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The Hossenfeffer Bass Build

#421
mapleglo said:
For those of us who grew up during the old days, the best basses had those tuners. I love the look, personally. But yeah, my tuner brand of choice is the Hipshot ultra lights. If I'm going to have the huge elephant ear tuners hanging off my headstock, I want them to weight as little as possible.

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It's interesting how we associate certain attributes of gear to quality. I read someone' post a while ago where they can't buy sonic blue instruments because they associate it with cheap Sear's basses from the 60's. For me it's transparent red. Can't do it.
 
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#422
Maybe my reamer was too big (the taper angle) because by the time I got the hole large enough to take the tuner, the top of the hole was too big. When I saw that, I only reamed the remaining holes till the opening was big enough and did what mapelgo mentioned (sandpaper around a dowel) to expend the rest of the hole.
 
#424
Sorry, that's what I warned against that: "If you do get a reamer, get one that matches the taper that you are shooting for (which is why I don't like the super-cheap hardware store reamers that you can get for less than $10)."
 
#426
Real peg tuners (like cellos) have tapers. The mechanical ones don't, but if you get a 2-Degree taper the difference in size over 1/2" is negligible. For machine heads you can also get reamers that don't have tapers and are meant to enlarge only slight differences. There is also ones like Invalid Link Removed, which won't work for the 1/2" bass tuners since this particular one made for guitar tuners, but you can get others.

The advantage of the tapered reamers is that you only need one or two (depending on what you build), whereas you may went a set of the other types (and that does get pricey).
 
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#429
ICM said:
It's interesting how we associate certain attributes of gear to quality. I read someone' post a while ago where they can't buy sonic blue instruments because they associate it with cheap Sear's basses from the 60's. For me it's transparent red. Can't do it.
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I'm a bit the same. I could never buy a blueburst instrument. To me that is the colour scheme of weird P-bass copies in pawnbrokers.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
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#432
You can buy one of those hardware store reamers and take it to a machine shop and they can machine it off so the taper stops at the correct diameter for your tuner bushings, or whatever you are enlarging a hole for. Then you just run the reamer right through the hole and correct size. I don't know if that's cheaper than buying the stewmac tool or not...
 
#433
I feel that I should point out that in my original message I said that a reamer may be of interest if you plan on building a lot. I'm not really trying to push them down anyone's throats. There are certainly other ways of getting things done; I just like precision tools (maybe overly fascinated by them). If it works, then, by all means, do it whatever way and be happy with the results.
 
#436
After messing about with sandpaper wrapped around drill bits, I got aggravated and grabbed a round rasp. I drew a circle 17/32" around the tuner holes as a guide so i wouldn't rasp egg-shaped holes and went at it v..e..r..y s...l...o...w...l..y until I got a firm thumb press fit on the bushings. Reamer? We don't need no stinkin' reamer!
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Used a centering ruler along the neck centerline to align tuners square:
IMG_5291_zpsot4vkc04.jpg


And pre-drilled some shallow holes with a drill bit matching the screw hole diameter in the tuner plate to center the screw bit:
IMG_5292_zpsaaksjdjc.jpg


Bam! Came out sweet. These Schaller tuners really are nice.
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Strung up E and G strings to see how things lay, no evil surprises. Yay!
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Hmmmmm.... Gonna go out on a limb and call my pre-cut brass nut.... a tad high.


The Axemasters brass nut is, oddly, two pieces of brass glued together, apparently with elmers or something equally useless, because it IMMEDIATELY separated into two pieces when I tried to grind it a little on my bench belt sander. No more of that.


I CA glued it back together and am slowly whittling it down to some approximation of reasonable height using my low-budget fret beveling jig. This will take a good long while, but it's my first full nut fitting.


Another day, another new skill to learn! Any idea how high this nut should be, even a ballpark, prior to doing any fine adjustment by nut slot filing? Any advice or links to good tutorials on nut shaping and polishing greatly appreciated. At least the string slots and top edge seem to have a pre-cut slight cant towards the tuners.


 
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