Down the rabbit hole again - Project 4350

[T_Bone_TL]

Bosch cordless drill sitting around waiting for resurrection, or the second coming. It's 12V NiCad era and not worth wasting more batteries on. Might give it a jumper cable for automotive-adjacent use with good-ol lead acid.

I've been rocking a "urine-green" Ryobi one+ 18V lithium drill/driver for longer than I can now recall, still on the same set of batteries it came with, including jobsite use/abuse (low voltage electrician) the past couple of years. Has yet to disappoint. OTOH, I have yet to add any friends for it, tight wallet syndrome sets in when I think about it.

Picked up a new set of brushes when my PC circular saw (corded, bought new) started to smoke. Was disgusted to find that the brushes were fine, the armature ($$$) was shot. Bought a Makita at Habitat for Humanity for $15, works pretty good. My Skil 77 worm-drive still works, at least. No complaints about the Hitachi angle grinder, either, and the PC690 is managing to live.

My "Red Bosch" Milwalkee hammer drill (blatantly made in the same factory from the same molds with different color plastics, that much of a copy of that Bosch) has dropped dead at least twice from a crappy switch. Perhaps I should try a Bosch switch next...?

 

[RichterScale]

My 12" DeWalt mitre is a great saw.
My little portable Ryobi table saw is junk.
My Bosch jig saw is amazing.
Everything in the pic is Ryobi and none of it owes me a nickel. Some of it has been around a long time and asked to do more work than most people say it's capable of.
Granted, I'm not a pro, full time machinist, so a HF $80 drill press is okay for I'll use it for. I'm not a pro, full time carpenter, so I don't need top of the line carpentry tools across the board, etc. I do a little of every trade at my job (and at home) so I need tools that work, get it done and don't cost a fortune. I rarely find that I need to double the spending to get the best tool. It happens now and then, but not often.
Point is, if only did one trade, full time, I could see investing in the best tools for that trade. Like, if I was a full time carpenter, I certainly wouldn't have a little Ryobi table saw. It's actually not good enough for what I do with it now and I will likely replace it.

Some stuff is oddly priced. The LED work light (not in the pic) was $75.
The cordless grinder was only $40. And I've worked that thing hard for about 3 yrs now.

 

[RichterScale]

I do plan to buy a nice set of wood chisels someday.
Cheap chisels suck.

 

[wagdog]

Is Ryobi the Squier of tools?

 

[Beej]

Is Ryobi the Squier of tools?

I'd say from the Basses forum subculture comparisons, it's more like the Glarry. Unless you're in Canada and then it's the Squier. Up here, Glarrys are more expensive than Squiers.

 

[RichterScale]

Edit:
The mop bucket is not Ryobi.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Edit:
The mop bucket is not Ryobi.

Well, there’s your problem! You definitely need an 18v 1+ mop bucket…

 

[ctmullins]

Catching up, gonna skip the power tools debate….

I have had a fair few cheap pickups. Most were disappointing. I have been lucky enough to also own and use a fair few non-cheap pickups. Most were inspiring. Yes, they’re rudimentary devices, so it shouldn’t be that hard or that expensive to make something that sounds great, but - they don’t all sound great, and the ones that do have tended to be not cheap.

I love using guitar pickups on bass. It doesn’t always work, but it usually does, and it gives me lots more options for great tone. Narrow string spacing helps. Can you fit those Strat rails under those covers diagonally?

 

[41hzthunder]

So I was thinking on those empty pick up covers I bought, and then for a totally other reason I bought myself one of these...

View attachment 4472232

That's a Musiclily hotrails strat pickup.

Brief pause as TB revs up, to decry the witch.

But, wait.

It's a perfectly functional transducer. It will turn the vibration of a ferromagnetic material inside its own localized field into an AC signal (a sinewave) that can be transformed to DC and then amplified to create an audible musical note. Or, something like that.

Imagine my delight when I found I only need to remove 1/64 from each side of the housing to fit my empty cases.

View attachment 4472253

Cool! Goin' Frankenstein after all. Bring on the lightning and eerie background music. This is worth making some popcorn.

 

[A9X]

Catching up on the thread after a few days...

banez Ergodyne EDB 605

I'd take it off your hands.

