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Jason's Refin

#41
erikbojerik said:
WesW, it depends on a lot of things; what kind of original finish and whether or not it needs to be stripped, neck-thru vs set-neck vs bolt-on, satin vs glossy, etc etc. PM me.

All the hardware is on and the bass is set up, but because we've lost a little volume in the control cavity from making the cover thicker, I need to shave off a few mm from one side of the cavity to make room for the 9V. There's plenty of room.
Click to expand...

Make sure you take PLENTY of photos on the finished product...it's an amazing job...the bass was pretty spectacular to begin with...now...WOW!
 
#46
Hehehe - we were "there" awhile ago, but I've since been chasing down a few nagging issues with this one. The finish is done, and there was a rogue wire to take care of, but the main issue was that we had some rattling on the lowB and E between #3 and #7 with Jason's aggressive playing style - turns out that the neck responds slightly differently to truss rod tweeks on the bass and treble sides of the fretboard, so we needed to accentuate slightly the relief under the lowB and E strings by carefully sanding down the epoxy with 600-grit, then re-buffing. I can see now why some folks prefer to use 2 truss rods on a wide neck.

That's all taken care of, but I'm getting the bass back today to chase down a grounding problem in the electronics cavity. I neglected to take some good photos before the bass left the shop the first time, so I'll try to remedy that this weekend.
 
#49
Alright Pilbara - you asked for it. Note lampshade and light fixture reflections:

JasonRefin34.jpg


JasonRefin35.jpg
 
#55
WesW said:
Wow! That's a gorgeous bass!!!

So - any thoughts on tone after the refin? Same. . . different?

Thanks
Click to expand...

The tone, different:
I definitely love the fact that I now have some "Click" in it.
Makes it sound alot more "percussive", hell, I can slap it and it sounds decent (of course, fretted slap is more brighter) it's got some "thud" to it, when thumped. The fingerboard used to kind of "soak up" some of the sounds that are now present, in other words.

The epoxy definitely brought out more of the brightness. as far as the other frequencies are concerned (low mids and lows):
They're still same as before. Any fretless players that play rock, metal genres (of course not limiting to ;) ), works out well.
 
#56
Jason's bass has a very nice macassar ebony board, and while ebony already has good attack properties, it is well known that it also has significant damping (it is quick to squelch the initial attack) - not so much of an issue with a fretted bass, but easy to hear with a fretless when you compare raw ebony to epoxy-coated.

Apart from the epoxy treatment, I highly doubt you'd be able to hear the difference between an oil finish and a clear coat finish. In fact, I will probably put up a blind sound clip poll on my next bass - unfinished vs clear coat - and see who wants to try to pick which is which.
 
#57
erikbojerik said:
Now the spraying....the first coat goes on cut by 20% with a slow-reducer lacquer thinner, so that it will soak into the remaining wood grain nicely. For this purpose, the bass hangs vertically.

JasonRefin6.jpg
Click to expand...

sorry old thread, but do you spray outside usually? I'm tempted to do this because the air is so dry here, and I am shooting a deadly 2 part poly, even with the aosafety mask I don't want to do that in the garage.
 
#59
erikbojerik said:
Jason's bass has a very nice macassar ebony board, and while ebony already has good attack properties, it is well known that it also has significant damping (it is quick to squelch the initial attack) - not so much of an issue with a fretted bass, but easy to hear with a fretless when you compare raw ebony to epoxy-coated.

Apart from the epoxy treatment, I highly doubt you'd be able to hear the difference between an oil finish and a clear coat finish. In fact, I will probably put up a blind sound clip poll on my next bass - unfinished vs clear coat - and see who wants to try to pick which is which.
Click to expand...

I scratched a bass once and it TOTALLY opened up the sound ...


that sound that opened up was me saying "OHHHH SH%!" :D
 

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