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Winter Build Off, Bassilet

#21
Crawforde said:
I miss that sometimes. a lot actually.
but not enough to move back to it until I’m retired.
I worked on the Great Lakes for a lot of years and I miss Lake Superior and the east sides of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron a lot. Beautiful country.
I’m afraid that after 15 years in Florida my blood has probably thinned out enough that the things I used to enjoy would probably kill me.
watching hockey in Florida is still weird. The only other fans I know of are also transplants from the frozen north. Florida has 2 freakin teams though. And they beat my Red Wings. It’s not fair.
Click to expand...
I miss Lake Superior a lot. Grew up on the north shore. The mountains in New Mexico are great, but they are not Great Lakes great.
I love the concept for this build First read Dune in my teens. Still one of the books that has left strong impressions on my decades later.
 
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#23
It’s been raining and I’m still not completely back on my feet yet, but I got a little bit of work done on the inside of the back.
6C9862DE-8697-4283-B783-E48398411D8E.jpeg

I have piezos to go under the bridge feet, but am also tempted to put a set of P bass pickups on this. What do you think, leave it light and go piezo only, or add magnetic pickups?
 
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#25
I know I find a blend of magnetic and piezo to be more usable than piezo alone. A p pickup is a good choice tone-wise cause it should give you the lows and low mids a piezo might not. I'd push it further from the bridge than the traditional p placement.
 
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#26
With the right preamp the piezo should work well by itself. The DB side might have better information on what piezos works better, I'll say from experience disc piezos don't work well by themselves.

Edit: realized a j pickup wouldn't work.
 
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#27
I recently saw a high impedance preamp/ Hpf in the classifieds and snagged it.
Made by one of our TBers on the DB side for acoustics with piezos, so that’s cool.
It’s an F-deck 3. If it helps a lot, I’ll buy one another and include it in the scroll viotar when I ship/ deliver it as it only has piezos. The finish on that one is almost done so I’ll be stringing it up soon.
I would prefer to not put the p-bass pickups in if I can help it. This has (as currently envisioned) a fingerboard that extends from the nut, past the bridge, to the bottom of the instrument. Before I decide I’ll wire up the pickup and test it to see how far from the string I can get it and still get a decent signal. If it can sense far enough maybe I can set the pickups into the fingerboard from below and have them just about invisible except for the adjustment screw holes and the ears. I’d prefer that to cutting a section out for the pickups and then having to make a ramp/ cover of some sort.
anyway, today I carved the back out some more, and glued it to the body. I’ll finish rough shaping it before I attach the neck/ guts and then the top. The scroll got a little work too. I’m planning a smooth minimalist hawk/ falcon head instead of a scroll. I think that may look good with the flame of the maple. If the grain isn’t cool, I can always add feathers. So many worm sketches, but as a scroll they looked bad, or like a deformed flower bud, or like something I couldn’t photograph for a G rated site.
clamps
 

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#28
Pickups.
Here is a pic from a TBer on the DB side. If I use my P-pickups they will mount something like this, but be under the fingerboard.
My build is a 5 string though, so a little different, mine will need a more traditional placement.
mid inplace them correctly I could probably leave 1/16” of an inch of fingerboard above the pickup. Or maybe cut it, and glue the bit to the pickup.

D0F4EBAD-A90C-4168-89C8-B42C23062459.jpeg
 
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#32
I wired up the pickups this morning and held them over the strings of another bass.
I don’t think they will give me a signal at the distance I need to to hide them under the fingerboard.
Would a really hot P bass pick up work at distances around 1 to 1.25 cm to the strings?
Does anyone know of any that would work for this?
Otherwise I will stick with the piezos alone.
 
#33
Crawforde said:
I wired up the pickups this morning and held them over the strings of another bass.
I don’t think they will give me a signal at the distance I need to to hide them under the fingerboard.
Would a really hot P bass pick up work at distances around 1 to 1.25 cm to the strings?
Does anyone know of any that would work for this?
Otherwise I will stick with the piezos alone.
Click to expand...

1 cm isn't a great distance, I'd expect most pickups to function just fine with that space between the poles and the strings. Maybe you got a bum pickup? Got any other to try with, just for comparison's sake?
 
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#34
This is the only P pickup I have. it’s a $20 Uber boutique 9.3k pickup.
part of the problem could be the alligator clips and odd contortions I was doing to hold the connections in place, hold the pickup over bass strings, strum a string, and then guestimate the distance. it would probably have made an entertaining video.
not as funny as possum wrestling under the bed, but that wasn’t captured either and I hope it never happens again.
Maybe I’ll try again but wire it straight to the jack. That should make the trials easier.
 
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#35
Crawforde said:
This is the only P pickup I have. it’s a $20 Uber boutique 9.3k pickup.
part of the problem could be the alligator clips and odd contortions I was doing to hold the connections in place, hold the pickup over bass strings, strum a string, and then guestimate the distance. it would probably have made an entertaining video.
not as funny as possum wrestling under the bed, but that wasn’t captured either and I hope it never happens again.
Maybe I’ll try again but wire it straight to the jack. That should make the trials easier.
Click to expand...

It might be easier to screw the pickup down to a piece of wood, and then put it facing down above your test instrument. You could use some screws or something as legs to set the offset distance above the test string.
 
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#39
I’ve reached a point where options have arisen, plans may change, and I’m unsure of which way to go.
The hawk, neck, tailpiece is all one piece of wood. The “tone cut out” or the hollowed out underside of the neck extension and fingerboard is big enough that I could mount the piezos and the jack directly in there, and then attach the neck / fingerboard to the body with a couple of inserts or modified Bruce bars, and the body could be removable. The original plan was to glue it all together, mount the piezos on the underside of the top, have the jack exit the side of the body.
If I go the removable guts route I will be able to take it apart and add a magnetic pickup later if I am not satisfied with the piezo tone. I could also relocate the piezos more easily if I want. I was planning on putting the tuners in soon and then stringing it up and playing with the piezos inside the scientific mass reducing radiused-tone-cut-out to find the best location.
 
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