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Plywood instruments...worthless?

#41
Well I've spent some time with this body since my last update. I haven't had too much time to get out in my shop and tinker, but in the last few days I've gotten some work done. I took wood filler to all the imperfections in the body, and filled every pickguard and bridge screw hole so I can start fresh with everything.

The trick when dealing with plywood bodies is around the edges. The way it was, you could easily tell if you were looking for it that the edges were sharper than on a bass this style usually is. It's not my intention to deceive on the origins of this body, but I just don't like that "cut off" look! So I spent a lot of time rounding edges with sandpaper by hand. After I got everything filled I made sure it was coated well with sealer so as to not have any finish problems later. It's in the primer phase right now, which has been another slow process. I never seem happy with it so I sand, prime, sand prime, etc etc. It's almost perfect now though and has the proper P shape as best I can do. I'm just looking for no weird edges or anything like that.

I think I finally have an idea of what I want to do with it though. My girlfriend has been talking about learning how to play guitar or bass soon. It seems to me like this would be a nice platform to use for that. The time I'll have into it by the time it's done will be extensive and she's one of those girls that will absolutely love anything I made myself as opposed to getting jewelery or something like that. I could do all kinds of little customization things to do. Headstock decals, engraved neck plates. etc. Maybe even use the body as a platform for having one of her favorite poems printed on it since she's very literary and artistic.

Her favorite color is purple, which is my next dilemma. I've used the Guitar ReRanch aerosols before with great success, as long as you have the patience to wet sand and buff like there's no tomorrow to get a quality finish out of it. They don't have purple as a color though, so I'm wondering what my other options are? I bought a can of Rustoleum "Painter's Touch" in a purple color today. I'm going to try it out on a piece of scrap wood and see how it looks. I think it's an enamel based product. Do you think it's a problem to use it on a bass? It's going to be clear coated and everything so I'm guessing it's probably fine. I think plenty of people use enamel finishes on instruments. It may not be the "vintage style" nitro finish but that's not what I'm going for with this anyways.

I'll have more pictures soon of its current condition.
 
#42
I think the type of finish doesn't impact the sound on the plywood as opposed to tonewood, as long as the finish layer isn't too thick. Plywood is processed too much and contains too much glue.
I always wondered how a violet metallic/yellow or seafoam green metallic/yellow sunburst would look like. Especially with a maple/rosewood neck. Pretty bizarre, I think)))
 
#43
Here's a picture of how it currently looks. I'll probably give it one last quick coat and light sanding tomorrow. Then possibly try the color coat out and see how it looks. I haven't drilled the PG screw holes yet since I'm still not sure which one I'm going to use. Those holes are quite shallow and shouldn't matter if it's already finished since often times you have to re-drill finished bodies for new pickguards anyways.

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What I'm thinking of at the moment, is to paint the body the purple color, make the headstock match it, and use black hardware and a black pickguard. Or maybe chrome hardware and a black pickguard. I'll have to play with photoshop and see how it might look. There's a lot of ways I could go with it, but I still have plenty of time to figure that out. I just want to get it painted so that it becomes more assembly and setup so I can stop having to do the messy work in my non-air conditioned shop in the Florida heat!
 
#45
eedo said:
Any Updates? :-)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been doing some color on it and am now into the clearcoat stages. My camera is having issues so that's why I haven't posted anymore pictures yet.

Using acrylic lacquer is a bit different than nitro, mainly in the drying time as it's a lot quicker and as such you end up with a lot more overspray. It also doesn't flow out as nicely since it dries faster, but you can work with it much sooner too.

I think I'll stick to nitro anytime I can get the right color. It's more expensive but I prefer working with it. I'm interested to see how this other stuff buffs out though. Another day of clear coats and I"ll be ready for the wet sanding process and final buffing.
 
#47
Well my good camera is shot, so I had to pull out my ancient digital camera to take pictures. This one doesn't do so well with lighting so they aren't the best. The finish is actually a bit darker and much deeper looking than in these pictures. It reflects and shows fingerprints about a s much as black does! I'm impressed with how well it buffed out. It's not a boutique quality finish but it's pretty darn close to most off the wall production basses. It definitely took a lot more effort to work with this rattle can acrylic lacquer as opposed to nitro though. It would have been nice to use regular finish but, what fun is that?? If it was easy then it wouldn't be worth as much blood sweat and tears! I suppose it's worth it to get the right color since it's my girlfriend's favorite. I really like how it turned out. I also shielded the cavities tonight as you can see in the pictures.

I'm still not sure what neck to use. I have an SX neck that fits on it and the screw holes even line up, but she has really small hands and I think SX's are too chunky. I might need to pick up a cheap Squier neck or something instead. I may wire it up tomorrow and see how she sounds with the SX neck! I'm sort of gambling that it's going to be decent with all the work I've done before even knowing. It's good experience with this stuff anyways even if it doesn't sound great.

I need ideas for hardware though. I have a full set of chrome stuff. I have the white pickguard right now but I ordered a black one to replace it since I think it'll look much better. Should I go with the chrome hardware or get all black stuff as well? I'm going to paint the headstock of whatever neck I end up using to match the body color.

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Here's my photoshop version of what it should look like. The body color obviously isn't exactly the same but you get the general idea. Thanks to Sadowsky for having such easy images to Photoshop with on their site! The hardware color really could go either way with chrome or black. It's chrome in this picture but its kind of dark also.

