Cheaper solution in my case, just change the saddles.
That’s my favorite bass bridge. I’ve got it on one of mine now, it’s probably my most common mod.
It’s not super high mass but it’s a nice, solid, substantial bridge for sure. And yeah the additional weight over the L-bends does help balance. I really like it. Looks great in black too.
2 Likes
6 Likes
Yeah I’ve never bought that one, I always just get the normal 201B-4.
Great bridge.
5 Likes
BABICZ is about the best design I have had. Not sure about the others but these are as rock solid as it gets.
1 Like
Little bit of a sneak peek after the first coat of dye was applied. The neck didn’t take very well and I had to sand back with 60 grit to get down through some of the prior finish. It’s not perfect but it’s MUCH better than it was the first time.
10 Likes
Oh man Clear coat this bad girl to a high gloss finish and you’ll have yourself a heartbreaker.
4 Likes
I’m thinking of doing a ceruse finish on the ash side wings, in either silver or gold. I could do black as well. Black would match my existing hardware, which I had planned to reuse. If using the others I could reuse but I may rethink and get something else that goes better.
1 Like
What dye did you use and how did you apply it?
It’s Jacquard’s “Basic Dye” in color Malachite that I got for a penny off Amazon Haul during a sale a few weeks back. Figured it was cheap enough to try, heh. It’s a powder. I followed the paint-on instructions (mostly). They recommend water or denatured alcohol. I didn’t have any denatured alcohol but during my scrap testing I tried isopropyl alcohol as I had an old bottle on my work bench and it actually gave a pretty good result, much better than water, and dries super quick. I actually heated it up to not-quite boiling, added the powder and mixed, then poured through a coffee filter in a funnel (to catch any undissolved chunks) into a plastic bottle so I could easily apply to rag and seal back up.
I had sanded to 400 grit, then read that that high could burnish the maple and not allow it to take dye well, so I scuffed it back up a bit down to 240. Used warm water to open up the pores a bit, brass brush on the ash body wings to deepen the grain and wiped on the dye with a clean microfiber rag.
When stripping the old finish off I had apparently missed some on the neck and in some crevices so the neck was super blotchy at first. I had to sand it back down to 60 and work my way back up before trying again.
Once I’m good with the dye, I need to apply a sanding sealer to lock it in before doing the ceruse finish to fill the grain. Then there will be some clear coat layers over that, Tru-Oil, probably.
4 Likes
It adds a tad bit of amber hue to the color just to let you know. Boiled linseed oil is more clear while offer the same coating properties.
2 Likes
Cool, thanks
1 Like
From what I’ve been reading you don’t want to put BLO over sanding sealer as it keeps it from soaking into the wood. I’ll need a sealed layer to protect the dye from the grain filler.
1 Like
I use it as fretboard oil and it works great
1 Like
I’ve got 4 finish options at this point:
-
just the malachite dye and natural grain
-
black grain filler
-
silver grain filler
-
gold grain filler
I was kind of leaning toward the gold, but my wife thinks it may be tacky. Would probably pair with black or black with gold chrome bridge/tuners/knobs if I went this way. Silver could be a bit understated it classy. Probably black or dark metallic hardware with this. Black seems barely different from natural. Would probably keep the all black hardware I currently have.
6 Likes
I like #1 (straight malachite) the best. Second would be #4 (gold grain filler). Not really a fan of either #2 or #3. It’s looking good!
2 Likes
Number 1 gets my vote
1 Like
Wow! Check out this project bass.
3 Likes