Stripping In The Blue Light District

The Ibanez body is quite a dark brown color. I thought it was a solid paint finish for many years, but if you take a fresh look there is definitely a decent bit of woodgrain going on underneath a heavy lacquer.

The bass is a lawsuit model dating from the mid-seventies and has had some remedial work carried out already. The original Gibson three-post style bridge was replaced (quite rightly) and a thumbrest was ditched. The holes left were filled with wooden plugs and under the dark lacquer the repair work was practically invisible. The bizarre shaped cutout that looks ideal for storing ice-lollies was hidden away under a scratchplate.







Half way through the paint stripping and Chewie & me are wondering if perhaps we have been a little bit hasty. It is looking quite rough now. Talking about different new paint finishes keeps us going...



Once the paint stripper has done its chemical nastiness, we attacked the surface with sandpaper. It was like trying to sand glass. At this stage other uses for the body were found, such as the latest in guitar-inspired lingerie...






It took power tools and some good old fashioned grunt to shift whatever was still clinging to the wood, but evetually the mist started to clear. The paintjob had been hiding quite a nice veneer. The body could now be seen properly and was constructed from five layers of differing thickness hardwood (plus two [ash?] veneers), with the grain direction changed on alternate layers. With the contouring on the body these layers show up as go-faster-stripes. When the hardware gets bolted back on, this is really going to look smart.

Back in the land of fboard lights, the plastic dots have been shaped using 6mm and 8mm formers. The dots have been glued into the board and here are the results:

Funny how turning the lights on makes the wood get darker...

Lighting Up Time

Chewie & me decided a while ago that lots of little wires and lights inside a neck would no doubt cause trouble. Lights are essential, but wires need to be kept to a minimum. Space is pretty limited so we came up with the idea of using a long piece of veroboard cut to shape to connect to all the leds. The walnut fboard stiffening was removed with a dremel mini circular saw and a chisel. It didn't need to be exceptionally neat as it will be hidden from view eventually.

Blue surface mount leds were ordered a few months ago, but they didn't look that blue to me. A second lot of leds were sourced and these looked a lot nicer. These ones were even smaller - 0603 size, 1.6mm by 0.8mm! Each led has a 100 ohm series resistor, and all these led / resistor combinations were connected in parallel so that only two wires are needed to be fed into the main body.

Soldering surface mount parts can be quite tricky. The small black rectangle at the top of the board is the resistor. These are 1206 sized (3.2mm by 1.6mm). The led is barely visible, but is soldered between the resistor and the yellow wire coming up to meet it. This is part of the octave marker, the other resistor / led is at the bottom.






Strangely I found that two of the ten leds were more green than blue. They were all packaged in a strip so I was expecting a much better colour match. Fortunately the ibanez neck only needs eight, so the two dodgy ones were saved to look green on another day.



Once all the parts where fitted, the assembly was tested, run from 5V with an extra 470 ohm resistor. To reflect as much light forward as possible, the veroboard, solder & resistors were painted white. A hole was drilled at a particularly cunning angle in the neck and the fboard was placed on top to give an idea of how the finished neck will look. Not bad methinks. It still needs clear dots put in place, but it has definitely livened up the old-timer...

Back To The Ibanez

I haven't done much to the Ibanez bass since the fboard was sawn off a few months ago. The fboard itself was quite fragile, and the neck was quite warped. In fact the neck was so warped if it was thrown in the air, it would have probably come back again...

The top of the neck was planed straight again which removed a fair bit of material. The back was sanded to remove the mess left by acetone and old cracked paint. It is amazing how much wood isn't there! As the neck thins down near the headstock, the large 1/2" wide by 3/8" deep channel doesn't seem to have a great amount around it. It is only 15mm deep around the first fret. Blimey. It is not surprising that heads snap off on occasions...

Talking of snap off, the fboard did actually fall apart. The saw got a bit close at the 19th fret and was just held by a few hairy bits of rosewood and some finger lint. It didn't last long.

The back of the fboard had to be carefully sanded to remove the worst of the saw marks and to give a suitable surface for gluing. I had some walnut left over from my sandwich making a few weeks ago and managed to whittle it into a (slightly larger) similar shape. It was planed down from 6mm to around 3mm and then the large part of the fboard glued onto it.

The following day the last part of the fboard was also carefully glued into place now that the main part was unlikely to wander. Once dry, the walnut was then sanded back to the outline of the original fboard and the dot holes redrilled.

The next stage for this fboard is to receive some LEDs. These need to fit in the 3mm walnut zone and have clear acrylic dots covering them in the fboard before it can be reunited with the trussrod. 3mm should compensate for the sawing, sanding and planing that the neck has had to endure in order to sort out the original duff trussrod problem. Well, I hope so...