5 String bass

This is my fifth build but my first attempt at building a bass.

I have noticed a few comments about staining. Some saying the stain wont take or takes too well. One thing I've learnt in my past builds is sand, sand then sand some more. If the stain isn't taking, it's probably because of glue residue and nothing to do with the timber, so sand, sand, sand.

I usually start with 180 grit and work up to 1200. I don't see the need to start any lower unless the finish is complete shite. You'll find a nice smooth finish before staining will reduce "bleeding" and produce a much more even colour.

That said, here's my latest attempt. I made a few stuff ups along the way but nothing past experience didn't help me solve. The first minor stuff up was breaking one or two of the neck screws off during the mock up. (Sorry Adam, but your bolt on neck is now a set neck )

Hi David, welcome to the forum.

Some timbers, particularly rock maple, can end up glassy smooth when sanded to 1200 and therefore repel most attempts to stain them. From personal experience 240 seems to be the spot where maple necks will still absorb an even spread of stain colour.

On Basswood bodies they shine up fairly quickly too and I also tend to stop at 240 as on my first build went up to 320 and there were shinier smooth spots that didn't absorb as much stain as they could have if the grain wasn't so closed over from using finer grits.

Everyone has different experiences and the grain will also differ from one body to the next and I have found it easier to get better blend of colour with a bit of texture still present and the introduce the finer grades of grit once plenty of top coats have been laid down. My last build is a good example where back is basswood and at 240 it still struggled to take an even spread of colour all over due to the variance in grain patterns quite often found with that timber.

Thanks Mate. It's great to hear your feedback Waz

My first experience with basswood was a shocker. The body was complete rubbish (in terms of finish) and the neck wasn't much better. I ended up doing some solid colours to cover up the mess. If I can find a pic I'll post it. (It's an Iceman shape and now has a set of Seymour Duncan Alnico II Pros instead of the pickups that came with it.)

On this project I've only gone as high as 400 grit so far as it sanded up really nicely. Some of the red bled a little but nothing too dramatic. I've gone over the whole guitar with a white limewash. It looks a little "ghostly"?? and makes the red look faded.

I'm going to finish in a few coats of clear and then buff it off to get a more satin finish.

One thing I'm not sure of is the pickup wiring on this one. Most setups I've done have an active and an earth from the pick up. This one has 3 wires. The only 3 wire pickups I've done are actives (EMG's and the like) so any help, words of advice will be most graciously accepted.

Anyway, I'm off to "The Shed" to do some more on this beast and a few other projects I've been assigned

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Hi David, welcome to the forum.

Some timbers, particularly rock maple, can end up glassy smooth when sanded to 1200 and therefore repel most attempts to stain them. From personal experience 240 seems to be the spot where maple necks will still absorb an even spread of stain colour.

On Basswood bodies they shine up fairly quickly too and I also tend to stop at 240 as on my first build went up to 320 and there were shinier smooth spots that didn't absorb as much stain as they could have if the grain wasn't so closed over from using finer grits.

Everyone has different experiences and the grain will also differ from one body to the next and I have found it easier to get better blend of colour with a bit of texture still present and the introduce the finer grades of grit once plenty of top coats have been laid down. My last build is a good example where back is basswood and at 240 it still struggled to take an even spread of colour all over due to the variance in grain patterns quite often found with that timber.

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Are the "3 wires" actually green with a bare, red & white soldered together at the tip, and black? That would be usual for the style of pickup now supplied with this kit. If so, black is your hot/active, green & bare is your ground/shield, and the soldered red/white pair is the series link between the coils (for coil splitting etc.). If you won't be coil splitting just inslate the red/white tip so it can't short on anything.

Hi David, nice iceman.

For the stock IB5 humbucker pickups they are actually 4 conductors where a couple have been paired together. Simplest setup is to heat shrink the ends off on the paired wires and connect the others. If you have a look under 'Forum' - 'Wiring Pickups' - 'Split coil wiring for stock Chinese PBG Humbuckers' I have described which wires do what and also how to split the coils if you want to try something different.

Edit- Scott just beat to the post and is spot on with the wire colours. Thanks Weirdy.

I only had a quick look at the pups to be honest. I'll have a better look when the time comes to do the hardware.

The iceman came up really well in the end. With the new pick ups it sounds amazing especially with a bit of overdrive (well maybe a lot) it will sustain for days.

(My wife says she can see a British/English trend developing and thinks I'm secretly plotting to go back home for good. The last build was the Union flag and now an abstract take on St Georges Cross?????)

I'll check out the tutorials and give you a shout if I get into strife.

More pics to come

PS: I had a better look at the pups and you're both right. 3 lots of wires, not 3 wires

You definitely don't want to come back here at the moment!

You did a good recovery job on the Iceman.

In my opinion, solid basswood bodies without a veneer are really designed for solid or almost opaque colour finishes.

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

In my opinion, solid basswood bodies without a veneer are really designed for solid or almost opaque colour finishes.

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Hey Simon, that's a bit harsh as some Basswood bodies turn up with a bit of interesting grain pattern happening. Maybe not as much as you find with Ash.

Not trying to be harsh, just practical. You may get lucky and get some with a good grain pattern, but because of the general nature of Basswood, if I was ordering a body in one (as opposed to say ash), then I'd already have planned to do a solid finish. If it turned out to have a decent grain, then I might change my mind. The definition of what constitutes 'Basswood' is quite broad and there are about 30 species in the Lime/Basswood family (of which most are found in Asia), but they generally have very little grain.

