I added some notes on this subject, see page linked below. I keep seeing truly horrific advice being dispensed online by luthiées, when the correct solution is easy and free.
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For a while now I've been working on the WordPress plugin that does the slideshows. I had re-written the php back-end from NivoSlider, and then I decided to rewrite the front-end. The front-end is driven by jquery, so it was a good opportunity to get familiar with that. It's actually pretty simple.
Over a few months of tinkering, I added several hundred slide transitions, grouped in families to make things manageable. Eventually, I pretty much exhausted all the things you can do by animating css with jquery. So I turned to inline svg image masks. You can do much more with real graphics than just css, but there is one hitch - svg is poorly supported in Chrome and all its derivatives, including Opera, Edge, and Brave. But if you load this page in Firefox or Safari, it will demonstrate what you can do with svg.
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This wound up on the back burner for a while, but I finally got back around to it. The black stripe is 1/16" tape from the roll there, applied to the shiny under-layer. It wasn't that hard to apply, using the screw holes as guides. It's not awfully sticky, but should hold up well sandwiched between the clear pickguard and the body. You can get that tape at Hobby Lobby. I finished the pickup 'routs' with hand files.
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I've been experimenting with some Gargle stuff lately, and the experience is not good.
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Danelectro Catalog 1963
Here are some catalogs from the two golden eras of Danelectro - the sixties and the nineties. Use the arrows to flip through the pages.
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This is a pack of Duracells I found in my dad's closet. The 'use by' date is January 2002, you can see it right there. Yet, there is not a speck of white mange on them. They have not leaked after over twenty years! These batteries were made in the USA. Modern Duracells are made in China, and are pretty much guaranteed to leak in 20 weeks, if not 20 days. The whole point of alkaline batteries once upon a time was that they didn't leak like acid batteries. You paid extra for that.
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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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