The Mediocre Builders Club

[MirandM]

I was just brainstorming. any time someone gives me a good idea that gets me thinking outside the box, i tend to go further and further outside the box until i have several ideas to evaluate.

That's what I like about this thread, you're absolutely free to do that and tell us. And that's why I responded, not to criticise, just the oposite, I like challenges like that, so please just jot down your thoughts.

 

[MirandM]

Might just work, did a bit a photo chopping, and look:

Windings on the inner two strings might even be the normal way.

 

[RodRy]

I have a question to ask of the people i trust. When i was discussing bass designs with Russ, from Door County Music company, he asked about fretless basses. I told him I could build fretless, but i wasn't ready to learn to play one yet. He commented that as a teacher he could assure me that it is easier to play fretless than fretted. Then it occurred to me that on one of my first builds i put detents (shallow holes ~1/4"diameter) in the back of the neck for my thumb to feel so that I could accurately find the proper fret without looking at the fretboard.
This made me think that i could remove the frets from a normal bass and instead of trying to repair it to look like there never were frets, I could instead replace the frets with inlays. The neck would be smooth (aka fretless) but i could accurately hit the fret positions by sight.
I could market it as a fretless trainer.

Is this a stupid idea or worth considering???? I would use a very hard resin as the inlay material...

I got the idea from your suggestions to... when i removed the big screws on the floating top bass and instead of hiding the holes put inlay dots into them to "turn a mistake into a feature".

I don't know if I'm one of the people you trust, but I think you are exactly on the right path. Many of us have fretless basses that have fret lines in them and they do indeed make it easier to play, because you have a visual reference.

 

[RodRy]

I hope you thoroughly enjoy it. To be honest, Building a bass body is the most fun, most time consuming and most rewarding thing i have done in my adult life. (excluding vacations and family events)

Thanks! My plan is to make a series of cheap wood bodies to get all the layout and shapes exactly as I want them, then make one with a really nice body. I'll use each of the cheap bodies to practice getting things right.

I'll let you know how it goes!

 

[OldCoupeTom]

I'll let you know how it goes!

Please make sure to let us all know. I too "harbor a notion" for once I complete my street rod project.

 

[MirandM]

Wow, yesterday I found out where the heck I left my unfinished "el weirdo" project. Amongst the 231.549 boxes that I still have filled with home movement stuff, I found a large one that had what looked like a piece of wood at the bottom. Yes, there it was, complete with neck and all other shiny parts. I was searching for something completely different, but that's what usually happens, you find what you were looking for 3 months ago and not what you actually want to find.

 

[MirandM]

...I was searching for something completely different, but that's what usually happens, you find what you were looking for 3 months ago and not what you actually want to find.

Indeed, I just found the other box I was looking for. It had the description on the side "flutes and music stuff" but it was turned away from my view which is why I didn't find it in the first place. Well now I did. Apart from a lot cables there were the flutes I wanted to find, This one will go directly to what will be the new studio room.
Moving homes is a real pita even though you mark the boxes, everything gets mixed up and until you really organize all the boxes a little, time flies. Well all of this is a bit OT but since it involves the building stuff I need for my projects, I guess I can approve that...

 

[John LaTorre]

I hear you. I just bought a kit guitar that was started four years ago by another guy who got bored with the process and left it sitting for four years. I have yet to see what he actually accomplished and how well he did it.

 

[MirandM]

I hear you. I just bought a kit guitar that was started four years ago by another guy who got bored with the process and left it sitting for four years. I have yet to see what he actually accomplished and how well he did it.

Good luck with that.
My case however is not from boredom, but simply because I had to move homes and couldn't dedicate the time needed. I'd like to terminate it, of course, but it will take a bit more time since I have some other more pressing projects to finish first. I will be terminating it though.

 

[MirandM]

Here's something for you @bass theory :
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if I remember correctly we had some discussion about this idea. Maybe it will be of some use to you.

 

[MirandM]

Having said I have more pressing projects, some of you may remember about me moving homes and having the intent of setting up a music studio.
Well on the 30th of dec. I finally had this "bang" that told me "tomorrow I'm going to dedicate myself to the studio". And it happened
Yes, really. After breakfast I didn't sit down to view mails and posts and stuff, but instead started to work on getting stuff out of that room.

The room, apart from having most of my musical instruments still in boxes, had a lot of bedroom materials, blankets, cushions, boxes filled with stuff that shouldn't be there. Where I lived previously I had four bedrooms, now only one with one single bed. So most of this stuff is just overflow.
After reviewing everything I removed it to have more space. Now I could finally set up my drumset to see if it would fit. No problem, fits perfectly. Only thing that needed repairs was the wall behind it. It had a rather large crack in it. Old house so quite normal.
Today I finished the repair with white paint, now it looks like it was never there.

