They are getting a bit spendy though.
They used to do a Rick but I think they were frowned at and had to stop, otherwise I would be all over it.
I wasn’t going to get a new bass and decided not to do the project with the scroll neck but this was too good to resist.
Not sure how I will finish it, I thought about a transparent red or a burst but thought a brown stain might be better.
But then I was playing La Grange this evening and was reminded of this finish and thought “Hmmm”
Dusty Hill, master of understated, but essential basslines. Been a fan since I first saw them when Tres Hombres was released. Hard to believe it’s already 5 years since we lost him. He was only 2 years older than me.
I like that finish! Definitely not one of their fuzzy toilet seat cover finishes.
I have a new appreciation for EMG’s solderless install system. Finished (crosses fingers) wiring up the Fishmans tonight. I stopped before attaching all the hardware. That’ll be tomorrow.
Then dyed dyed the body and neck to be malachite green. Did a gold ceruse application to the grain of the wood. There was something causing the wood of the neck right next to the fretboard to not take the dye well (probably fretboard glue down in the pores) so I put gold pinstripes down the length of the neck. Finished with 9 layers of Tru-Oil.
I then dyed the laurel fretboard to be more ebony with Fiebing’s black leather dye.
Mostly Guyker hardware. The black part of the bridge is original. I took the gold saddles off a Guyker gold bridge. Thought about using the gold bridge with black saddles, but it’s just a little much once the strings et al are added.
Thanks! I was trying to get some better light outside. It’s a little glossy but not a lot. My coworker keeps trying to get me to make it shinier, but I like a little bit more on the satin side with a slight sheen. I might have got too much Tru-Oil on the neck. I think O need to sand it a little with some 400grit.
Thanks! Setting it up is being… fun. Through all the humidity of Iowa summers in my garage and dye and oil and whatnot while being unstrung, the neck was backbowed and required quite a bit of adjustment. My 12th fret on the E string side is a tad low and have had to raise the saddle a bit to accommodate for now. The drop tuner is bing finicky. I had it set perfectly, then adjusted the action and intonation and now it doesn’t want to stay reliably in tune switching back and forth. I’m thinking the string might be catching on the nut. It’s playable but not perfect. I might take it to a local guy to have the frets checked out and see if he can get it a bit better.
I really haven’t had much of a chance to put them through their paces. They sound good. Not quite as much difference between the 3 voices as I’d hoped, but I’m still messing around with it. I’ll probably give more detail when I know it over on the Fishman Fluence thread.
So, kind of a fun experiment. I used GPT Astra 6 to basically drive Blender for me on my laptop to render a version of this bass based on my SVG design of the body and fingerboard. (Nevermind the headstock, it created some random garbage.)
But the cool part is I could make it export to a file format I can open directly on my Apple Vision Pro headset, in 1:1 scale. So I can look at it up close and get a feel for it before actually cutting any wood.
This design needs some refinement (and an actual headstock) but I’m really digging the body. Will probably end up with large 3/4" roundovers like the P-Bass.
Anyway, first time playing with this and thought it was a neat tool:
That is pretty cool. Aesthetically, I like the hard edges; reminds me of the Baums and Reverends (aside from the Wattplower). Nice and clean and modern looking. Ergonomically, some kind of rounding and/or forearm cut would be good.
Yeah, will most likely do a forearm cut as well as a comfort cut on the back, this was just throwing the dice using just the shape outline and seeing what it came up with. I’ll do the actual 3D modeling by hand and add that in.
I tend to like the large roundovers, both aesthetically as well as they are just really comfortable with no hard edges to catch, pretty much anywhere. Cool thing is, I can model and render it both ways and view it full scale in 3D space to see which one I like better. And on the AVP it practically looks like it’s real, the video just doesn’t even come anywhere close to conveying it.
Is that also a pirate bassist’s favorite note?