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#48
sweet man i think thats real cool what your doing for your girl friend i wish i was as thoughtful haha

but i really think chrome would look better , and i think most girls would dig chrome more black hardware makes me think of esp's etc likr metal guitars which a p style is not but to eachs own brotha;)
 
#56
Well this project is coming along. I have the neck I'm going to use for it. It's an SX neck, but not a typical one. This one is actually P width at the nut, but is pretty skinny front to back, which is not how most SX necks are. It should be pretty easy for someone with small hands to play. It has 21 frets also and the fretboard extends over the edge and over the pickguard. The headstock is also slightly smaller than my other SX's.

Here's the neck:
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The frets have been leveled and the fret ends smoothed out nicely. It has no finish on it yet, just a thin coat of sand and sealer. I'll probably do some more sealer on it before anything else since the humidity level here is crazy and I don't know how well it's been done.

I also got a black pickguard for it now, I like it much better than white. It is shaped slightly differently and the electronics ended up not fitting anymore (large cts pots, switchcraft jack). It BARELY fit in there with the other pickguard but I didn't like how tight it was anyways, especially with the foil in there. I had to tear out the foil in that part of the cavity and route it out more. It's got plenty of space now though so I'm much happier with it. I also had to break out the flat and round files to open up the P pickup cutout, as the SX pickup is a little bigger than the average size. It didn't take too much and it looks good. The neck pocket cutout was also too small, I doubt that would have fit around any Fender neck, but its easy enough to fix.

I'm still not sure if I want to do a matching headstock or do the whole neck/headstock in black. I could go either way on it really. Maybe black back and purple headstock? Perhaps.

I also got a new camera, so the pictures are a lot better! The color looks a lot better in these.

I'll probably wire up the pots tonight or tomorrow so I can say I'm done with the body. That's about all there is left on it.

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Then I just have to do the work on the neck and It'll be ready to go! There have been probably a dozen little quirks with things not fitting exactly right, etc but I guess fixing those is a big part of the fun on this project. At the end it's all going to look good.
 
#58
A little lengthy update today...

I decided to be productive again today and wired up the electronics harness. It's solid shaft CTS pots, switchcraft jack, and orange drop cap. I had to drill an extra hole in the pickguard so that all 3 pots and the jack are all top mounted. There's no side mount hole for it so it was either drill it out for that or go all top mounted. I think the top mounted option will work out better. There's not enough room for a clean socket mount and I'm not a huge fan of the football style jack plates.

I got it all wired up, attached the pickup leads and...about half success! The bridge pickup works fine, the P pickup is DEAD. Nothing. I checked all the wiring and it's all perfect. I got out the ohmmeter and it reads absolutely nothing. I pulled it out and checked each side. The bass side was fine, the treble side had nothing. I popped the cover off and sure enough the copper lead inside wasn't attached to the post. I CAREFULLY fixed that, but still nothing. I suspect it has another break somewhere. I guess that's what I get for buying used.

I also pulled out the J pickup that matches the P (not the same one I used on this bass) and it reads about 4k, which is a bit less than half what it should be. Seems both pickups in this set have issues. $20 lesson learned.

Lucky for me I have another SX P pickup coming to me soon. I try and pick them up when I see them cheap because they are actually pretty nice sounding pickups.

But on the bright side, the bridge pickup works well! I was excited to see how this bass would sound so I put on another SX neck I have that has tuners installed on it and the neck holes actually lined up perfectly, so I put it on, and put a set of strings on it, and tuned it up. I didn't bother doing any setup, I just wanted an idea and since this neck isn't staying on there I just left it alone. Surprisingly the action wasn't THAT bad on it, even with the truss rod in a neutral spot. I only left it like that long enough to try, then loosened them up so they leave no tension on the neck.

I expected after all this restoration work to get a nightmare of terrible sound out of it, but it actually sounds pretty good! Of course it was just the bridge pickup, but it got a very nice sound, much better than I expected it to be. I've never used these strings before either. There was some deal at Samash.com a while back where I got 5 sets of these strings (Guitar Research) for 3 dollars total with 2nd day Fedex shipping. I expected them to be terrible but they are pretty good considering they cost under a dollar for the set! I'm excited to get the new P pickup so I can see what it will sound like in here. I guess you guys were right though, I shouldn't write it off for being plywood. Nobody can ever tell now that its painted anyways. I put a good amount of effort into making sure the typical "sharp" edges you see with plywood bodies aren't there. It looks great, isn't too heavy and it sounds better than I expected. I can't say for sure until I get the P pickup in there, but I wouldn't say it sounds better or worse than my other basses, I'm quite happy with it.

Now I just need to make up my mind on the neck finish. My biggest issue is wanting a matching purple headstock, but the black lacquer I have is nitro, and the purple is acrylic, and I don't want to mix them. I had a simple realization last night that I can just go buy a can of black acrylic for 3 bucks and have all finish on the bass be the same, which is probably the best idea anyways. It's not that bad to work with and it dries a lot faster than nitro so I don't have to wait weeks to work with it. I'll probably just do that, and get some kind of custom headstock decal printed to put under the clearcoat too for that custom look.

This is getting exciting! :hyper:
 
#60
Just got a Slammer PBass. Took the neck off today cause I'm de-fretting it and saw in the neck pocket that it's plywood. The thing sounds great though! I think the added weight from the glue helps prevent neck dive too. I can rest the lower horn on my right thigh and it balances perfectly. Couldn't do that with a Squire for twice as much!
 

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