I used some hollow wire braid between the pots. It worked ok, but was tricky to get through the F-hole. Simon recommended using shielded cable. I liked that idea, but I was using a bunch of colors so as not to confused..
It's not easy to do any shielding in hollow bodied guitars, especially where it counts most with humbuckers - in the control cavity.
You can shield the pickup cavities, but as the supplied pickups are humbuckers with covers, then it's going to do next to nothing to reduce induced noise in that area, but adds more wires to solder and conceal.
The pickup leads are shielded, so the only unshielded wiring is on the potentiometer/switch/output jack harness. These are all close together, so this does reduce the level of noise picked up. If the pickup selector was on the upper horn, then I'd certainly use screened cable to run to it, as it's quite a distance, but it's probably not worth it for a few centimetres.
went to sand the headstock logo flush.. but aparantly it wasn't completely dry yet.. so i sanded the whole front of the headstock down to bare wood and will paint and stain it all again.. the logo was cut into the wood so that'll work just fine.. just gonna take some more time.. of which i have plenty as the clear on the top has to fully harden before i can sand and polish it before i can mount the bridge which i'll need to align the neck..
as to the shielding.. i think Simon is right.. it won't make a lot of difference to shield those short bits of wire.. besides i don't see much use for it when playing at home.. can't see myself playing bass for a band and performing live anyway.. since i'm actually mainly a guitarist..
why would a guitarist build a bass? well i do have a really nice guitar but the bass i currently have is really crap it rattles and buzzes all over the place so it was a better candidate to replace with a DIY instrument.
I think most of us have both regardless of how we identify. Your reason sounds good to me. I have three other basses. But I wanted one to do exactly what you say. Turns out there are not that many affordable semi-hollow 34" scale solid center bases on the market...
rite.. 2nd attempt at headstock logo.. 1st time around i mixed a lot of pearl powder in the silver paint i think that's the reason it wouldn't dry properly.
this time around i put down a basecoat of silver paint, then some superglue and then the pearl powder.. should be good to go after i sand it down flat..
just redid the stain on the headstock after re doing the logo and resanding it.
the result is not perfect but plenty good enough to me.. odd thing is the difference between the 2 pics.. 1 is with and the other without flash..
i also did a bit of a fade like i did on the body.. which i really like
Different colour temperatures from the flash and the standard lighting bringing out different colours. Also, if it's an LED flash on a phone camera, then it's mainly three quite narrow frequencies (red, green and blue) mixed to give the white, but it's not as broad spectrum white as a standard light bulb (or better still, the sun) will give, so some of the colours in the flash's spectrum are missing.
no way back now..i have just been installing the 1st bits of hardware
I needed the bridge and 2 tuners installed to check the alignment of the neck.. the bridge pins went in surprisingly well.. they seem to be in there pretty solidly.. i've been reading horror stories about those but mine seem fine..
turns out the sideways problem has been solved.. (i do need to fabricate me a shim though.. there's a bit of a gap between body and neck).. however there remains the non existent action unless i mount the bridge stoopidly high..
in this last pic you should be able to see what i mean.. the strings actually do not get up off the fretboard.. i do realise the bridge was mounted pretty much as low as possible.. but otherwise A: it looks silly i.m.o. and B: the space between strings and pups would be way too big.
the questions now are.. should i try to change the break angle on the neck.. or just plane it down so it sits lower.. or a combination of the 2..?
and then a couple of unrelated questions.. A: i'm unfamiliar with this type of bridge.. should it sit paralel to the body or paralel to the strings??
and B: i know the distance from the nut to the 12th fret should be half of the scale length and from the 12th to the bridge a bit bigger.. approximately how much is a bit? so i can check if the neck is in the correct position down the strings wise
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