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Winter 2017 build off- carbon headless bass

Starting to look like a bass. Well, at least as much as it ever will. Everything is ready for fretboard. My order from US shipped on Tuesday after waiting for almost a month for a reply from European suppliers. Today I got a message that the fretboards are in stock now. I think I'm not going to order more fretboards, I can just as well wait.

View attachment 1034459

I shielded the pickup coils and cast them in the covers. Later tonight I'm planning to solder wires, glue the magnets and cast the covers full.

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I thought that the CF would act as an RF shield since carbon conducts electricity. Have you every tried a CF build without shielding foil? Or does the epoxy prevent it from working as a shield?
Steve
 
I thought that the CF would act as an RF shield since carbon conducts electricity. Have you every tried a CF build without shielding foil? Or does the epoxy prevent it from working as a shield?
Steve
You're right. Carbon does work as a shield but there is no carbon and hence shield on top of the pickups. That's why I shielded the pickups. I'm not shielding the control cavity but I'm going to use wire as bridge ground.
 
No reply from decal maker so time to learn to use Inkscape. I've used it at work before but just a bit. Well, it didn't take much time to stretch the font and make an outline pic of the font. Size looks good. I ordered waterslide paper for laser. In theory I print the text, spray couple of light coats of clear over the print, use water to remove the print, turn it over and paint the inside of the letters white. When paint is dry I transfer the waterslide on it's place, let it dry and spray clearcoat over the bass. We'll see how it goes.

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I sanded the pivot plate and brushed one more coat of epoxy. I'm going to use the pivot plate as test bed for spraying black burst with tinted clear.

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When you stretch a typeface in a way that doesn't honour the way it was designed the results often look unbalanced. Font designers take great care when balancing out the relative weights of the horizontal and vertical strokes but If you don't stretch too much, you should be fine.

Best of luck with the rest of your build. It's looking great.
 
When you stretch a typeface in a way that doesn't honour the way it was designed the results often look unbalanced. Font designers take great care when balancing out the relative weights of the horizontal and vertical strokes but If you don't stretch too much, you should be fine.

Best of luck with the rest of your build. It's looking great.
I noticed too that too much stretching makes the font look strange. I have to make sure that the width of the letter lines remain the same like in the original size. May have to do some adjusting before printing.
 
In Inkscape you can convert type to paths and then adjust the shapes point by point. Watch out for curved corners though: Bezier handles can be frustrating if you're not used to them. Making a grid of guides can help keep those even.

This page might help if you need any tips but it doesn't go into much detail: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
Here's a sneak peak of what kind of finish I have in mind. Carbon black burst that hides the joints of top, back and neck.

WP_20170124_19_03_29_Pro.jpg


I hope fretboard blanks arrive soon. While waiting I'm trying to find pots for the Stingray preamp. I want to stack bass and treble but 100k log/1M lin or rev log stacked pot has to be custom made. I hope I can find pots to use as parts.
 
Here's a sneak peak of what kind of finish I have in mind. Carbon black burst that hides the joints of top, back and neck.

View attachment 1038800

I hope fretboard blanks arrive soon. While waiting I'm trying to find pots for the Stingray preamp. I want to stack bass and treble but 100k log/1M lin or rev log stacked pot has to be custom made. I hope I can find pots to use as parts.
That looks exeptionally nice.
 
I got the fret slots cut, fretboard tapered and radiused to 10" radius with 100 grit paper. Luminlay side dots glued also. Richlite is easy to sand and cut with power tools but sawing fret slots with Stewmac fret saw is just pain. Saw heats quickly, saw dust sticks to saw teeths and saw sticks to slots. Very annoying.

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Tomorrow I'm going to sand the side dots flush, rough sand the underside of fretboard and bond the fretboard on the neck.
I ordered right value pots for making a stacked bass/treble pot.
 

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