Will be posting some pics but not for now. For the moment things are "in motion" which is very nice.
Maybe this summer I can actually do some work on the yet-to-finish projects.

 

[enzodm]

Amongst the 231.549 boxes that I still have filled with home movement stuff, I found a large one that had what looked like a piece of wood at the bottom.

I understand: I moved too (last February) and I still have to find part of my toys. However, there is still something to do in the new home, thus perhaps is better not to find distractions

Happy mediocre new year,

 

[BaldyLee]

All my frankenbasses. I love them, warts and all. The jazz was gigged HARD for 20 years.

The P is a before and after shot. Trashed Squier to ‘62 copy. The Iceman was my daughter’s Christmas gift this year (Color shift paint). Pic is pre-clear coat. Put black beauties on it too.

Next project is a Precision body/JJ pickup fretless. Waiting on the body from Warmoth. Planning metallic gun metal finish with all black hardware. Rear routed, no pickguard.

 

[MirandM]

So finally I got my hands on materials that will serve for my humongous 2m wide stand. Even better I've got enough to do one of 2m and another of 1m. Those will serve for some 20 + 10 guitars, so 30 in all. Together with my 9 and 7 stands will give me enough for the 41 I need.

The racks will obviously be custom made.
I've got the basic design figured out and only need to find some way to hold the necks. I want this to be adjustable, some basses have their jack perpendicular to the body so they need some more space than the ones that have the jack on the side of the body.
Making the neck support adjustable would give me the option of maybe having more basses in one rack. The usual distance between adjacent neck's of the commercials racks is about 9.5cm, which is why I estimated the 20 + 10.
Even though I have a lot of inputs on my mixing panels, I won't be able to plug in all of them, so some will need to be without a cable on the rack. Wouldn't surprise me if I'm able to squeeze in 24 or 25 within the 2m width.

Great thing about making a custom rack is you can make it much sturdier than the commercial one's which I find pretty flimsy.

One bass that won't be put in the rack is the Thunderbird. That thing is just impossible to support, I'll have to get a wall hanger for that one.

Haven't started building yet, but I will make photos of the progress once I start.

 

[MirandM]

Lately I've also been into repairing some old equipment.
When I played in a band I used a Behringer MDX-1600 AutoCom, actually I had two, one for the drums and another for the bass. I also used a HA-8000 Powerplay headphones amp with eight outputs.
After some years both of these had problems and were replaced by other models.
These are 19" rack mounted devices that I use between the various mixing panels.
Some people don't like Behringer, but I find them very decent and useful for their price. If they fail it won't break your wallet to buy another one.

I never trashed them though, thinking one day I'd check up on a possible repair.
Well that time has come. The last few days I had some time available and dug up my scope and other electronic thingies to give them a runover.

Found the problem in the HA-8000 pretty fast and ordered some parts. Since I was ordering I also ordered the parts for the MDX-1600 which only uses two different types of chips. One channel is ok, the other fails, so basically it's just a matter of replacing chips on that one.

Now it's just waiting for the chips. Total repair costs about 12€ so quite cheap and really worth it.

 

[bass theory]

I finally bought a new house and moved. Wow, the work involved after living in the same house for eighteen years. the new house is in Port Edwards which is the geographic center of Wisconsin. I downsized from a 2700sq-ft ranch to a1500 sq-ft cape cod. But OMG the shop in this house. The previous owner was a crafter who worked on a variety of projects. There are actually 2 shops in the house a 20' x 16' shop with pegboard walls and benches all around.... pics to follow... and a 12' x 15' smaller one, which i set up as my "man cave" (my office, desk and all, and my studio for basses and amps as well as drums.). My granddaughter decided that since they are now 2 minutes away by car she was going to share this with me... so she renamed it the "minion cave" and we can both be minions.
first the main shop:



and the "minion cave;

 

[Holdsg]

very nice.
giving me ideas for my new house being constructed in Mesquite, NV.
I have an office/music room in the house, but the garage is a clean slate.

 

[MirandM]

Lately I've also been into repairing some old equipment.
When I played in a band I used a Behringer MDX-1600 AutoCom, actually I had two, one for the drums and another for the bass. I also used a HA-8000 Powerplay headphones amp with eight outputs.
After some years both of these had problems and were replaced by other models.
These are 19" rack mounted devices that I use between the various mixing panels.
Some people don't like Behringer, but I find them very decent and useful for their price. If they fail it won't break your wallet to buy another one.

