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...)

It's Alive

The last few days have been so frustrating. The bass only needed another half hour or so, and it would "be" a bass - I just needed to finish the pilot holes in the neck, and bolt it together. FINALLY I found the time!!!!

It all bolted together without any real issues - but would it be aligned right? The only way to find out was to string it up. I just happened to have a set of rotosounds in the old pink box - seemed perfect, so on they went. While I was working I had iTunes on random play, and as the first string went on Merciless from the first Mr Big album kicked in... A Good Omen.

So? The strings line up on the neck perfectly!!!! I got the neck holes in exactly the right place!!!

With that done I added the string tree, and (even though I knew they'd have to come off  for tweaking) the knobs and bridge cover. The ripper and dragon sticker went on and we have an (almost) finished bass!!!

So how does it play? Well the action and intonation are exactly what you'd expect from a bass that's just been bolted together form parts - not even close, but the neck seems pretty true, so a good setup should sort things out. The neck feels fatter than I thought it would but it's nice having the almost bare wood. The body wood feels unfinished, even though it's thoroughly sealed. Plugging the two pickups into a two channel amp, and they sounded good. The EB is all bottom, and the P is thin and toppy (by comparison) which is great. Running the P through a random distortion pedal and the appeal of the dual system became instantly apparent. The P became this total lead sound, while the EB thundered underneath, with the option to roll between them as required - a pretty cool system, which will rock once I refine it a little.

Whats to do? Well setup is 90% of the work. I'm still missing a couple of stickers that I need to print myself, so they need to go on yet, but other than that we have an awesome bass...

edit: almost forgot - the top frets need scalloping.

Almost there...

All going well... The headstock was sprayed, an Telecaster logo applied, and a couple of extra layers of laquer applied, then on with the machine heads. The Hipshot d-tuner went on first... it's a tight fit, as there's a HUGE plate. I then struggled to get the regular machine heads to fit on next to it. I had to file down the edge of the A string tuner to fit it in. They're also at a slightly funny angle, as the place is right up against the edges of the headstock. It's a but quirky, but it's all fine. Those machine head screws are TINY. Had to make another trip to the hardware store to pick up a 1.5mm drill bit. I tried putting on one without a pilot hole and it was a disaster, but once I had the right drill the neck is finished and ready to go.

I also FINALLY got all the wiring sorted out (I hope). More dodgey pots and stuff made it a painfull couple of hours figuring out what was going wrong, and then it was a tight squeeze fitting it all in (the pickguard cutout for the P pickups is REALLY tight too, and needed a little enlarging), but it's all together.

All that's left to do is bolt the neck on. Its more or less drilled - just needs a slightly bigger pilot hole, and I can finally string this thing up...

The right way... and the left way!

D'oh! Tonight I figured I could grab 15 minutes, nip out to the studio and get a couple of quick tasks done. The first one went fine - a quick spray of laquer on the headstock. I decided to go for a more gloss finish here, and was able to give it a couple of coats as it drys within a few minutes (I hope! that's what the tin says). I masked of the fretboard, but I let some of the spray hit the back of the neck in the hope of getting a soft edge between the two area's - as if it's been worn down.

While that was drying between coats I figured I could hook up the controls to the pickups. They're all wired from the other night, so now the laquer on the body is dry, all I needed to do was solder the two halfs together, and the body would be done - 10 minutes...

A cool trick us to use a tuning fork - touch the pickup wires against a jack plug, then hold a ringing tuning fork over the pickup, and you check that it's all working - it was. I then wired the EB pickup to the controls, and put the jack in the socket. It worked (YEY!), but something was odd - the volume control worked backwards!!!!! Quiet where it should be loud, and loud where it should be quiet. That was just odd... Maybe I'd wired it backwards? But I was starting from a pre-wired Jazz control plate. Was it wrong? I rewired it the other way round, but the audio taper was wrong, so it just sounded awefull... Then it clicked... What if the plate I bought second hand on ebay) was from a LEFT handed bass? The controls would be reversed!!!!!! AAARRRGGGHHHH.

The plate was bought on ebay, and the seller had stripped a few instruments, and sold them on as parts. A quick check of "completed listings" found the culprate. Sold the same day as my control plate -  a left hand Jazz body. AAARRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

It's not the end of the world. I got three nice knobs, and a jack socked for about what they're worth. I just need to get some new pots (and I had one anyway), so I'm only out a couple of £, but it's SO frustrating. The pickguard should be on by now, but instead I need to rewire the whole thing again.

D'oh!

Enter Sandman...

Lots of little jobs getting ticked off now. I made it to the shops and picked up some sandpaper, so I was able to sand down the white area's of the body. Once they were clean, I gave them another wipe of oil. All looked good, so I gave the damaged areas another blast of matte laquer, and hopefully that's the body more or less done.

I'd previously done most of the headstock reshape, and was expecting to fine tune it and sand it. However following the first pass of sanding it started looking great, so I gave it a final pass of fine sanding, and a wipe of oil. The sanded area was lighter than the rest (which is stained a light yellow), so I tried a few things to darken it down - coffee, cocoa, and finally curry powder!! It's not a perfect match, but it looks pretty good, so I can live with it.

The Jazz control plate arrived, so I was able to wire up the control plate. While you might think that I'd be able to use the existing wiring (as a Jazz has to Vol's and a tone, just like we need), it turned out that to get the correct layout, and make it fit the long control layout I had to more or less completly dismantle it, and rewire it.  No biggy, it all went together great, and the nice shiny control knobs really look the part. Sheehans basses use (from front to back) V/T/V layout with the tone only affecting the EB pickup. It's a slightly odd layout (with the T in the middle), but makes more sense when you see this old photo of the bass, when it had FOUR controls. Clearly Billy added the new pickup, and added a new set of V/T controls for it, but at some point the P tone control was removed - perhaps when the stereo output was added?

