Recent content by gormsby

Fully half my life since early June has been just watching the concert footage. "OMG! Last night was Toronto night 3! Is it up yet? Is it up yet? Is it up yet..." I know that as primarily a bassist, I should be most focused on Geddy, but to be honest the Anika-cam videos just keep pulling me...

Twin Town, Minneapolis. Their basic logo t-shirt is ubiquitous on people around here, but oddly not on their site right now. The "Damn Proud" version they do have carries with it an implicit declaration of certain human/political allegiances of local and national import, so approach that one as...

Being from Minneapolis, I recall an apocryphal story that went around and around years ago about a band whose name kept getting them cease-and-desist letters from a famous local act. Apparently, someone was unhappy that a band was billing themselves as "Prints."

Assuming the take was large enough (under maybe $4 million, I'd just save it and maybe retire early), I wouldn't buy more basses, exactly. It would go into home renovations/expansion, which would include a well appointed luthiery/woodshop. Then I could stick to my recently-adopted "build, don't...

I'll throw in a few. They may seem 'no-duh' obvious, but having them on a checklist never hurts and can prevent some oversights. Lower bout should be large enough to accommodate your planned controls, well arranged, and leave enough room for whatever contouring you have planned (minimal on an...

I'm young enough that I knew Robin Gibb from "Boys do fall in love" before I ever knew he was a BeeGee.

Alternative idea if the solo set sounds too daunting at first: Years ago a friend of mine organized an open mic night and tapped me for between-act interlude music. Basically I had however long it took for each act to clear the stage and the next to set up and be ready to start. In practice, it...

I'm fine with the poplar burl as an option, and then, with a natural finish. I'm not on board with the color bursts (of which, Ibanez seems particularly fond of blue [?!]), nor with the "it's the only option" aspect.

Beautiful wood work! I love the large knobs. I have a 6-string 30" scale with a Labella flat set, and the 0.095 E sounds much quieter than the other strings unamplified, but plugged in it sounds just fine, well balanced with the rest of the strings.

Slowly getting back into it after a winter that was too cold for working in the garage and too distracting in other ways. Top of my list is to finish a guitar and a lap steel nearing completion, along with a conversion neck to turn a friend's Squier Bass VI into a baritone guitar. A few ideas...

Yep. As long as your granite countertop test (or other trusted surface) shows that the outside edge is indeed straight. In my sloppy drawing (neck on bottom, straightedge on top), the red lines would still be an interrupted "straightedge". Shift it up and over a fret-width or more from normal...

That's what you're looking for. Check it at Home Depot and if the major/outside edge is flat, you can still use it for this, just with the notches between the frets so you're assessing the tops of the frets relative to each other. And that use case for checking necks for reasonable straightness...

Different truss rods are different, and I've never seen one protrude as a result of adjustment, so can't speak to that. I typically use dual-action rods. I think of it as loosening the rod to "neutral" in the sense that it's not applying any force to the neck, then tightening it until it engages...

Of course Bruce said it better and in way fewer words: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/fret-levelling-a-question-probably-asked-a-thousand-times.1669100/post-28978358

I will grant that you want a straight neck before filing, but only up to a point. I think the intent of this directive is to make sure the neck is returned to "neutral", or no longer under the same truss rod load that it had when it was attached and strung up to tension. A "shorthand," if you...