A/E piezo four string - the last of the Phoenix basses

[Jisch]

I used three magnet pairs to hold my cover on. At a high level you put two across from each other (they are the pivot point) and one at the end. The other end is open so you can press the cover in. Apparently when I was doing something else I must have pressed down on that cover and broke the end one off inside. The funny thing is it still works, the magnet holds it like a latch. I'll fix this, but always cool to see something like this work out. Sorry for the crappy music. I was on a conf call at the time I recorded this, better than boring work talk:

 

[Jisch]

I put the first coat of Tru Oil on, it looks amazing, but there are two spots where I guess I didn't sand past the glue squeeze out, have to sand back those spots. The buffer came in today, so I could be playing this by the weekend.

 

[Jisch]

Sanded off offending area, reapplied a coat of Tru Oil.

 

[reverendrally]

POP! Man I love what truoil does.

 

[Jisch]

It definitely goes deeper than tung oil, it's easier to apply as well. Of course this basement pictures don't do it justice. My plan with this one is to buff the Tru Oil with 0000 steel wool then coat with wax, it will be a semi-gloss finish.

 

[Jisch]

I mounted the tuners. I swear I had a set of black L/R, but all I have is eight left side, I think black would look better, maybe I'll swap 'em out later. These are Carvin tuners, which are indeed better quality than the China direct cheapies.

I've got three coats on, areas are still absorbing, so I'll do another couple then buff out with 0000 before going for the final coats.

I drilled out the string saddles so I could run the wires for the ghost system:

 

[Beej]

It definitely goes deeper than tung oil, it's easier to apply as well. Of course this basement pictures don't do it justice. My plan with this one is to buff the Tru Oil with 0000 steel wool then coat with wax, it will be a semi-gloss finish.

I've seen this written up before, but don't use wax myself in the final finish of an oil finish - will you be showing this part? I'm curious as to how it's done...

 

[Jisch]

The Ghost piezos terminate in those plastic connectors and it would super convenient if I had bought their buffer, which I didn't know about until after I purchased the Bartolini. The Bartolini just has wires for the input. I read up on the piezos and they would normally plug into a "summing bridge" which just puts all the piezos in parallel with each other, it's a nice neat package.

I could just cut off those connectors and try soldering them all together, but my spidey senses tell me that this wire will be hard/impossible to solder. I looked around and found that pins you use in sewing were the perfect size to put in the connector so I made my own summing bridge, it's not pretty but it's secure both the soldered and physical connections. Time will tell if it will work or if I need to get more creative or go and find a pinout block (or whatever those are called) that I can just plug this in. I actually have several blocks from EMG pickups, but the pins are much larger than these.

 

[Jisch]

I've seen this written up before, but don't use wax myself in the final finish of an oil finish - will you be showing this part? I'm curious as to how it's done...

Yes, my plan is to do exactly what I did with the neck, 3-4 coats of Tru Oil, knock the shine down with 0000 steel wool, 2-4 more coats of Tru Oil, knock the shine down again, then coat in paste wax. The neck feels so nice, it's really smooth and has a nice sheen to it, sort of a semi-gloss kind of look. I'll post up pictures of the process as I go. The last coat of Tru Oil should be dry now, so I'll do the first steel wool buff out.

 

[Jisch]

Hmm, I might just change my idea, but here's the body before 0000 buffing:

After buffing (it would look slightly more shiny than this with the wax on it):

And after the next Tru Oil coat:

It looks so good shiny, I might just leave it shiny and forgo the wax. Indecision.

 

[Jisch]

$4 for the summing bridge from Graphtech, ordered.

 

[Jisch]

After looking at this body I don't want to mount any knobs on the front of it. I know Mapleglo did the slide in thing, what are some other ways to mount a volume and tone knob so they are not visible from the front?

 

[Jisch]

I mounted up the neck. I played around with the thought of making a wooden bridge, then when I started looking at the Ghost string saddles, I thought it would be difficult to do it well. After looking at the chrome bridge I think I'm good. The saddles are black. And the strings are black nylon wrapped (those deep talking strings, $32 for a set of strings?).

 

[Jason Harris]

Stunning Sub'd!

 

[Jisch]

I got the bridge mounted this morning. I'm sure the eagle eyes here at LC noticed that the bolts on the back of the neck are not exactly centered. In retrospect I probably should have pulled out the inserts (they are held in with CA glue so that would be a nightmare) and filled in the holes and started over again. Anyway, my concern was that the neck was crooked and I'd have to mount the bridge crooked or off center. Thankfully that's not the case. Everything lined up nicely. The bridge and neck height seem perfect as well.

I'll get some strings on it, find the intonation point then drill through the bridge plate and into the body for the piezo wires. I stupidly forgot to map out where the channel is for the wires. I have pictures, but no measurements, hopefully I can find it. I imagine getting those wires through that channel is going to be a test of patience. I'm sure there's glue in there too.

 

[Jisch]

I strung it up and set the intonation on each string, I'll drill holes in the bridge plate in these locations so you can't see them once the string saddles are in place. Once I have those established I need to find the channel and connect the two. Theoretically the channel is pretty much in this spot if I measured correctly.

 

[Jisch]

I am still well within the "you won't see any of this once it's put together", but I'll admit I am hesitant to post this due to its ugliness. I had planned on drilling from where the wires exited the bottom of the bridge plate over to the channel for the wires back to the control cavity. Sounded like a plan. Well getting that angle right for each hole while hitting the channel in the right spot proved difficult. I think I actually did have connectivity between each hole and the channel but in all but two of the cases the hole between the two was too small for the connector (or even my chase wire) to make it through.

I had to regroup and route a channel along the top of the bass under the bridge to go from the furthest two strings back to where the D string hole was.

Being closest to the cavity, the G string was easiest (though it probably took me a good 45 minutes to get this first one run:

It took a lot of swearing and finally some smoothing out with a rat tail to get the other three run, probably another 45 minutes, once I had the transition between hole and channel smoothed out it went a lot easier.

Another case of my optimism and lack of experience getting in the way of quick success, next time will be easier, but that's why I do this, to challenge myself and figure things out.

 

[Jisch]

I've never built a bass to get a specific sound before this one. I've come to appreciate the range of tone out of the Audere Preamp and it's worked well with both Lace and EMG pickups, they sound great, but I'm generally looking for variety rather than a specific tone.

This bass I wanted a specific tone, natural, organic, whatever you call that, I hit a home run, this thing sounds exactly what I want it to sound like. I've got a few things to finish setting up and I may need to put on a thumb rest (I've never been good at floating my right hand). I'll be playing this for a few days, I can tell you that. I'll record something soon.

very excited and happy with this one, and at 12 days might be my fastest build to date.

 

[Jisch]

Definitely not my best work, but here's a quick song I put together using this bass. I guess 3 (or four) tracks all played into an Alesis single channel interface into Garageband using a couple different input patches. At a minimum you get the point of how this instrument sounds. I'll get some pictures tomorrow when the sun comes out.

 

[Jisch]

I took a few pics of the bass out in the sunlight. Generally speaking it's not as orange as it looks in the pics, but I think you can see the ribboning, it looks great.

The only issue I have with the bass right now is the fingerboard has retained some of the smoke smell. I don't know if everyone would smell it, I have a feeling I'm sensitized to that smell at this point. It's not a nice outdoorsy fire smell, it's a nasty plasticky smell. I had the same thing on the short scale I refinished and it dissipated eventually. I'll keep rubbing it down with lemon oil and see if it subsides before sanding deeper if I have to.