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What's the dumbest mistake you have made?

squarewave

squarewave

Supporting Member
Jun 16, 2004
2,101
619
Iowa City, Iowa USA
#1
A couple days ago, I was drilling the holes to mount a bolt-on neck, and I drilled right through the fingboard. How careless is that?

About 10 years ago, I was 80% done with a very nice neck-through bass, when I dropped it and snapped the headstock off on the concrete floor. Man, I'm a loser.

Do you have anything to share?
 
#2
Uhh,a couple years ago i bought a guitar. =/ that was a big nono.

:D

BTW no pics, no hole in fretboard.

all joking aside. When i was refinishing my neck, i messed up the finish close to the heel. I could've fixed it, but i was too lazy to do so. Now its going to take some sanding to fix it.
 
#8
once i needed to trim some of my body blank down before bandsawing...so i used a table saw. So i thought i set the blade right, but it wasn't high enough = nice long cuts deep into the back upper horn...beautiful wood that had to be covered with dark finish to hide it...:atoz:
 
#10
T2W said:
I did that too once. You should have seen my 'stoned' face when I saw the rod on the corner of the desk. It took me a few seconds to realize.
Click to expand...

I also was on the receiving end of this idiotic if naive behavior. I had already put in about three clamps when I suddenly went "wait, what?!?!" and quickly removed them, placed the rod, spread a bit more glue (since it had already started to try ...dang titebond) and everything was ok. The bass is still out there and the owner loves it.
 
#12
What's the dumbest mistake you have made?
Click to expand...

you mean besides clicking 'Submit Reply' to a post or two? :o



let's see now ... ummm ... how deep is that last control cavity route supposed to be? O wait - this is a thinner body than I do standard!?!??! so much for that top, eh?

or how about adjusting the router depth, answering a question from my spouse when she snuck into the shop unnoticed, adjusting the router depth, and then routing the final pass on the trussrod channel


nope - none of those. this is it: using that blue masking tape to mask-off a neck where I was painting a matching headstock ... a nitro finished neck ... a neck already finished and buffed out ... a neck where I decided on a whim to add a matching headstock color ... did I say the neck was already buffed out ... and decided to have dinner before spraying the color coat ... :help: can anyone say "can't get the tape off the neck"?

yep, that would be it :rollno:

all the best,

R
 
#13
Two posts in the same thread, I must find something else for my spare time....

All my bolt-on necks have what is called a "T-nut" some kind of threaded insert, but they install on the fretboard side of the neck.

When gluing fretboard, 1 time out of 2, they stay on the shelf, just like the truss rods...:bawl:

I also misjudge the thickness of a neck, add to this a bad router and you have a recipe to split a neck in 2 parts when doing the trussrod channel... at least the 2 parts were identical... (is that worth something????)

Lets not talk about moving templates to rout pickup or drilling wire channels going right through the top...

now I'm really ashamed of me....
 
#14
* Faceplanted on stage infront of 150 people.

* Was drunk and bought picks for around 300 swedish kroners.. ( that'd be around 30 euro ) they are like 5 kr a piece here)

* Cable "jumped" out of my bass on a gig... Tho high on adrenaline as i was i dident notice, played the whole song like that.
 
#17
oh, and also. measuring. did it right the first time, did it right the second time, then when i finally measured for the 3rd time, and cut the body out. the bridge was so far off the body i had to restart. good thing i have 1000 board feet of ash in my attic
 
#18
I THOUGHT I wanted a fretless, and did the typical pulling of the frets and filling them... then found out I didn't like fretless :[ I used it for one recording, then tried refretting it, and failed miserably. My 76 gibson ripper has been sitting useless for several years :[
 
#20
On a small lake one day, digging into my box looking for my favorite bass lure. Found it. Held it up. Said "Yeah, that's the one. Bass love this thing". Then I tossed it in the drink. Realizing too late that I probably should've tied it on first.

Oh wait! Wrong forum. Man, bass... bass... Who can tell! Sorry.
 

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