Orange Overload

 

After the two weeks was up, the lacquer was lightly rubbed down with wet'n'dry paper, rubbing compound and T-cut which gave a pretty good high-gloss finish. There's a few not-so-good areas but from any reasonable distance it looks great. The bright orange is so intense that the camera gets saturated. According to Kia-Ora, it's too orangey for crows, and apparently too orangey for Nikon's too!

 

 

 

The jack socket doubles up as a strap button. An extra hole was drilled to allow the E string bridge to be earthed. As the nut is aluminium, it should earth all of them in a roundabout way.

 

There are no plates over control cavities on this guitar as it would spoil the organic curves. The pickup selector switch is fitted underneath the pickup and accessible from the rear (the bagel!). No other controls are needed - it's very minimalist...

 

The pickup was then fitted to (a) pickup the string vibrations and (b) cover the dodgy woodwork and shoddy soldering.

 

Now for the artistic shots. Chewie got me some orange Neon strings for my birthday, so this was the time to whip'em out. They really are the icing on the cake! 

 

You can't beat a good angle shot...

 

Much better than straight photos...

 

The white strap matches the fretboard.

 

I'm getting the hang of not overloading the camera now. It's a case of standing further away and using the zoom lens. Simple really, s'pose.

 

 

Here it is, hanging together. It still hasn't snapped.

 

After a bit of settling in, the strings seem to stay in tune for at least a few hours. I'm pleased that the stainless steel re-inforcement has worked well as the strings can be tuned quite independently. I'm still getting used to the Delano Xtender pickup as I cannot decide on the best switch position. There is plenty of top end, but without sounding lacking anywhere else. It's a good place to start, and I'll have to give the 4x10 cab full beans with it soon ;-)

The Bloques Big Birthday Bash

Ah - forgot to press the publish button 2 years ago...

Moonbassalpha got its first major outing on 6/June/09 in Chichester at The Bloques Big Birthday Bash.

Since then, the neck has warped slightly, but in a Dingwall kind of way. It is only very slight and doesn't affect my playing. I think it was down to the wenge having a definite twist in the grain, even when stacking the layers in different directions when creating the neck. That is the downside of mail order wood buying! But that aside, everything else is still working fine.

I had to change the Bartolini pickups as I found them too dark. I could not get exactly the same size replacements so a bit of mild tweakage and some cheap £10 a go pups later and it sounds better to my ears.

March 2011 - Oving

Only a month ago I found myself buying a bass neck from ebay. It's straight, and doesn't have the typical fender scroll at the end. I scribbled a few different ideas down on paper since then and one has risen to the top of the stack...

Using Paint to get faux 3d didn't come out too bad for someone that is more used to drawing stickmen. I think the top horn needs to be a bit smaller, but the key points are

1. I cannot buy a bass that looks like this (hmm - deja vu)

2. It uses a ready built neck (though it needs an overhaul)

3. I like curves!

4. It looks pleasantly unlikely to work

5. I like orange

6. I've seen the Delano Xtender oval shaped pickup and want an excuse to use it

I reckon this one would benefit from being made out of a thick piece of maple. The string tension is going to make a lot of demands on the strength of the body wood, so I'm thinking of about 2.5" thick, but with a roundish cross section.

And definitely no lights this time.