Superfreaky Brain Fart ~ Luthiery Laboratories

August 24, 2020

Superfreaky Brain Fart

August 24, 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.

Not sure what possessed me at the time, but I built this with A250 tone pots and B500 volume pots, and the B pots are doing their usual on/off switch behavior - no change until almost zero, then cut off completely. After my most recent testing, I have concluded that B pots have no place in a guitar at all. I probably did this because I have just two A500 pots in the parts bin, one mini and one full sized. A few days ago I ordered a lot of them, when they come in, I will swap these out. In the meantime, the B's will do, especially at full volume, so I can check this thing out.

Uncategorized, 08/24/20

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Rickenbacker 4001 Bass 1

This one is kind of a joke and an experiment in just how cheap you can build a guitar. The body is dry-erase board over plywood - no finish - with Tolex side binding. Dry-erase board is Masonite covered with Melamine. The neck is 100% Radiata pine, even the fretboard. The "inlays" are glitter and CA glue. The pickguard is the other side of the dry-erase board - 'chalkboard'. The pickup mount is a 57 cent switch plate.

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Drill Press

I took a drive over to Harbor Freight - purveyor of fine {sarcasm} Chinese tools & hardware - and picked up this little drill press. With a coupon, it cost me just over fifty bucks. This is not what I would call a good drill press, in fact, it is pretty crappy. The base and the table are stamped, not forged, and small. The quill travel is a measly two inches, parts that should be steel are aluminum, parts that should be aluminum are plastic, vibration is excessive, and the 3/8" chuck has a disconcerting wobble to it. I knew all that when I bought it, and I never would have if I did not already have a much better one, or at least a decent one. What I wanted from this drill press is small size and lightweight, so I can add it to my inside workstation, and not have to leave the heat/ac to go drill a hole in the garage. This press weighs well under 40 pounds and doesn't take up too much space on my inside workbench. My 'good' drill press is not something you'd want to move around a lot.

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