What's On Your Workbench?

[Will_White]

Drilled the headstock of the Bass VI. The tuner holes are to close together for the tuners I bought so I'll have to mount them at an angle.

 

[tubedude]

With weeds?

 

[MPU]

Passinwind preamp just finished. I'm going to modify the dual pots for longer thread and shaft for onboard mounting. I also have to order a dual concentric 50k pot for bass/mid.

 

[Axstar]

No fun with the Epiphone Wildkat.

The problem was the pickups! I bought replacement Artec Alnico V P90 pickups. These come with generic black plastic covers. As such the beck pickup was too high and the bridge pickup was too low. I tried to carve arches into the underside of them, but the neck pickup in particular didn't sit right.

I've grafted the original Epiphone baseplate onto the neck pickup. I've also replaced the hook up cable on both pickups with braided coax, like you would find in a vintage Gibson. This was a scary task, as it involves waving a soldering iron, hot enough to melt solder onto the brass baseplate, around the pickup coil. I also needed to cut both the start and end wires for the pickup coil and then graft them onto the coax cable. Stressful!

I went back to the stock Epi chrome covers, but goodness these are microphonic pickups. Time to get cooking!

Bubble bubble!

Steamy business!

 

[tubedude]

That oughta kill em.

 

[Axstar]

That oughta kill em.

They will either be silent or... silent! I hope I didn't cook all the music out of them.

 

[tubedude]

There is a line between killing the squealies and killing the tone. Feedback must die though.

 

[saved]

on my workbench are 4 maple necks laminated with carbon sheets
Link Removed

 

[5tring]

That’s a cool idea - never seen carbon used like that before. Don’t breathe it in when you shape the necks!

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Yeah, that CF fiber is nasty! Full respirator and gloves mandatory as you are shaping/ sanding neck. I got some splinters cutting CF rods, like metal splinters, but worse.

 

[moonshinegtrs]

Here's a few shop shots...

Things are a mess, basically pandemonium but in a good way... Thankful to be busy.

Moonshine

 

[Gary_M]

Here's a few shop shots...

Things are a mess, basically pandemonium but in a good way... Thankful to be busy.
View attachment 3473638 View attachment 3473639 View attachment 3473640 View attachment 3473641


Moonshine

I gotta say, I'd feel right at home there. Love your shop.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

I aspire to be neat..... But im not. I tend to cover every space with tools until further progress becomes difficult.

 

[Jisch]

My shop is such a mess right now. I need to get better control of my wood. I have great wood storage up in my attic. I leave most of my wood up there, but I have a pile of mid-large sized pieces in my shop that seems to grow with every build. My bench is a disaster too. Maybe I'll take some time today to fix that.

Hahahaha, no I won't.

 

[moonshinegtrs]

My shop is such a mess right now. I need to get better control of my wood. I have great wood storage up in my attic. I leave most of my wood up there, but I have a pile of mid-large sized pieces in my shop that seems to grow with every build. My bench is a disaster too. Maybe I'll take some time today to fix that.

Hahahaha, no I won't.

Last December I purchased an 8' x 20' Steel shipping container just to store my lumber...

I wish now that I had gone ahead and bought a 40' one. If you have the room they are a great investment.


Moonshine

 

[Jisch]

I fear that would encourage our (my wife and I) wood hoarding tendencies!

 

[moonshinegtrs]

I fear that would encourage our (my wife and I) wood hoarding tendencies!

It will. Oh yes, it will.


Moonshine

 

[Stumbo]

Love this thread. Don't have any room for tools and equipment right now. So I'll live vicariously through you guys!

More pics, the better!

 

[dmarino]

Here's what's on the bench: gluing in red dots on bird's eye maple.
Need to shape the board a little and get 'er ready for installation

 

[Means2nEnd]

Hi all, I haven't been posting much at all the last couple months. I took on a 7 string headless build for a pro player and a couple other builds guitars and basses then realized.. I don't have anything in my shop designed to build a neck that is over 4" wide. So the last few months I have been doing a couple re finishes, rebuilding the upper rocker arm in my Powermatic band saw, finishing up an over arm pin router that will fit in my shop in my basement and of course making a bunch of tools and fixtures to build the 7 string monster.

I was saving some pic as I was going to make a whole complete build thread all at once as I am a binge watcher/reader thought it would be cool to have it all up at once instead of the normal 9 month to a year thang but I was reading this thread like I always do and saw the post from "saved" and I have been doing the same thing sort of with 1.5 mm carbon fiber sheets and I thought I would share a few pics.

I have always been obsessed with the incredible stability of the composite necks by Joe Zon and the carbon fiber and composite from Modulus. I have owned several and although I loved the stability of them I did not however liked the plastic type tones in the upper mids and treble. Actually my band members always thought they sounded as they put it like "Crayons". So my idea of the full beam of carbon fiber sheet through the neck I stole from the joint venture from Modulus and Mike Tobias the Genesis model they made for a short stint which sported the vertical sheet of carbon fiber and also had a horizontal sheet between the fretboard and neck itself. I felt that was a waist of room and money the horizontal sheet as it offers really about zero strength in that direction. Also I figure in a neck with a single truss rod it you run the sheet of carbon fiber like Modulus did you will remove most of it if it's centered when you route for the truss rod. Saved has his on the sides so I think he feels the same way. I centered mine as I have two low pro S.M. truss rods going in on the sides as well as two more carbon fiber rods in wenge and purpleheart... it should be sort of strong. The artist lives on a house boat in Sausalito so everything almost is glued with West Systems epoxy.

Fretboard is ebony with flame maple binding and will have a 48" radius

Well here is a few pics of the slow progress. Will have a chamber or two for weight relief it won't do anything to the tone... Cheers!