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Zeronyne's bass assembly diary (Update 4/12/2006)


zeronyne

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It looks fine to me Zeronyne.

In fact it looks most excellent.

 

And of course, HOW DOES IT SOUND?

 

(It's hard for me to hear it from here, that's why I'm yelling)

 

What was the total cost for this project?

 

(Apart from emergency room charges for stitches from slips of tools, soldering burns, and punching the wall in frustration? :) )

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The bass looks great 09!

Nobody will know about those cosmetic flaws but you and they won't affect the way the bass plays.

My hat's off to you!

A trick I heard from one of my luthier buds for grounding the bridge is to twist the ground wire a little and put a tiny drop of solder on it. He claims this trick will insure solid contact and cure noisy passive pups. Just a thought.

Good job!

Visit my band's new web site.

 

www.themojoroots.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Originally posted by jeremy c:

What was the total cost for this project?

 

(Apart from emergency room charges for stitches from slips of tools, soldering burns, and punching the wall in frustration? :) )

$604.00. I could have saved $100.00 if I had chosen a neck without binding and blocks. Also, the Dremel I bought was $40.00, so there was some reuse there.

 

But the education was priceless.

 

After I intonate it tonight, I will record a few short clips.

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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Cool! Now people will come up to you and say, "That's a neat bass--I've never seen one like it!" And you can say, "There isn't another one like it--I made it." :thu:

 

Cool to have something that you made yourself. I look forward to clips; I bet it'll sound great.

 

All that and an education to boot! Now I so want to do this... :D

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Mr 0-9: If I had a hat, I'd take it off to you. I am in no ways a fan of the P-Bass, nor of black guitars (yet I end up with them anyway); yet you found a way to make me say, "Hmmm... that's a nice P-Bass! I wouldn't mind having that!" And you've given me a reason to consider buying the odd pieces to eventually build my own.

Three cheers to Zero Nine, Junior Luthier!

"Am I enough of a freak to be worth paying to see?"- Separated Out (Marillion)

NEW band Old band

 

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Way back when I was young, I assembled some electronic kits. One thing that remains from that experience is that different soldering situations require different levels of heat. You can use reasonably low heat to attach a wire to a post, but need more to attach to the pot body. Also, some metals resist being soldered. I remember filing a spot on some metal casing so I could solder to it. That might have made the soldering to the bridge more workable.

 

The drilling from control cavity to bridge area is a mystery to me. I'd like to see the tools to do that (I'll probably browse StewMac). That (to me) seemed like the hardest part.

 

It looks good, and if it plays and sounds cool, you're in great shape !!

 

sweet tease said:

Can I have your Nordstrand build slot now? You clearly don't need it...

And what do you need it for? You have one, and were last seen buying guitar equipment for your offspring...

 

Tom

www.stoneflyrocks.com

Acoustic Color

 

Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars and keep your feet on the ground. - Theodore Roosevelt

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Originally posted by zeronyne:

The Gotoh Bridge I bought seems to have some sort of coating, so solder just refuses to stick. My jury rigged solution will follow.

may be too late, but here's what I do: get a piece of copper or aluminum foil that is adhesive on one side (I've used insulation foil from Home Depot, it works) and stick that under the bridge where the sun don't shine. your solder and wire will stick onto the foil. it's as simple as that.

 

pull out your VOM and see that, if you did it right, you'll have conductivity from the top of the bridge to the ground wire. besides, screwing down the bridge will insure the ground wire isn't going to go anywhere unless you move it around.

 

another tip: skip the solder they sell at Radio Shack. spend just as much and get the fine silver-tin solder they use for electronics work. heats faster and you wind up using less to do your work with. make sure your solder tip is clean and plated before each use, and if it starts getting hard to use just get another tip. a clean, plated tip is much easier to solder with than a dirty, blackened one.

 

I was lucky to have my dad show me the fine arts of soldering and shop work as a young man.

 

TC: there's a long (6-8"?) drill bit they make to drill through bodies. last time I think I found one in Sears, but not all of them carry a good assortment. figuring out the right angle to drill can be tricky, though if you're not used to thinking 3-dimensionally. best to practice on scrap wood before doing the deed on the actual body.

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  • 1 month later...

I had a small multimedia clip to do for a corporate client tonight. I'm rewiring my studio, which takes several days, so I decided to try to pull it off on my laptop. They wanted to reference a Temptations song. My apologies to them for butchering it.

 

Anyway, I used the P Bass, and I thought some of you would want to hear it.

 

I pulled out everything in the mix except for some percussion and a small synth line. I recorded the bass in two passes. The latency is due to me monitoring through the laptop. I will fix it before it gets to the client, but it is immaterial here.

 

The initial part and end part(this is only 30 seconds) is the P Bass through an Avalon 737 set completely flat with no compression. The tone is rolled completely off. There's a bit of a delay plug in, but it is run parallel, so it's not effecting the source signal.

 

The middle part is the P again, tone full on, played through the Bass Pod using a GK model with a bunch of high end added.

 

By the way, in case you are interested. The "radio tuning" noise throughout is a filter plug in (PNP Pyro) set to self-oscillate, but the LFO is modified by the basses signal. Sort of a side-chain for the filter.

 

I hope it's a good contextual representation of old-school P goodness from a beginner.

 

 

LINK TO MP3

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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Thanks for all the kind words, deserved or not!

 

Getz76

What did you use for the drums? Sounds good.

This was done in Live 5.2. For the mellow section, I used two tempo-matched loops from Stylus RMX plus a bit of snare from a Yamaha RM50. The livelier part is another loop...I think it's from an Acid library...on top of a pattern I sequenced with sounds from DFH2. They both have a compressor set to intentionally "pump", and the middle part also has some Q filtering for that pseudo wah thing.

 

Shecky Madball:

Next I want to hear the tone not rolled off, but without all the highs added. Bet that is a "full service" sound !!

Will do, but the new strings are a bit zingy. After I finish the rewiring, I'll revisit this and record something more "true".

 

This may be the first time in my Asian American life that I've been associated with the word "Mutha". I feel complete. :D

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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Originally posted by CMDN:

Reminds me that 09 is a bad mutha...

Shut yo mouth!

 

And for my .02, that bass sounds fantastic.

My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle. ~Liberace
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He's a complicated man, and now he understands how to build a p-bass....

\m/

Erik

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

--Sun Tzu

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