There's another storm brewing!

Good idea, and that’s the approach I generally take. When I was figuring where and in what orientation to put the logo, I printed out the various images at full scale and placed them on the (actual) headstock. I didn’t have a preference between the hollows and the solids at the time. I didn’t do that again with this final orientation, but I did put this pair of images onscreen at full scale, with another guitar leaned up in front of the computer, and view from a distance.

 

Shipped

The bass is on its way to the finisher. Here are the farewell pictures in case, deities forbid, they’re needed for insurance purposes.




Wiring

While it’s away, I can play with the wire management for the control cavity. The Audere preamp comes pre-wired, and beautifully done at that. But with seven pots and a switch in this configuration, plus a jack, a battery clip, and an LED and every one of the 30 or so wires being about 6” long so that they could fit anyone’s instrument, it would be a complete rat’s nest if you didn’t put some effort into it. Plus I swapped out the Audere-supplied switch for one with a short toggle, and added a pickup selector switch — the pre has the usual two inputs, but I have three pickups.

 

Pretty; ugly

Bridge saddle screws (and pickup height screws), before and after shaping and polishing; and pickup springs coated with some plasti-dip.

 

Problem is I kept getting better at it, so I did each one twice or three times before I had them all matching. A lot of time with tiny objects. I’ve worked with metal polishers with work, and it’s a dirty but exacting business.

The screws needed to be reduced a touch in OD so there was no escaping doing some work. Plus, yes, it should look good in place.

 

Indeed the springs do. I was working with a half dried up can of plasti-dip that required a helluva lot of naphtha to loosen it up, very unevenly. With a fresh can I could have dipped, drained, and they would have been beautiful. But they will be buried inside, and some part of this has to be ugly, right?
Seriously though, I think I saw once that someone coated just the middle half of some pickup springs, which would have been enough to silence any twang and would have allowed handling them cleanly by one end. But with this older material, it wasn’t happening on the test piece.

 

you know, I just found the picture I had saved of coated springs. And 1- it is so much neater that mine are horrible by comparison 2- the layout is not like I expected - they’re not going concentrically on the screws 3- it looks like it could also be shrink tubing rather than any kind of dip.

It does give me ideas, though.

Pic of someone else’s work that I had saved:

 

Progress

Bass is still at the painter's, and has been sealed and filled. Due for sanding and final coating.

Got these for clearing the fret slots when I get it back.

 

As far as I see in the picture, yes. They certainly don’t look like four of them would fit on four J-pup screws. I suppose there could be two dowel stubs there to aid assembly.

They are very small end mills, with 1/8” shafts that can fit into a Dremel. Quite possibly the same mills that were used to make the slots in the first place.

And thanks for the well wishes.