Recent content by StarbardGuitar

And it's done! Soon enough the customer will be picking it up, so my time with the assembled bass will be short lived. This whole thing took a lot longer than I had anticipated, but turned out to be worth the wait IMO.

Made a small truss rod cover today. This way the truss rod can still be easily accessed, rather than require the strings and pickguard to be removed. I improvised a little with some ideas on how to do this since I had no templates. I need the truss cover to fit tight so it is not noticeable from...

As I was putting this bass together, I found out that somehow the blue stain on the heel of the neck & on the body are mismatched. I've thought about it a lot, and I think that the body just got more sun while drying which added a tint to the color. The reason I think this is the case is because...

I had a little set back - I got a tiny sand through on the back of the neck, it's not a big deal fortunately. Sprayed a little more finish over that and am waiting for that to dry before I can move on. Just getting little things done while I wait, like installing the strap buttons.

Thank you!

Just need to apply a few more coats of shielding paint to the cavities, then it's time to finally assemble & set it up!

Let the finish cure for 2 weeks, wet sanded with 2000 grit and started buffing. I've only made it through the coarse grit so far but it is looking great. I did sand the top and back with a block, though the top still has a wavy reflection. I can live with that though. Also had one small...

Sprayed the last couple coats of finish today, just have to wait for it to cure now. That is definitely the worst part of a build...

Sanded through part of the logo, so I removed it and decided to place it more central on the headstock rather than near the edge to avoid doing that again. I think after this build I will try to never use waterslide decals again, they're so easy to sand through and never really give me good...

Thank you!

Got the logo on. Spent a bit of time doing some tedious taping. Sprayed the burst, removed the tape, cleaned it up a bit and got some clear on top.

I would have to guess it would work, especially if you were using a water based stain. Do yourself a favor and test the process first on scraps! It's much better to figure out what will or won't work before you start attempting it on the actual instrument.

Nope, unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the top taped up. The way I did it was when the wood was all unfinished, I sanded only up to 180 on the top since the tape leaves a residue and sometimes tears a little grain out when peeling off. Then I started around the edges tearing up small...

At which point in the process are you asking about specifically? There were a couple times where I used tape, just not sure which part you're wondering about

No problem, I'm glad my mistakes can be helpful learning experiences to others as well as myself. Well, I'm really still fairly new to this honestly. So I bought stain from StewMac. This is only the second stained top I've ever done. For this build I diluted it in denatured alcohol, rather...