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Inside The Secret Underground Laboratory

#881
NKBassman said:
I was kind of curious if there was anything particularly special going on with the pickups? I saw some video clips with Juan Perez demoing some of your basses and loved the tone.
Click to expand...

Well, yes, there is! They are custom pickups of my own design, which are made to bring out the sound of the wood frame. They are "extended Hi-Fi" type magnetic pickups. Powerful, extra wide frequency range at both ends, high clarity and definition, relatively flat EQ curve. The opposite of a standard P-Bass pickup. It's a microphone, that more accurately captures the sound on the strings and doesn't adjust it much. The tone you hear on my AMB-2 basses is from the strings and the frame.

You can see all the details of how my pickups are designed and built on the pickups thread:

Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread

And at various places in the Love Of Ampegs Part 2 thread:

love of Ampeg and other Scroll Basses, Part 2
 
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#884
Well, another poor, orphaned machine has found its way to the Secret Underground Lab......The legendary home for wayward fine woodworking and metalworking machines.....

IMG_9511B.jpg


It's....Another bandsaw! Because, when I think about it, I really don't have enough bandsaws. I mean, I only have 7 of them. I could use an 8th.

My friend Ryan, one of our tenants down the hall, spotted it on a Gov't Auction web site, in Thousand Oaks, barely 20 miles from here. It's a 1950's era Powermatic 14" bandsaw, coming right out of a local school wood shop. A nice strong industrial duty machine from a great era. And it has local history.

For a week, it was going for under $50 on the auction. We knew it was going to spike up, but the question was how much? To our amazement, Ryan won it for $270 total, with fees. He picked it up today and brought it here. We just finished unloading it. He very kindly agreed to sell it to me for $340. That's a bargain. These Powermatics will usually sell for $800-$1200 on CraigsList.

IMG_9512B.jpg


I lifted it up with my trusty crane and set it on the blue pallet jack......And wheeled it into the shop for a quick inspection.

IMG_9515B.jpg


From a quick inspection, it looks to be in fine shape. Full running condition, nothing broken or missing. It doesn't even look like it has a lot of wear. It does have a 3-phase motor, which I will probably change out for a single phase 3/4 HP one.

IMG_9516B.jpg


My plan for this bandsaw is to put it over in Unit 2, for Jeremy to use.
 
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#886
Bruce Johnson said:
Well, another poor, orphaned machine has found its way to the Secret Underground Lab......The legendary home for wayward fine woodworking and metalworking machines.....

View attachment 5078883
Click to expand...


I mean, if you will leave the doors wide open, you're going to get strays finding their way in from the parking lot.


Good on ya, for giving it a nice home.



I think this song was probably written as your anthem :

 
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#888
Bloomfield said:
Wow, that's quite the deal. As for the motor, I just had a look on ebay and it seems you can get a suitable VFD for under $100. That would be likely be easier than changing the motor, and would give you variable speed as well. I have one on my lathe and it works great.
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That's always a reasonable option......but I also have a large collection of homeless motors here too. They also tend to wander in here.....I honestly have about 30 spare electric motors of different sizes and vintages. Swapping a motor on a machine is a routine thing for me.
 
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#889
Wood and Wire said:
I mean, if you will leave the doors wide open, you're going to get strays finding their way in from the parking lot.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I'm gaining a reputation....What usually happens is a friend of mine walks into my shop and says "Hey I know a guy who is cleaning out his shop and getting rid of a.......Are you interested?" That's how I get most of my wayward machines.

In this case, Ryan came over into my shop and asked "Are Powermatic bandsaws any good?" Um, yeah. He told me there was a nice looking Powermatic bandsaw on the Gov't Auction site, right near here. And it was currently bidding at...$12. We scrambled over to his computer and gawked at the pictures. I told him that it was a really nice machine, but I don't personally need another bandsaw. And I guessed that it would probably sell for $700 or more. Those small Powermatics are popular with home shop guys. But he said he was going to go ahead and bid on it. I told him that if he could win it for a few hundred bucks, I'd help him clean up and check it out. And he could resell it for $700 or more.

I was amazed when he walked in proudly a few days later and told me he won it for $212, a total of $270 with fees. He told me that if I wanted it, he'd sell it to me for what he paid, plus something for his time delivering it. I thought about it for a little while, and concluded that I would definitely regret it later if I passed up a deal like that. I offered him $340 for it.

I justified it to myself because Jeremy could really use his own bandsaw in the Unit 2 shop across the hall. So he doesn't have to walk over to my shop to use one of mine. He, of course, is very happy with that.

