needs is a simple pre so it can feed into a power amp.  A little compression would be nice, and maybe some EQ. Looking around the SM Audio TB101 and TC01 look great (one has better compression, one has better EQ), though I don't know what they sound like. They're cheap, and have instrument inputs on the front! They also come in dual formats which might be nice (and makes racking them easier!). I've got an ART TubePac (in another rack - not used much, but I do like it there) which I'll use to try out the concept at the next gig, and if it works, them I'll grab something to use permanently.

It's HUGE!!!!!

Wednesday night is rehersal night, so it was time for the new bass's first semi-public outing... I'd been keeping it quiet until it was ready, but after a couple of days setup, it just needed to be played.

I ran the P-pickup through an old Sunn 15 watt guitar practise amp I've had for years (it's got a sticker on saying "do not use after Feb '93" on it!!!!), and I just threw that together with my Hartke kickback (the usuall practise rig). The results were awesome!!!! It sounded massive, even through the small rig. I just couldn't stop playing the trill intro to "addicted to that rush" - it just sounded instant "sheehan". It cut through, and it thundered just like you always wanted a bass to.

The guys were totally impressed - they both failed to spot my headstock reshape, and thought it was a real Tele', which is pretty cool. I'm under instruction to bring it on Friday to the gig, so having passed it's first test with flying colours, it's going to have an audience real soon.

There are still a few things to do. The winged ripper needs to go on, but I haven't printed it up yet. The plan is to get someone with a better printer to do it for me, so I don't screw it up. More signifigantly the fretboard needs scalloping, and the EB pickup needs its cover lowered a bit. The tone control on the EB isn't working quite right either, but I can live without it.

The big problem right now is how to turn tonights "baby rig" success into a full gig rig. I've got enough parts, but I'm not quite sure how to hook it all together to produce the full effect at gig volume (apparently a couple of Ampeg 8x10's works well...)