Build II - Paradox MJ5 - New design!

[roberthabraken]

Another update!

I wasn't satisfied with the bridge placement. I kept looking at it and it just felt wrong. After taking careful measurements I found out it sat on at an angle of about 0.3 degrees. That doesn't look like much, but if you extend the sides of the bridge to the fingerboard, the one at the bass side was 5 mm further away from the 24th fret end than the one at the treble side. That's not good

So I needed to fix the bridge placement. I decided to plug the two outer holes and keep the one in the middle to pivot the bridge, then mark and drill new holes and re-attach the bridge. Yesterday I plugged the holes with a small wooden dowel and some Titebond:



Titebond cures in half an hour, but I needed it to be fully cured because the new holes would only be shifted by 0.5 mm. I let it cure overnight and today I marked the new holes, using the center screw to pivot the bridge. Next time, I'm going to use this technique right away, because it's much easier to get it right.

Now, it's on _perfectly_ straight. And I'm happy.

Time to move to the next assembly task. I marked the positions of all the pickguard screws through a paper template using masking tape to scribe on:



Then, I drilled all holes using a 3 mm drill bit, followed by a counter sink bit:



Marking through the freshly drilled holes onto the body and drilling 2 mm holes in the body was the next step:



Et voilà:



Looking cool! Looks like a lot of screws due to the small size of the pickguard, but I like the bling-bling style of it. A close up:

[PDGood]

Man, that would be hard to do - get a body looking that great and then drill holes in it. I'd be a nervous wreck.

[pilotjones]

Looking good, man.

If that blue dye - sand back - red dye thing works, on a test piece, you could try blue-to-black-burst - sand back - red dye. Could be interesting.

[Hopkins]

That pick guard is sexy

[roberthabraken]

Originally Posted by PDGood

Man, that would be hard to do - get a body looking that great and then drill holes in it. I'd be a nervous wreck.

Yes, +1... same here. But the most nerve racking is the bridge grounding wire channel. And dyeing I guess; for me that is.

Originally Posted by pilotjones

Looking good, man.

If that blue dye - sand back - red dye thing works, on a test piece, you could try blue-to-black-burst - sand back - red dye. Could be interesting.

Thanks Pete!! That's a good idea too, I will collect some options and do some test pieces. Although just a transparent oil finish is still high on my list of options too..

Originally Posted by Hopkins

That pick guard is sexy

[roberthabraken]

Currently I'm figuring out the electronics / controls and I need your help!

First question: what kind of knobs do you think I should use? I have a direction, but can't decide what fits my design best. The following image shows my options:



The first three are my preferred options, I think d) is a bit cheap looking and e) doesn't really fit my design.

I like the barrel knob for it's flat top, but I'm not sure it'll go with the design. The heavy dome knob is looking really good, and the Gotoh is the one I've used on my first bass, which I liked both for feel and quality.

What's your opinion? (Any other options are fine too, as long as they fit the design of course).


Second question: I want to use a passive volume / balance / tone setup as I did on my first bass. I think it's way better to control the mix of bridge and neck pickup, without having varying volume issues. I have a wiring diagram from Delano (so that's no problem) and it tells me to use a 250k tone pot and a 250k volume pot. The things I don't know are:

1. Should the balance pot be 250k or 500k ? I guess 250k, same as the other ones, but I'm not sure..
2. Should I use a logarithmic or linear pot for both tone and volume pots? I know I used one log and one linear pot on my first bass, but I'm not sure which one was the linear and I'm also not sure if that's the best solution. Any advice would be appreciated!

[Gabeja15]

try these, they have a nice clean look to them:

http://www.mammothelectronics.com/4S...p/700-1800.htm

[pilotjones]

AFAIK when doing passive volume or blend, or tone, you should use log pots. It worked well for me. A double log blend pot is called an M-N taper.

I used 500K all around in order to avoid the treble loss that people talk about.


AFA knobs, how many will you have? I was surprised how heavy they can be! My five wooden knobs weigh far less than one steel knob, which seems counterintuitive until either you hold them in your hand, or you do the math and find that steel is 11 times the density of hard maple.

[Hopkins]

I think a set of jazz bass knobs would look better on that bass than chrome.

I like these from radio shack as well
http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...uctId=2102831#

I used them on this, bass and I think they look really good

[roberthabraken]

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

Came across these today, would match the mother of pearl pickguard they're one and still have the chrome metal to match the rest of the hardware, so could be cool. What about these?

Originally Posted by pilotjones

AFAIK when doing passive volume or blend, or tone, you should use log pots. It worked well for me. A double log blend pot is called an M-N taper.

I used 500K all around in order to avoid the treble loss that people talk about.


AFA knobs, how many will you have? I was surprised how heavy they can be! My five wooden knobs weigh far less than one steel knob, which seems counterintuitive until either you hold them in your hand, or you do the math and find that steel is 11 times the density of hard maple.