So if I was planning to do a solid colour, basswood would be fine, but for something with a decent grain to go under a planned translucent finish, I'd be ordering something else that I'd know would have decent grain pattern.

So I've been told Simon. I've been speaking with my cousin on Skype in sunny Devon the last few nights. He said it's been a bit on the cool side of late. I'm coming over in June/July for his 89th birthday bash.

I was a bit lucky as the grain patterns were on the Iceman. they weren't to bad at all. But the dye bled like no ones business, mostly on the back. I did the back in solid black and also the white in a solid colour. the red and blue I managed to leave for the most part and hide the edges with the white

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

You definitely don't want to come back here at the moment!

You did a good recovery job on the Iceman.

In my opinion, solid basswood bodies without a veneer are really designed for solid or almost opaque colour finishes.

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Question for the masses. What is the bridge setup measurements for the 5 string bass? Am I right in assuming it's the same as for the 6 string videos on the website?

In terms of distance from the nut? It's a 34" scale so your high G saddle will be furthest forward, probably just a bit further away than the 34", and the rest of the saddles will be staggered back from that. It's a general Fender style bridge and StewMac reckon that the bridge fixing screw hole centres should be 35" from the bridge, which should allow at least 1" of saddle adjustment.

I'd move the G saddle forward so that it's still got about 10mm of thread still showing at the neck end of it, and position the bridge so that the centre of the saddle is 34" (863.6mm) from the fingerboard edge of the nut. Hopefully this should put the fixing holes at roughly 35" (889mm) from the nut to tie-in with the StewMac recommendations.

Any doubts, then it may help to show us a picture of the bridge. The one in the PBG picture of the kit doesn't look right to me; the one of the built IB-5 looks different and with longer saddle screws.

OK. The bridge on the pictured built bass is what's supplied with the kit, not the picture showing the parts. I'll follow your recommendations Simon and hopefully all will be well. Thanks mate

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

In terms of distance from the nut? It's a 34" scale so your high G saddle will be furthest forward, probably just a bit further than the 34", and the rest of the saddles will be staggered back from that. It's a general Fender style bridge and StewMac reckon that the bridge fixing screw hole centres should be 35" from the bridge, which should allow at least 1" of saddle adjustment.

I'd move the G saddle forward so that it's still got about 10mm of thread still showing at the neck end of it, and position the bridge so that the centre of the saddle is 34" (863.6mm) from the fingerboard edge of the nut. Hopefully this should put the fixing holes at roughly 35" (889mm) from the nut to tie-in with the StewMac recommendations.

Any doubts, then it may help to show us a picture of the bridge. The one in the PBG picture of the kit doesn't look right to me; the one of the built IB-5 looks different and with longer saddle screws.

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That's good. It gives a lot more scope for adjustment if necessary.

The next question I have is what pins do I use on the output jack. The kit comes with a 3 pin barrel jack. The longest pin looks like it's the earth but there is nothing on either of the other 2 indicating what is what.

The PBG wiring diagram for the IB5 only shows a standard jack socket, so isn't any help here. Generally for this type of connector, web info indicates that normally the lugs are all slightly different lengths, with the shortest one being the tip/hot connection, the middle one the ring connection (for stereo output or battery switching) which would remain unused in your case, and the longest one, which is the shield/ground connection.

The only way to check thoroughly is by sticking a lead in the barrel and measuring with a multimeter. A standard guitar lead will let you check which lug connects to the Tip, but the Ring and Shield connections on the barrel jack will both connect to the shield on the lead's jack. If you have a stereo/TRS jack lead, then its easy to check the connection of all three lugs. The ring connection isn't used, so unless you plan to fit an active circuit in, it can be a good idea to clearly mark the ring connector and then snip it off, so that you don't accidentally use it or have a loose strand of signal wire shorting against it.

Conversely you could wire the shield/ground lug and the ring lugs together (for extra ground contact area, never a bad thing).

The factory seems to use a rather unique three pin flush-mount socket... they never connect up the way you expect and I think have changed at least once. Current batch, I believe, still has shortest pin as hot and the middle as ground/sleeve. This post may help, but as Simon said, it's always good to check with a multimeter just to be sure.

The IB-5 usually has a stereo jack with three pins - (http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-con...s/pdf/IB-5.pdf). From memory, the pins are a larger one (lets call this the bottom) and two more arranged in a sort of broken circle around the jack when looking down the jack from the wiring end. I've tried to represent the three lugs with the three lines in the diagram shown. The lug that is closest to the centre (and typically shortest) is generally the mono (or "hot") lug, the furtherest outside (and typically longest) - the earth. Hopefully the diagrams below should explain it better... If it's different from the photo below, if you could take a photo and attach it, we should be able to work out a solution for you pretty quickly. That said, WeirdBits and Simon have it right with the multimeter- that's the best way to check.

Tip, ring & sleeve is what this type of plug was originally known as.

It is a telephone cord type switchboard plug like you see in the old black & white movies, known correctly as a Sylvester Switchboard.

Some businesses were still using them as late as 1980 here in Sydney, Email Whitegoods had three of them

OK. Some diagrams have the hot wire as white, but an earlier post from someone suggested the hot wire was black. The pups with the kit have a green/bare, a black on its own and red/white soldered together. So which is the hot wire in my case? Black??

Yep, black is hot, green & bare is the ground & shield, red & white is the coil link (just insulate the soldered tip so it can't short).