RD-4 build: Trials and tribulations.

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.


Attachment 20895

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


Attachment 20896

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


Attachment 20897

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.


Attachment 20898

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.

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.


Attachment 20899

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


Attachment 20900

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.


Attachment 20901

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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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Thank you very much!

Very nice 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 ...


Attachment 20949

... 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.


Attachment 20950

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.


Attachment 20951

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.

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!

Attachment 21140

There were some issues with my finish that I decided to correct. I sprayed over the area that I had worked on and then this happened. Now I have a dead fly stuck in my wet clear and 20 hours of waiting before I can sand it away. At least he went quick.

I've heard of fret buzz, but body buzz...

Well that's a certainly a fly in the ointment of this build - sorry Simon, thought you might have gone with this!

What a bummer - that finish looks great abw.

oooo crap. Bad Norwegian words. Lots of bad Norwegian words. I hate that sort of thing happening, it's like the universe testing your calm.

Damn flies! I've noticed my local Australian flies have a liking for grey primer spray....

Thanks for your kind words. The fly will always be a part of this bass. The spot where the fly met its demise is still visible under the new coat. I used a bit of solvent to remove it and some must have remained. In direct spot lighting you can see some bubbles. Life has gotten in the way lately, but I finally had some time this weekend. Went ahead with sanding, buffing and polishing.


Attachment 21432

This is the result on the front, I am pretty happy with it and it is as good as my level of skill will get it. For the sanding I used an overpowered random orbital sander with 2000, 3000 and 4000 foam pads. For the buffing and polishing I also used a orbital sander with two different pads and compounds. Not the best idea as the sander has a way too high RPM, but it is what I had. The buffing compound suggested 800 RPM, the sander works at 12,000 RPM (unloaded). Up close in direct lighting you can see lots of small circular cuts. I call it Pre-Relicing™.


Attachment 21433

Another important step in Pre-Relicing™ is to make sure that you get big splotches of hardener as your can of clear coat runs dry. They give the finish that rustic charm and extra mojo. Joking aside, I have made my peace with it. Then and there I had a faint hope that it would meld into the rest of the coat, but that did not happen. If I were to do the whole job again it would be too time consuming right now and something else would go probably go wrong. Professional results are for professionals.


Now comes another fun challenge, making a new pick guard. I am torn between keeping with the original shape or going full on Liberatore era Voivod. A part of me also wants something in chrome to match the hardware, but I am not as cool as Glenn Tipton.

Attachment 21567

And there we are. Making a pickguard shaped like the original proved to be way beyond me. But hey, it sparkles and that is good enough for me. Maybe I'll try again someday.

There is some selective noise and hum here and there, not sure if it is faulty soldering or lack of proper shielding.

As far as playability goes, it is mostly good. I am still getting my head around this whole setup and adjusting thing.

It's great to actually see one of these babies finished.

Hawt! This is great. I agree with Fretworn, been looking forward to seeing one of these buttoned up. What bridge have you used?

nice looking RD-4 ABW, have you got any more pics of the finished build ? you should enter it in GOTM

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

nice looking RD-4 ABW, have you got any more pics of the finished build ? you should enter it in GOTM

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Thanks for the encouragement, but out of respect for the great work displayed in those threads, I think I will reserve that for a later build. I never removed the splotches of hardener that you can see in the earlier post, doing it over would have taken more time than I have available right now. If you want to see more pictures, I would be happy to take some. There will be a post in the photo gallery section.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pablopepper

Hawt! This is great. I agree with Fretworn, been looking forward to seeing one of these buttoned up. What bridge have you used?

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Thank you! The bridge is a Hipshot Supertone. It fits the pre-drilled holes just fine, but I had to go treasure hunting for inserts that would fit the screws that came with the Supertone. The lead and/or pitch of was slightly different according to people in the know.

Awesome bass!


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