Bass! How low can you go?

[Bob Ross]

will assemble it and will enjoy using it for a few months while I get some real work done and scheme on how to get into a proper paint booth so this part of the build isn't so painful.

I feel your pain: I have two instruments that I bought raw wood bodies for with the intention of doing my own finish work...but due to my pathological inability to be patient & meticulous when applying finishes (as well as my own laziness/procrastination) these instruments are now going on 18 months and 84 months (!) respectively without a final finish.

[VertigoCycles]

I feel your pain: I have two instruments that I bought raw wood bodies for with the intention of doing my own finish work...but due to my pathological inability to be patient & meticulous when applying finishes (as well as my own laziness/procrastination) these instruments are now going on 18 months and 84 months (!) respectively without a final finish.

Good luck to you! It's a different kind of pain cave. Did you ever have one of those sliding puzzles as a kid? The ones with the sliding squares that had to be moved to unlock anything adjacent to it? My project list is like that. Everything is interrelated in some way and I can't just grab one thing and do it start to finish without moving 34 other projects out of they way first.

I assembled the bass the other day, and got it 90% wired up. I wrongly assumed that between all the extra parts I had on hand from building a couple of amps, and a professor friend of mine gifting me six moving boxes of NOS components from her lab, that's I'd have the two caps I need for the tone controls. While I wait for my Mouser order, I've been enjoying doinking around with the bass on the ODS clone I built. I wired a serial/parallel switch into the controls too and in serial mode it's like a little volume boost while thickening the tone...so cool. The good news is that it sounds great, the neck feels amazing and I don't notice the crap paint job while I'm playing with it. I haven't built enough of these yet to know how different woods really affect the tone. Unplugged, this sounds like the bigger, meaner older brother of a strat. Very loud, clear and resonant with a bit of a growl to it. I'll see if I can find a good spot for a photo tomorrow and wrap this up

[Mark Kelly]

If you are just looking to wire it up, you know you can series / parallel caps to get the value you want?

Works just like resistors but backwards (because you are adding admittances not impedances) so if you wanted say 330 nF and you had a box full of 220 nF you can wire two in series then one in parallel across the series pair and it will come out to the correct value.

Be careful doing this with electros because one cap in the series pair might not see enough polarisation voltage to maintain the electrode film but I can't imagine you are using electros in your tone controls.

[VertigoCycles]

If you are just looking to wire it up, you know you can series / parallel caps to get the value you want?

I did know that but thanks for pointing it out. The reason why I chose not to do it is because the caps I have in the appropriate values are the orange drop type and are too big to fit into the control cavity, which is already quite tight. Had I opted to put the mini switch somewhere else, there would be room, but as is...no go. The caps arrived yesterday, have been soldered in and I should have ordered more of them in more values to experiment, so I'll do another order with Mouser to try them out. Right now there are 0.047uF caps in the controls, and I do have one 0.1 ceramic to test so I'll do that first. There's not quite enough range with the 0.047s

[Bob Ross]

@VertigoCycles just curious if you ever finished up this bass, and if so how it's working out for you?

[j44ke]

I keep thinking this is another fishing thread.

[VertigoCycles]

@VertigoCycles just curious if you ever finished up this bass, and if so how it's working out for you?

yes, it's been finished for quite some time. I love it! The series/parallel switch gives me a few tonal options, it feels great, sounds great (even on a guitar amp) and now that I've had it for a while, I don't notice the imperfections in the paint. I built a 100W copy of a Dumble Steel String Singer a while back and it handles the bass like a champ. Plenty of power for my uses.

It was getting a lot of play early on, but I mostly play guitar and after acquiring a 70's ES-355 earlier this year, none of my other instruments are being played much.

One of these days I'll take some photos and put this thread to rest, but both of my parents have passed this year and I have my hands full just trying to manage all the estate business and a property that's $2500 miles away.

[72gmc]

yes, it's been finished for quite some time. I love it! The series/parallel switch gives me a few tonal options, it feels great, sounds great (even on a guitar amp) and now that I've had it for a while, I don't notice the imperfections in the paint. I built a 100W copy of a Dumble Steel String Singer a while back and it handles the bass like a champ. Plenty of power for my uses.

It was getting a lot of play early on, but I mostly play guitar and after acquiring a 70's ES-355 earlier this year, none of my other instruments are being played much.

One of these days I'll take some photos and put this thread to rest, but both of my parents have passed this year and I have my hands full just trying to manage all the estate business and a property that's $2500 miles away.

Sorry to hear that, Sean. My wife and I each lost one parent this year. I’ll be glad when you can take the time to pick up that bass again.