I never trashed them though, thinking one day I'd check up on a possible repair.
Well that time has come. The last few days I had some time available and dug up my scope and other electronic thingies to give them a runover.

Found the problem in the HA-8000 pretty fast and ordered some parts. Since I was ordering I also ordered the parts for the MDX-1600 which only uses two different types of chips. One channel is ok, the other fails, so basically it's just a matter of replacing chips on that one.

Now it's just waiting for the chips. Total repair costs about 12€ so quite cheap and really worth it.

Update on the two behringers.

After replacing the main amplification chip on the HA-8000 the result was... the same... what? That had taken some time because I had to desolder and remove the output jack to be able to get to the chip. So I did some more checking and dug up the pin config of the main volume pot. Desoldered that one too and guess what...
it failed. It's a miniature 10k stereo pot with a rather strange config (which is why I didn't catch the error first hand) and apparently one of the sliders hardly made contact. So I dismantled it, cleaned all the parts and readjusted the slider a bit. After putting everything together it worked again and so I soldered it on the main board again and tadaaa, problem solved.

I also double checked the MDX-1600 and cleaned sprayed all of the pots. After doing another checkup with the frequency generator and the scope it seems to work correctly. Both channels are doing exactly the same. I haven't check it with my gear as I still have nothing setup and you can't just plug a bass in as it needs line signals, so that'll have to wait a bit, but it seems ok.

 

[MirandM]

Update on the two behringers.

After replacing the main amplification chip on the HA-8000 the result was... the same... what? That had taken some time because I had to desolder and remove the output jack to be able to get to the chip. So I did some more checking and dug up the pin config of the main volume pot. Desoldered that one too and guess what...
it failed. It's a miniature 10k stereo pot with a rather strange config (which is why I didn't catch the error first hand) and apparently one of the sliders hardly made contact. So I dismantled it, cleaned all the parts and readjusted the slider a bit. After putting everything together it worked again and so I soldered it on the main board again and tadaaa, problem solved.

I also double checked the MDX-1600 and cleaned sprayed all of the pots. After doing another checkup with the frequency generator and the scope it seems to work correctly. Both channels are doing exactly the same. I haven't check it with my gear as I still have nothing setup and you can't just plug a bass in as it needs line signals, so that'll have to wait a bit, but it seems ok.

View attachment 5034916

And yet another update, mind you, not planned though.

I felt kind of strange after having the MDX-1600 working ok. Something inside bugged me. You know like it doesn't click into place.
So today I went to do something entirely different which involved going through the movement boxes in search of my sattelite dish receiver. Guess what... I found the original box of the MDX-1600 but... it was a bit too heavy to be empty, so there was definitely something inside...

Ouch, I totally forgot about that one. A rather older version of the behringer composer the MDX-2000. And yes, that one clearly was the one I used when I got into the 19" stuff. And surely this is the one that failed.

So what's the difference between all of these?
Well:
The MDX-2000 composer is a compressor with an expander at the input.
the MDX-1600 autocomp-xl is a compressor with a dynamic enhancer at the output.
the MDX-2600 composer-pro-xl (the newer two I currently use) is a compressor with an expander on the input and a de-esser on the output.
Of course these options are all adjustable, you activate the amount you want.
Which reminds me of why I changed to the newer MDX-2600, which was because of the vocal recordings at the time. De-essing is a nice feature to have and was a sort of upgrade from the MDX-1600 at the time as I didn't need the dynamic expansion at the output.

Now I still need to check the MDX-2000 to see if I can repair it, so there'll be another update I guess...
Behringer continues....

 

[OldCoupeTom]

I finally bought a new house and moved. Wow, the work involved after living in the same house for eighteen years. the new house is in Port Edwards which is the geographic center of Wisconsin. I downsized from a 2700sq-ft ranch to a1500 sq-ft cape cod. But OMG the shop in this house. The previous owner was a crafter who worked on a variety of projects. There are actually 2 shops in the house a 20' x 16' shop with pegboard walls and benches all around.... pics to follow... and a 12' x 15' smaller one, which i set up as my "man cave" (my office, desk and all, and my studio for basses and amps as well as drums.). My granddaughter decided that since they are now 2 minutes away by car she was going to share this with me... so she renamed it the "minion cave" and we can both be minions.
first the main shop:

View attachment 5030290 View attachment 5030291 View attachment 5030292 View attachment 5030293

and the "minion cave;
View attachment 5030294 View attachment 5030295 View attachment 5030296 View attachment 5030297

AH! Beautiful organization...a concept which in life has eluded me even 'til now.