Radiatabacker Part IIa ~ Luthiery Laboratories

July 19, 2020

Radiatabacker Part IIa

July 19, 2020

Well, it's that time of year again, time to renew the web hosting. And for those of you that don't know, that has become a lot more expensive than it used to be. Fifty dollars a year is now several hundred. Not to mention the price of domain names has gone up ten-fold.

And I just found out that the nice folks at PayPal disabled all my Support buttons, and I never got a notice (although that may be my fault.) In any case, it is all working again now, so if you would like to make a small donation to help defray these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.

A lot of work for not much to show

I made some small adjustments to the outline, and finished the neck mounting. And a lot of sanding. The drywall sander is a godsend, it works much better than a block, and really saves your hands. But my arms feel like lead.

I also did the roundovers on the back, a mix of 1/4" and 3/4". You can see the small fillets I left at the base of the neck mount. I could have squared those corners with a file, but this will be less prone to crack the finish. The neck will cover them.

And a lot more sanding on the back, I found a spot where the belt sander had dug too deep. It's as flat as a mirror now.

Detail of the neck mount and horns. I'll use a standard Fender mounting plate for the added strength, since this body is rather thin. The front body edge will get binding. Now I think it's time to start roughing-out a neck. Fortunately, I have a model right at hand that I can simply copy - the Superfreak. Speaking of which, that one is ready for final assembly.

Uncategorized, 07/19/20

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SX SPB-57 Precision Bass

This is my attempt to recreate my very first bass, a "Montaya", as well as one of my first ventures into 'modding'. These SX's are great instruments. For 109 bucks you get an alder body with a beautiful 3-tone sunburst, a decent neck, functional bridge & tuners, and a flawless finish. What you don't get is any kind of useable pickups or strings. On this one, I installed a USA Fender pickup, my favorite d'Addario strings, and gave it a careful fret dressing and setup. I also added the tortoise pickguard, rosewood thumbrest, and ashtray for the looks only. At the time, I was going purely from memory, but I later found a picture of the original, and I got it dead right.

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