On interesting thing I learned - Jazz controls wire their volume pots so that the pickup goes to the wiper, while P's use them in the more obvious pickup connected to the end, and output to the wiper. J's need to be that way because they have to pickups, and P's use a more obvious layout, but I wonder if there's any difference in the sound?

Anyway - the body is now finished, so it can go into final assembly. The neck is oiled, so just needs laquered, logo'd and the tuners attached...

It's so close!!!1

I can't think of anything

Time for an update, but I couldn't think of a clever title... So where are we:

Firstly the white laquer problem was worse than I though. There are a couple of moderatly large areas that needed attention. The worst of it flaked off easily, but a couple of patches need some sanding, and are proving quite stubborn. I need to go buy sandpaper to clean it down, and it may need a bit of a respray in some area's but it'll be OK.

While putting off a trip to the shops, I finally went for it and did the headstock. I traced the existing P shape into paper and cut it out, then drew and cut out a template for the new tele-style shape. It's not actually possible to get a true tele shape, as the circle at the end of the headstock forms a sharper angle on a P than it does in a Tele, so we're going to have the soft buldge of a tele, with the sharp edge to the circle of a P - no one will notice!

So once I was happy with the template I traced it onto the headstick (front and back) and attacked it from the rear with a jigsaw. It just about worked OK, but I had to finish the cuts with a small handsaw. I then used a file to get it down to around the right shape. It still needs sanding, and some final shaping, but it's pretty close, and pretty smooth so it's really just a finishing job from now on. It looks pretty good!

I've ordered a Jazz control set, as that gave me the three pots, knobs and cap that I needed for less than I could buy them. That does leave me with a couple of spare bits, as I bought a pot, with the plan being to use the other parts from the spare body, but I decided it was easier to just get some extra parts, and leave the other body in tack.

So now we're REALLY close to getting this think playing. Jobs left to do are:

Finish the neck

ReFinish the body.

Add the stickers

Add the machine heads

Bolt it all together.

Hook up the electrics.

Play a gig!

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

We ARE on a roll.

With the oil finished, a quick spray over with matt laquer left the body looking great and ready to go. It drys really quickly so I was  able to get on and start assembling things.

First off I put on the bridge - primarily to give me a reference point for aligning the neck. With that on there really was no excuse not to fit the neck!!!!! This is the scariest bit, as it's the most expensive component, and it's a one shot deal - drill the holes in the right place or have an off centre neck. I put the screws in the body holes so they were just protruding. Lined everything up, checked it with a long metal ruler, and pressed down making four small indentations. I then took the neck off, and put it back again, lined it up and pressed down. Still only four indentations, so we're good to go....

Tentitivly I drilled pilot holes, to about 1/4", and attatched the neck to the body... It seemed good, so I drilled full depth. At that point I hit a minor hitch. The next size drill bit I had was a fraction too large. It MIGHT be OK, be ideally I need a size down, so the neck is basically drilled, and ready to attach, but it needs a new drill bit to finish it off. Best of all with the neck loosly attatched (actually it felt pretty solid), the bass felt and looked great. Everything seems to line up.

Of course the headstock still needs to be done (and there's no hardware there yet), but with the neck drilled the whole project seems a lot closer to working.

With the body laquered, and the neck drilled, there really was no reason not to keep going and attatch some hardware. The EB pickup looked too good not to add, so in it went (with the help of a little foam to push it up). Strangly the screws that came with it are HUGE - they only have to hold the cover on - but they're the same size as the screws for the neck. I found some others, and it all went on sweetly.

What next... Another scarey job. The pickguard. With the EB in place I was able to check that the template I used to lay everything out was still correct, and fitted around the pickup like it was supposed to. Then I transfered the shape to the pickguard. I was a bit worried about cutting it, but it turned out my jigsaw produced a really clean cut, so I was able to cut out the pickguard to make space for the EB pickup pretty easily. Add a few holes for the controls, and it's done!

Wow - a load of progress.

The bad news is that as I was doing this a couple of white areas appeared in the laquer - I think some moisture must of got in/under it. Fortunarly they're round the edges (where I gave it a quick touch up), and the white areas are flaking off, so a quick touch with wire wool should sort them. I don't think they'll need recoating.

So the body is almost done. All the hardstuff is done, so I just need to wire it all up, strap buttons, bridge cover and add the stickers.

The headstock is more of a challenge - reshape it, refinish it, add machine heads, and nut. Still with the body done, it all feels a lot more reachable.

Skate and Destroy

I'd tracked down all except one of the stickers - the tiny little one on the back.

The letters SAD probably meant Skate and Destroy, a slogan used by Thrasher Magazine in the 80's, but I couldn't find anything even close....

Time to ask for help. A quick post on TalkBass and I had the answer in a few minutes, and here it is...  on a hoodie! Thanks to DrPete we now have a much better idea of what this looks like.

We're not out of the woods yet - this is the only image we have, but it's confirmed as thrasher/Skate&Destroy. Worst case I can clean this up and produce a version, but I'm still followiung up some leads in the hope of getting a better image.

It's Oil Over Now...

Three quick coats of Danish oil later, and it's looking great. The pics show before and after (and of course you can see the new routing).

That stuff only takes a couple of minutes to wipe on, and a few hours to dry, so it only took a couple of days to get it done.

I could just leave it like this, but as I need to add some waterslide transfers, I'll probably give it a quick spray of matt varnish first.

The finish is far from perfect - particulary when you hold it up to the light and catch the reflections, but from any distance it looks great, and besides this s upposed to be a relic project. Trouble is with the hardware added it looks sooo sweet, I don't know if I'll be able to bring myself to add the stickers...