As such, it will be young, dumb, and full of hum.

I like your sense of humour, but you're twice as funny to me as you remind me of someone so when you post something funny, I hear it in her voice.

If I don't think it's funny, should I lie and say it was, so I'm not burned at the stake?

It'll probably be less funny that it might be as you've heard lots of the jokes already.

Either way, it's my second language.

Your first being 'Murican!, right?

Cheap chisels suck

Cold Chisel were great. Flame Trees makes me cry as I love the town it's about.

Anyway, a 4350 makes me think of these bookshelf speakers. I'm building my version of these for someone next year, but with 40y of advancements in design.

 

[Flamingo21]

@RichterScale I'm looking at a detail of your pic:

it looks like a chess set to me.

 

[RichterScale]

Power tool chess board.
Another million$ idea!

 

[Lo-E]

I don't think that a simple, cheap to produce, magnetic pickup should cost a couple hundred dollars. I'm not here to pay for somebody else's poorly designed or inadequately researched business model. Price gouging is a poor model but it seems common amongst pickup designers.

I understand that bespoke/ boutique winders may like to charge more, and I also have thoughts on that too, but in general I can't hear a deal breaking difference between a $30 and $100 pickup of the same design.

I would even venture to say that certain very well regarded brand name pickups may have a lot in common with pickups from... well, you get the idea.

I’m of mixed minds when I read a post like this, and for a couple of different reasons.

One reason is that I don’t believe all pickups are created equal and I believe that applies to every price range. I’ve heard cheap “junk” that sounded absolutely great and expensive boutique stuff that wasn’t anything special, but I’ve also heard cheap junk that really was junk and expensive stuff that really did sound better. The bottom line is that I don’t think price has much to do with it on either side of the quality equation.

Another thing that I think about (and this is just based upon my ideology and I’m not judging or criticizing those of a different mindset) is that as a union tradesman I try to buy products that are made in the US first and in countries with good labor conditions second and, only lastly, where working conditions are known to be poor. It’s not a hard and fast rule for me, but a set of guidelines I try to stick to when it’s practical. (Obviously, when the “American” brand is really made in China it makes absolutely no difference.)

For those of us who remember a time when there were very few companies making replacement pickups (Seymour Duncan, Bill Lawrence, DiMarzio, Bartolini, Kent Armstrong…. that was about it), we might remember two things that stand out in my mind: One was that they would only bother marketing a product if it was an improvement, either in quality or sound, over stock pickups. The other - and this is key - is that they were never much more expensive than stock, OEM replacement pickups.
These were cottage industries that were expensive to tool up for and had limited profit margins but they didn’t charge a fortune because the market simply wouldn’t bear it. As far as I can remember, it wasn’t until a certain pickup “guru” showed up in the 1990s and started taking out ads full of absolutely ridiculous hyperbole that prices for “magic” pickups started to soar.

That said, some of the small makers will still turn out an excellent product for a reasonable price (Fralin comes to mind - they sound great, he’s a nice guy and his prices are only marginally higher than Fender replacements - but there are lots of others) and I don’t mind paying their rates knowing that the money is supporting a small business.

Also, there are some p’ups that really do sound different than others on the market (Barts, for instance) and if that’s a sound I’m looking for I’ll happily pay to get it. Likewise with pickups that require a huge amount of labor to produce (such as a Darkstar or the like).

So, okay, yeah…. There’s my take on boutique vs. bargain basement pickups.

 

[ChickWithaRic]

Catching up, gonna skip the power tools debate….

I have had a fair few cheap pickups. Most were disappointing. I have been lucky enough to also own and use a fair few non-cheap pickups. Most were inspiring. Yes, they’re rudimentary devices, so it shouldn’t be that hard or that expensive to make something that sounds great, but - they don’t all sound great, and the ones that do have tended to be not cheap.

I love using guitar pickups on bass. It doesn’t always work, but it usually does, and it gives me lots more options for great tone. Narrow string spacing helps. Can you fit those Strat rails under those covers diagonally?

