Recent content by MrBohjangles

Thanks GR7. I couldn't tell from your comments if you realized the original GAXB was a pretty basic, single pu bass. The body, neck, and a little hardware are all that remains from the original instrument. I designed and built the bass you see posted. I documented the process in a thread if...

Awesome thread. Have become a big fan of the midscales. I'll add mine to the mix. It's a MrBohjangles hot-rod special. I had been curious about trying out a midscale for a while and came across a low-mileage Ibanez Gio GAXB150 at Goodwill. Scooped it up for $50. Found out why it looked like...

Everyone here is probably a better bass player than me, so take my 2 cents for what they are worth... very little. As others have said, its whatever works best for you. If you don't like short scales personally, that's cool. That's why Baskin Robbins makes 31 flavors. But disparaging them...

Matt, I should have mentioned that part of my challenge was not having better tools to work with. I did this last step with a hand jigsaw, a plunge router, scissors and files and sandpaper. A scroll saw and a router table would have made a big difference. If I was going to do this repeatedly...

Step 7: The Finish Line So its been over a month since my last update. Was a combo of COVID shipping delays and trying to figure out exactly how I was going to make a custom pick guard. Some of the videos I had watched warned me it can be a pain in the a$$, and they were right. I admittedly...

So I fixed the wiring mistake and everyone is playing nice with each other now. While I was in there I installed the OMG cap on the HB's serial mode. I'm not sure OMG would be my description of the change. To me its a subtle difference at best, but it's all good. So only thing left is to...

After a little test driving, a few observations and a rookie mistake found. Took some measurements that explain exactly how the bass behaves in different combinations: Neck HB: Series = 12.4KOhm, Single Coil = 6.2KOhm, Parallel = 3.1KOhm, Phase = Neg (my term) Precision: Series = 8.9KOhm...

Step 6: Test Drive Put it back together, set the neck and string lengths. Only alterations from the original layout are a 500K volume pot (vs. original 250K) and I chose not to install the OMG caps on the hb serial modes (but left the option to add them later). Results are interesting. Wide...

So I carefully built the pu circuits and tested every step along the way using ct's suggestion of a piece of metal to tap the pu's (no neck or strings). Tested what I thought would be the correct wiring on the bench before starting. First in was the p-pu and switch directly to the jack. All...

You guys will like this rookie error. Was fooling around with some tests today and getting very strange results with the volume pot - like no sound. Thought I was loosing it. Did a little digging and realized I had bought a no-load pot. Until today I had no idea what the difference was...

Thanks ct. Hadn't considered impedance, but it makes sense. I think I got lucky and the ones I bought happen to have very similar nominal resistance. We'll see when we get it working. If there's a noticeable problem, I'll come up with a plan b (actually closer to plan j or k at this point).

So, following up on the troubleshooting... I think there were a laundry list of potential problems that may have prevented the bass from producing sound. I dis-assembled everything up to the volume pot and started first just looking at my design. The precision pu is pretty straight forward...

Thanks ct. Sounds like a project for tomorrow. I'll take the neck and string off and call it a night. Looking at layouts for blend to volume pots on the web, it noticed that most have the two non-used corners of the blend grounded where I have them open. I was just fooling around with...

What do they say... if it seems to good to be true it probably is. I realized what I was talking about above about continuity has to do with where the sweep on the volume pot is set and not a short. So I kept working backwards. One at a time I would loosen a switch or pot, press it slightly...

I think you are right on target for the most part. Working backwards, the first thing I checked was for continuity at the jack between ground and signal. It failed - there is short between the two. I was happy to find something right off the bat. Assuming the jack is good, I went to the next...