[Diablo de Acero]

yes, it's been finished for quite some time. I love it! The series/parallel switch gives me a few tonal options, it feels great, sounds great (even on a guitar amp) and now that I've had it for a while, I don't notice the imperfections in the paint. I built a 100W copy of a Dumble Steel String Singer a while back and it handles the bass like a champ. Plenty of power for my uses.

It was getting a lot of play early on, but I mostly play guitar and after acquiring a 70's ES-355 earlier this year, none of my other instruments are being played much.

One of these days I'll take some photos and put this thread to rest, but both of my parents have passed this year and I have my hands full just trying to manage all the estate business and a property that's $2500 miles away.

Geez.. Really sorry to hear about your parents passing. Both of mine passed this year also. I concur with it being quite a lot handle. Good luck. On a better note, can't wait to see what the bass is looking like.

[Bob Ross]

Oh, Sean, I'm so sorry to hear about your folks! I've been spending a lot of time with my parents lately, knowing that it's time I'll never be able to get back.

Would love to see the finished bass...and the Dumble clone...and especially the 70's ES-355! Here's a pic of me from 1978 the day I got my brand new ES-345
ES-345TD in 1978.jpg
...which, sadly, was stolen only 2 years later. I would kill to get that guitar back!

[VertigoCycles]

Thanks guys. I'm sorry for all of those who have lost loved ones as well. It's difficult enough on its own and while it brings out the best in some, it brings out the worst in others. I just got back home late Sunday night and just yesterday family members were already in contact about how they're going to get their money. It's disgusting.

On the bright side, I've been flipping a lot of gear this past year and it's been profitable enough that I've acquired a few new keepers.

[VertigoCycles]

Oh, Sean, I'm so sorry to hear about your folks! I've been spending a lot of time with my parents lately, knowing that it's time I'll never be able to get back.

Would love to see the finished bass...and the Dumble clone...and especially the 70's ES-355! Here's a pic of me from 1978 the day I got my brand new ES-345
...which, sadly, was stolen only 2 years later. I would kill to get that guitar back!

That's a real bummer about your guitar being stolen. I have a real soft spot for those Norlin era Gibsons. The T-Tops and Tim Shaw pickups were pretty great...the tarbacks not so much. I'm also a big fan of the maple necks and the volute. All three of the Gibsons I own right now are 78-81...a Les Paul 25/50, an ES-347 and the ES-355 which is easily the best Gibson I've ever had my hands on. Both the LP and the 347 have tarbacks and I'll sell the LP next year but UPS broke the 347 so I'll use that as a mule to test out different things. I've been wanting to make a bridge humbucker with a tap to give it a boost. I've got a Don Mare single in the bridge of the tele I built with a tap and I love both positions.

Here's one of the Dumble Clones

DD14A347-AC6E-45EF-9830-9E0DFC6F1048_1_105_c by Sean Chaney, on Flickr

A lent it to a buddy up near Seattle last year who has gigged it a bunch and loves it so much that I don't have the heart to ask for it back. We'll be visiting with him over thanksgiving so maybe he and I will work something out.

The SSS style Dumble copy I built sounds a like like what I recall of a Fender Dual Professional that I had in the 90's. It's super powerful and CLEAN but is so unforgiving of sloppy playing. One of the really interesting quirks is that it'll feedback in octave 5ths like a high gain amp. I don't think I have any finished photos of that one either. If you can't tell, I move on pretty quickly to new projects once I wrap them up. I've designed a 3 channel preamp and am slowly working on the layout. I've also been working on reverse-engineering some of the TC-1128 equalizer which is an amazing digitally controlled EQ with all analog circuitry. It would be a really fun (and useful) project to make a stereo line mixer with similar digitally controlled mixing stages that could be run from a midi controller.

[DOOFUS]

Bass? Yes, I am.

C2 is the comfortable low end for me. I can get to A1, but it's gravelly below the C. I need to keep working on support and placement.

Tenors suck.

[Bob Ross]

I feel your pain: I have two instruments that I bought raw wood bodies for with the intention of doing my own finish work...but due to my pathological inability to be patient & meticulous when applying finishes (as well as my own laziness/procrastination) these instruments are now going on 18 months and 84 months (!) respectively without a final finish.

fwiw, I finally finished (as in both completed, and applied the surface treatment ...in this case, Howard's Feed N Wax) the (what was then) 84 month old project instrument:

Total elapsed time, 10 years!!! But man, it came out great, and I'm psyched that I can finally play this bass without thinking "oh, man, I really need to finish this before I can focus on just playing it."