They don't quite fit diagonally, but a few minutes with a file is all that is necessary to make them fit the covers - we are only talking 1/32". Then I'll probably fill the whole thing with epoxy, after testing of course. I thought of handing the covers over to a machine shop to have the tops milled out so the blades come out the top, like a kind of mutant toaster. Of course, string spacing won't be an issue as I'm using a solo rail type bridge.

I also like guitar pickups on a bass. I'm 99% convinced that SD's ric treble pickup is a guitar humbucker. I also once owned a 7ender MusicMaster, the Tina Weymouth bass, which had a single Strat pickup. Yep, six polepieces and all. Loud and proud. It sounded great.

 

[ChickWithaRic]

Fake news.
And what happened to that heart to heart we just had about picking on the poor kids?
I will say this: I have a 20 yr old Bosch jig saw that I hope lasts forever, because it's the best jig saw I've ever had/used and it would break my heart to replace it with anything. I also have a DeWalt 12" compound sliding mitre with a portable stand that I bought 2 yrs ago. I may have considered a less expensive saw, but I had the money at the time and I got both the saw and stand for $400 new (black Fri sale at Lowe's)
The saw by itself was normally $550.
So yes, there are certain tools that are better, but for everyday use, the cordless Ryobi stuff is fine for a lot less $. I have the miles on my stuff to prove it. The circ saw is the only thing I like better in the old form. All the other new green stuff is better than their older blue stuff

Ryobi seems to be made for people with huge hands. I find it uncomfortable. Everything I have is Hitachi, or Metabo-HPT as it is now called. I've just always used it, and I've always got professional results with it. It's reliable, and generally speaking can survive being dropped from a greater height than I would enjoy being dropped from myself.

It's probably the rarest of the pro brands you'll see on the jobsite. DeWalt gets in everywhere, due to their saturation level marketing. Then I suppose Milwaukee (which is a sister brand of Ryobi now), then Makita. Festool and Hitachi you rarely see. Festool because it's $$$$$, and Hitachi because they have historically had a very small US dealer network. I believe that in Australia and New Zealand they are second only to Makita.

Of course, any range of power tools is only as good as its matching radio, and I love the Hitachi radio. It's the only tool you really need.

 

[RichterScale]

The Ryobi radio is a huge disappointment. They have a new one now, but I won't spend $100 on it.
I have a little Bose mini now. I moved on.

 

[Flying B]

The festool gear is $$$$$ but it is worth it, it's what I use at work. Although it might not stand up to the rigours of site work quite as well as some others, for workshop use it's second to none (IMO obviously). The kapex is amazing.

 

[ChickWithaRic]

The festool gear is $$$$$ but it is worth it, it's what I use at work. Although it might not stand up to the rigours of site work quite as well as some others, for workshop use it's second to none (IMO obviously). The kapex is amazing.

The really frustrating thing with Festool is that, for whatever reason, they don't epoxy dip their motor windings. Eventually they WILL short out. That's the number one failure mode across the entire range. It's great for workshops where its superior dust extraction really comes in useful, but like you say it does fail on site. I had two TS55 plunge saws fail on shorted out motors. The Kapex is a nice saw, a little on the big and heavy side, but very solid. It's one of the few portable (ish) saws that you could use for something as exacting as picture framing. I know a couple of people who use one daily. I'd buy one, but it's corded (I really don't do cords any more), and I think I'll be getting the cordless Hitachi 3607RDA when my stalwart (and corded, meh) C8FSHG finally gives up. The 3607 is made in Japan, and the $$$$ price reflects that fact (it's Kapex price), but it's astonishingly good and ultra portable. I might buy myself one for Christmas, but I also really really really want the Hitachi 1/2 inch 36V cordless router. Maybe I should start dating older men.

For Festool quality and site ruggedness, look no further than Mafell and Hilti. Again, $$$$, but worth every cent.

 

[ChickWithaRic]

Anyway, a 4350 makes me think of these bookshelf speakers. I'm building my version of these for someone next year, but with 40y of advancements in design.

View attachment 4473000

You must have some f***ing big books.

 

[ChickWithaRic]

I've just realized where I've seen these bridges before.

Ibanez, of course, on the BTB and EDB series. Both of which were very good.

I just knew I'd seen them before, but couldn't place it, then I looked at an ad today for a EDB900 and there it was.

Mystery solved.