RD-4 build: Trials and tribulations.

[abw]

DEAR DIARY:

I wanted a bass and I wanted to make something. I do not have any experience with guitar/bass builds. What I do have is a fair amount of experience in drum building, restoration and finishing/refinishing. I also have access to a good shop and a good selection of tools. This will be fun.

Step 1: Prep work.
Not much to report from the unboxing and the mock build. Issues that needed work:
- Some dents here and there. A really big dent betwen the pickup cavities.
- Uneven sides, curves and rounding.
- Uneven bevel on the pickguard.




This is the big dent. There is a smaller dent as well.




The dents have been filled with wood plaster and sanded smooth.




Sanding. Not too exciting, I know. Being used to hard woods, I went straight for a high powered orbital sander and a P120 disc. That was dumb. I got a medium foam block and gently worked my way from P80 to P600 by hand. Most of the work was done at P400, the P600 was mostly for smoothing out the curves.




Here we have the pickguard. I tried different approaches to the smoothing the bevel and got varying results. The white layer made the unevenness stick out like a sore thumb. I decided on a classic solution; black marker. This is regular marker, later I went over it with a proper acrylic paint marker. Looks good to me.

[abw]

Step 2: Priming, painting and lacquering.

In the past I have used stains, dyes, solid paints and wraps. Stains and dyes can be very beautiful, but I wanted something solid black and shiny. You can never go wrong with black and shiny.




This is the product line I went with. From the left we have filler primer, base color and 2K clear coat.




Behold my improvised lacquering setup! The goal is to avoid getting the clear coat overspray everywhere. These cans are no joke. The area is well ventilated and I am wearing a certified respirator and gloves. This stuff is extremely bad for you, please use proper protection.




And here it is. Now it will cure for at least a week before I sand, buff and polish it. There is some orange peel, but not more than I expected. The visible dust is on top of the surface and the line is a reflection from the ceiling. There are some spots where I might need to go in with a lacquering pen and touch it up. Time will tell.

Now I have time to brush up on my soldering skills. Not looking forward to that.

[elcodyloco]

Cool! I'm glad to see somebody do an RD bass at last! Is the shape faithful to the original Gibson model? I'm disappointed to see that the kit had such a horrendous dent, though. That's a little concerning.

[abw]

Cool! I'm glad to see somebody do an RD bass at last! Is the shape faithful to the original Gibson model? I'm disappointed to see that the kit had such a horrendous dent, though. That's a little concerning.

Yeah, the shape is on point as far as I can tell.

The dent is questionable quality control. It would have been a major problem if I had wanted a transparent finish. In this case I just decided to work around it.

[Dedman]

Looking great! Welcome, your glossy blackness has my full support!

[Simon Barden]

It will be easier to do the soldering if you make up most of the wiring harness first before fitting it in the bass. Use some cardboard to make a rough template of the control cavity. Poke holes through the cardboard using the holes in the guitar body in order to get the spacing correct, put the pots, switch and jack socket through the holes (I normally do the nuts up as well so they don't move too much). You then get much better access to the pots for wiring, and it's easier to keep the wire lengths as short as possible so they don't make a mess once in the cavity.

You only then need to connect to connect the pickups to the selector switch (which can normally be done with the wiring harness still not fitted) and then fit the pots, switch and jack to the guitar body.

Don't forget to fit a ground wire from the bridge to the back of a pot. There should be a hole for this drilled from one of the bridge post holes to the control cavity (from the lower rear post hole would be my guess). When you fit the post support inserts, you'll need to run the wire down this hole, leave 10-15mm of the end of the wire bare in the hole and trap the wire between the insert and the side of the hole. I'd leave a reasonable length of this wire spare in the cavity to allow easy wiring up and any future removal.

[abw]

It will be easier to do the soldering if you make up most of the wiring harness first before fitting it in the bass. Use some cardboard to make a rough template of the control cavity. Poke holes through the cardboard using the holes in the guitar body in order to get the spacing correct, put the pots, switch and jack socket through the holes (I normally do the nuts up as well so they don't move too much). You then get much better access to the pots for wiring, and it's easier to keep the wire lengths as short as possible so they don't make a mess once in the cavity.

You only then need to connect to connect the pickups to the selector switch (which can normally be done with the wiring harness still not fitted) and then fit the pots, switch and jack to the guitar body.

Don't forget to fit a ground wire from the bridge to the back of a pot. There should be a hole for this drilled from one of the bridge post holes to the control cavity (from the lower rear post hole would be my guess). When you fit the post support inserts, you'll need to run the wire down this hole, leave 10-15mm of the end of the wire bare in the hole and trap the wire between the insert and the side of the hole. I'd leave a reasonable length of this wire spare in the cavity to allow easy wiring up and any future removal.

Thank you very much!

[andrewdosborne]

Very nice abw!

[abw]

Step 3: Tribulations.

I am really enjoying this and I already want to do another build. This stuff is addictive. The lacquer has probably cured by now, but I will give it the full week. It is really hard to stay away. I got a hold of some old electronics and have practiced soldering as per Simon Barden's instructions. It is not as hard as I feared. Thanks again, I really appreciate the advice.

I was not feeling too bright today and I decided to do something easy. Cut out some graphics and stick it on the pickguard, how hard can it be? Well ...




... you could end up with a perfect mirror image. It is so dumb that it is funny. In all honesty I have done much worse things in the past, like carefully measuring out, pilot drilling and drilling 28 holes in two drums, just to discover that they were all wrongly spaced for the hardware. That one made me angry, this is just a bump in the road.




So it turned out that I did not have enough material for another go. I tried this instead. While it looks kind of good, I am not quite happy with the shape. It got the ball rolling, now I will try to do a custom pickguard.




And then there is this. Sloppy taping has left me with some thin lines of bare wood on both sides of the neck. There is still a lot of work to be done on the neck, I will have to figure something out.

Oh well, you live and learn.

For anyone interested, the skin for the pick guard is made by a Canadian company called Walopus. They specialise in drum wrap, but they also do “Guitar skins” that come with strong adhesive on the back. Lately, probably right after I placed my last order, they also started offering pick guard material from their designs. They have wonderful customer service and they do custom orders free of charge.

[Simon Barden]

I feel for you. I've discovered that I'm better off not doing anything if I'm not feeling that well. I find it too easy to make mistakes if I'm not thinking clearly. So I did nothing yesterday (plus the weather was horrid).

Now if you ever make a left-handed RD bass for someone, you've got a ready-made pickguard cover!