I'm not an Expert In A Dying Field. Antique Machinery Hoarding And Restoration is Alive and Well here in the Secret Underground Lab! Hey.....Where'd everyone go???

I like the song and video.....That touches close to home.....
 
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#890
Bruce Johnson said:
I'm not an Expert In A Dying Field. Antique Machinery Hoarding And Restoration is Alive and Well here in the Secret Underground Lab! Hey.....Where'd everyone go???
Click to expand...
I respect that and I'm here for it, even if it's not a pursuit I can participate in.

I'm pretty sure that if life had gone differently for my father, he could have also spent his later years surrounded by old tools he would carefully maintain and use; his father owned a sawmill so Dad grew up around lumber working equipment and came very close to inheriting the business. As it is, he had a fair garage full mainly of hand tools and some 60s-70s vintage weekend warrior-grade power tools. I regret missing out on some of the stuff (like a Craftsman radial arm saw that I couldn't justify shipping 500 miles, and a small crate of files which were mostly redundant but I should have sorted through them) and am not doing what I should with what I've inherited, and should rectify that.
 
#891
Bruce Johnson said:
Well, another poor, orphaned machine has found its way to the Secret Underground Lab......The legendary home for wayward fine woodworking and metalworking machines.....

View attachment 5078883

It's....Another bandsaw! Because, when I think about it, I really don't have enough bandsaws. I mean, I only have 7 of them. I could use an 8th.

My friend Ryan, one of our tenants down the hall, spotted it on a Gov't Auction web site, in Thousand Oaks, barely 20 miles from here. It's a 1950's era Powermatic 14" bandsaw, coming right out of a local school wood shop. A nice strong industrial duty machine from a great era. And it has local history.

For a week, it was going for under $50 on the auction. We knew it was going to spike up, but the question was how much? To our amazement, Ryan won it for $270 total, with fees. He picked it up today and brought it here. We just finished unloading it. He very kindly agreed to sell it to me for $340. That's a bargain. These Powermatics will usually sell for $800-$1200 on CraigsList.

View attachment 5078884

I lifted it up with my trusty crane and set it on the blue pallet jack......And wheeled it into the shop for a quick inspection.

View attachment 5078885

From a quick inspection, it looks to be in fine shape. Full running condition, nothing broken or missing. It doesn't even look like it has a lot of wear. It does have a 3-phase motor, which I will probably change out for a single phase 3/4 HP one.

View attachment 5078886

My plan for this bandsaw is to put it over in Unit 2, for Jeremy to use.
Click to expand...
That's exactly the machine from my high school woodshop and the same one my friend Kevin cut the tip of his index finger off with...lol. Actually those woodshop machines are usually well maintained with oversight of a good shop teacher. Looks like you got a cherry there.
 
#892
Bruce Johnson said:
Well, another poor, orphaned machine has found its way to the Secret Underground Lab......The legendary home for wayward fine woodworking and metalworking machines.....
Click to expand...
So I went ahead and added that "place" to Google Maps. We'll see if they let it fly. :thumbsup: ;) :roflmao:

Bruce Johnson said:
... He very kindly agreed to sell it to me for $340. That's a bargain. These Powermatics will usually sell for $800-$1200 on CraigsList...
Click to expand...
That's pretty much what they sell for around here, more towards the high end of that range tho. I'd say you got a heck of a deal! Those things are great saws.

Bruce Johnson said:
...
My plan for this bandsaw is to put it over in Unit 2, for Jeremy to use.
Click to expand...
You are an amazingly kind and generous man Bruce. Never change. :cool: :cool: :cool:
 
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#897
Flamingo21 said:
Under what name? The search term "Secret Underground Laboratory" leads me to a lamp repair service in Louisiana. :rollno:
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Hahahaha. "The legendary home for wayward fine woodworking and metalworking machines" ;)

They don't always allow it, so it probably won't show up. Plus, it takes at least three days before submissions show up, because they have to review them first. :smug:
 
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#898
TerribleTim68 said:
Hahahaha. "The legendary home for wayward fine woodworking and metalworking machines" ;)

They don't always allow it, so it probably won't show up. Plus, it takes at least three days before submissions show up, because they have to review them first. :smug:
Click to expand...

I was thinking of entering Secret Underground Laboratory in Google, and just putting Secret in for business description.

By the way, I do have the domain name SecretUndergroundLaboratory.com secured, but I haven't done anything with it yet.
 
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