Wow wulf, thanks for the MUCH better editing of the two pics! I'm still not sure myself for a similar reason-the clashing of the green buckeye with the red paduak and dark wenge stripes I think would be quite stunning, but the buckeye on its own would be pretty darn nice too.
How much of the pattern will you loose once the hardware is on? I really like the two little eyes towards the top. If you go for the whole thing, perhaps you should consider pickup covers cut out of the same piece of wood (so that you get the effect of the whole piece without sacrificing magnetic pickups). Wulf
I wanted those originally, but I'm using Bartolini soapbars, which already come encased. And I think it was JP who told me that covers could be built over the pickups themselves, but I'd probably lose some sound quality, which I don't want.
Brian, that's not exaclty what I said Bartolini pickups come in cated epoxy. I don't know if Bartolini offers them without covers. What I told you is that I heard about people adding wood over the epoxy casing and that this process was of course adding material between the strings and the magnets. This means that the magnets will probably be farther than the normal form the strings and that can cause some loss od dynamics... Peace, JP
It might be worth trying out a couple of slim veneers taken from the wood on top of the pickups. Attach them using some non-permanent solution and see if it makes any perceptable difference to the sound. All it will take is a little extra care in routing out the pickup holes in the first place in order to get the wood for the veneers. Wulf
Actually, if it's a veneer top to begin with (rather than a solid piece of wood to make the whole body), is routing really the correct term? Maybe 'cutting out' would be a better description? Wulf
That is hard. But not impossible. Dremel makes a nice router attachment for the mini-mototool they sell. Careful routing may allow a veneer to be shaved off with a very sharp chisel, depending on the grain of the wood. Worst case, you could use some scrap from the slab and try to match as well as possible. Thinner the better. For a nonpermanent test, try rubber glue. If the tone is satisfactory, a good permanent glue would be epoxy resin, or one of my favorite in ship models, a slurry of CA+ [viscous superglue] and yellow carpenters glue. It sets up fast, but is not as nasty as straight CA+. Thor
Well, for anyone that's interested, I decided to show the stringers. I went to Jon's new shop today and lined up the neck blank, fingerboard, and the parts of the top (we drew the shape of his bass design on the top), and it looked so good that I knew it was the way I'd be happiest with. I don't have a pic, but the neck looks pretty much the same as this one but with more wenge on the outside, and there will be an additional stripe of paduak on either side of the wenge as well that'll really bring out the green in the buckeye. The shape is larger than the JP body style as well, so it'll get more of the wood on there. The eyes may be lost as they're just about where the neck pup will be, but I think it'll look great in the end. I also saw a lot of his newer basses in progress (including another six-string very similar to mine), and in a month or two when they get some downtime from mass-building to update the website, there'll be some really awesome basses for you guys to check out. As for the veneers on the pickups, I'm not going to try them out at the moment. I'll keep the excess from the top though, in case I want to try it later. Based on the completed bass I saw that was similar to mine, the standard black should still look great.
Not sure what you're talking about Bryan as the shape on your top wood is the Lakland shape, not my Plume shape which looks like that: Notice how I posted a fiddleback buckeye top to keep a nice matching post in this thread!! BTW, showing the stringers will look nice IMO. And the more important part is that this s what YOU like the best !! This will be a nice bass Bryan. Peace, JP
JP, much apologies. For some reason I thought Larry had emailed me saying it was your shape drawn on top, but I looked through all the emails and realized I must have not had the windows open when I was using some naptha that day
I love the 'eye' at the base of the upper horn. That's going to be a monstrous looking bass when you're done! Wulf