That's really something I haven't thought about.. the weight of wooden and metal knobs. Too bad my design calls for metal knobs. I need the chrome and think wooden knobs wouldn't look good on a pearl pickguard. For an all wood bass that has less hardware on it, I reckon wooden knobs are the way too go.

I remember my previous config again, with a little help from DaanW.. I used log pots for volume (also called audio pots) because they make the volume increase and decrease sound more linear. If you would have them linear, they would lose there top fast and the lower half of the range would sound like less difference in volume.

For tone I used a linear pot, because the tone effect gets the best linear distribution with a linear pot (doesn't have the same effect as volume).

Delano says to use 250k pots, so I will, I guess too for the balance pot, use 250k pots for the setup.

[roberthabraken]

I learned (as I stated in my previous post) that volume should be logarithmic (also called audio taper) and tone should be a linear pot. But I read some threads where people say you should also use a logarithmic pot for tone purposes. So I did some more research and came across the following vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ANG3OrL5HI

Of course, it's still a personal preference, but based on these findings I am definitely going for a logarithmic pot for both volume and tone on this bass. So Pete was right I guess

Just wanted to share, great to see someone demonstrating different pots for different purposes (he has more videos on YouTube about the topic).

[NelsonNelson]

Everything on the bass looks very curvy and all so I would say definitely a dome top knob in chrome. Warwick style would be perfect. Looks awesome by the way!

[roberthabraken]

Originally Posted by NelsonNelson

Everything on the bass looks very curvy and all so I would say definitely a dome top knob in chrome. Warwick style would be perfect. Looks awesome by the way!

Thank you, you are kind of confirming my own conclusion (didn't share that yet), so I guess I am going to order the pots and knob

[roberthabraken]

Yesterday I drilled the wiring channels between the pickups and to the control cavity. I also drilled the pickup attachment screw holes and... the scariest hole of them all: the grounding wire channel for the bridge! Man do I hate that. But with careful measurements and some extra care it came out the way I intended. I really haven't been this nervous on the entire build as with this task.

Here you can see the wiring channel and some of the pickup attachment holes:



And the dreaded bridge grounding wire channel:



I also did some colouring tests. First with a local product 'Ecoline' from Talens, a concentrated water ink, just because I happened to have that lying around. The first test failed, trying to achieve a nice mix between sienna red, vermilion and bright yellow. It came out too orange and watery:



The second one is a small piece I painted with pure vermilion (for the first test I mixed the ink with water), and the colour came out rather nice, but I still do not like working with this product for this application. I also heared that it loses colour over time, so I better stick to commercially available dyes that are intended for this purpose.



So this was fun, but I ordered bright red and black dye (the latter to enhance the figure) right after this test. We'll see if that works out.

[roberthabraken]

Received both the pots and the knobs today, so I drilled holes for the control pots tonight:



Well, that went quite well, positioning went perfect, as by design, and the pots fit well:



You can see it's a good thing I ordered mini pots, as regular pots wouldn't fit at all, especially the volume control. On the bright side I'll have some room left for a future upgrade to active tone control (I reckon a Delano Sonar II and battery would still fit in there):



By the way, my top (5.5 mm) and pickguard (2.5 mm) are too thick for the control pot shafts. Long shaft pots would've been better, but they are not available in a mini version or as a blend pot, so I will have to drill some larger recess holes (1" in diameter and 3 mm deep) from the back to be able to install the pots. Just another thing on my list before I can start finishing the bass.

And of course some shots with the knobs on. Despite the fact that they are not closer together than normal, the small body and small pickguard make them look rather large. I'm a little bit in doubt, maybe I'll try mini dome knobs on there... but I'm not sure. If the rest of the hardware is on it may look good as it is. What do you think?

[MrArose13]

Out standing work Rob, I'm enjoying seeing your thought process and seeing this bass come alive.

roberthabraken
with the knobs on, the small body and small pickguard make them look rather large. I'm a little bit in doubt, maybe I'll try mini dome knobs on there... but I'm not sure. If the rest of the hardware is on it may look good as it is. What do you think?

(MO) I think it will balance out with all the hardware on, I have a feeling you already plan to do this but, you can just place bridge etc. in place and have a look.

Again, job well done

[Plantfood]

I think the knobs look great! They fit really well with the look and the size of the PG.

[pilotjones]

Those knobs look fine. They'll look even better with the chrome picking up red reflections from the body.

[Thumpin_P]

Agreed...keep the knobs...carry on...

[Prostheta]

I feel that Hipshot's "O-Ring" knobs would suit. The rubber rings tie in with the pickguard lamination and body pinstripe to my eye.


http://store.hipshotproducts.com/car...t_detail&p=233