Yesterday I hunted around for stuff. The trusty local hobby shop is all out of everything but balsa, and it didn't sound like they were getting anything else in, ever ! So I went down the road a piece to the high-end builder's supply / lumberyard (Dykes) to see what they had. And I turned up this nice piece of 5/4" x 6" maple. 5/4" is actually 1", the same way 1" is actually 3/4", and 6" is actually 5-1/2". I looked at a couple of pieces, and took three feet off the nicest one for about $18.
I've cut out the slot for the truss rod. This is a standard 540mm truss rod for a 34" scale bass. To make it fit in a 32" neck, I need to add one more fret. So my project will have one more fret than an actual Ric, just another way it will be better than the real thing. The jig and tools and method are all described in the Laboratory. Most of the work was done in the jig, with a little free-hand nipping for the adjuster end. I haven't carved out the access for the adjuster yet.
The first side came out good, now I am installing the second side. I trimmed both pieces so that I could use the short clamps. Using long clamps for a job like this would be a pain in the butt.
I smoothed down the brushed poly on this body and was dissatisfied with the result. The shape, with binding and German carve, is rather complex to sand, and the brushed-on finish required an excessive amount of sanding. The foam brush made no difference. Another bad idea from talk_ass, which is an endless spring of bad ideas. I will never again try to brush on a finish - there is no reason, I have excellent spray facilities.
I started assembling the Mosrite, finally. The routs are all so precise that I had to spend quite a while filing polyurethane out of them to make the neck and pickups fit again. Then I had to chisel out the pit for the output jack. You can see my solution for grounding the four individual bridges - a strip of aluminum tape, the same stuff as on the back of the dry-erase pickguard.
Been doing some quick experiments with CA and glitter for the last few days. At left is gold crushed glass. Center-top is very fine gunmetal plastic glitter. Center-bottom is silver crushed glass glitter. At right is standard plastic glitter. The green tube is medium CA, the pink one is thin, the standard formulation. Thick CA is quite rubbery when it dries, I would not use it for this.
Ebay is doing 10% bucks, and some knowledgeable people have said that this is not a complete piece of junk like the 'Overlord', so I ordered one. Merry Christmas for me.
This is the Kubicki bass body from last year (?) It is now wearing a nice chocolate burst and a thick coat of OIL-BASED polyurethane. It has been hanging up for over two months, and I figure the poly is 99% as hard as it will ever get.
Strung up with a rough setup. Everything tweaked and tightened. Feels good, haven't plugged it in yet. The guitar stands nicely on its two strap button feet without a stand, so you can safely lean it against a wall or amplifier. At least until your drummer gets loose, then nothing is safe. You can use the leather loop on the headstock to hang it up out of reach.
WordPress has always made a mess of images, but the new version is worse than I have ever seen. The server is polluted with gigs of unused crap that WP automatically generated and discarded. Yet at the same time, there are piles of broken image links. What the hell is this "smart" system doing?
