March 2020 GOTM

[Brendan]

March Guitar of the Month (for Guitars and Basses finished in February)

Enter your finished guitar or bass here to be judged for the Pit Bull Guitars March Guitar of the Month.

Please remember:

For Guitars or Basses finished on (or before) the end of February.

One guitar/bass per member per month.
It must be a Pit Bull Guitars kit (mods and upgrades acceptable).
Guitar or Bass must be finished and playable.

We need at least 4 photos:
· full guitar shot from the front;
· close up of the body finish;
· shot of the back of the guitar; and
· close up of the headstock (please, no brand name logos)


Please post your photos in this thread. If you are having issues posting photos on the forum, please email them to brendan (at) pitbullguitars (dot) com

Please note: This competition is open to amateur guitar builders only. If you are making and selling guitars for profit, you are ineligible. Also while there are some stunning guitars around - you never know what the judges are looking for, so we encourage anyone who's built a Pitbull during the month to enter!

Competition for closes at the end of February (Perth Western Australian time).

The sorts of things we judge on include:
· How well have the body and neck been prepared
· Is the choice of finish for the style of guitar appropriate
· How well has the finish been applied
· How well has all the hardware, pickups, etc, been installed
· Does it have the 'Wow Factor'· Which guitar would you make a beeline for in a guitar shop. That is, which one would you most like to take home.

BTW - remember that the winner is invited to be a guest judge the following month!

[Brendan]

First entry from Oldmate:
Here is my finished GR1SF. I used black dye then sanded back to make the grain pop lots more fine sanding, then several coats of green dye followed by several coats of spray on poly, sanding between coats a final sand with 2000 paper cut back and polish. Numerous hours on the frets and a set of slinky strings made this play like a dream.
The only mod was a set of Jim Dunlop 250k super pot.
I couldn't find the green I wanted in timber stain so I used a craft fabric dye it worked great.
Cheers from
Oldmate

[Brendan]

A couple more images:

[JimC]

This one had a complicated gestation. Ordered as a custom kit, it ended up with a different builder and an almost completely different set of hardware.

The bridge is Hipshot, bolted flat to the (scraped flat) body.

Pickups are Artec and the tuners are Jin Ho.

The pickup rings and truss rod cover are home made.

The control circuit is basically JB like with switches for single coil (bridge) and single coil/phase (neck).

The finish is natural, in Tru oil, with the exception of the engineered rosewood fingerboard which has been treated with a low viscosity epoxy primer and then lemon oil. It seemed to me that it only had very moderate flame in the top, so a spectacular finish wouldn't work well (and besides, that's not me). Oddly the flame in the maple is more visible in the photos than it is to my eyes.

Headstock decoration is a transfer on a background half veneer and half abalone, inlaid into the headstock.

Headstock profile is largely out of the box, but with the sharper corners radiused down to a GBR 10 pence piece.

Strings are Rotosound flats.

[JimC]

Many thanks to Simon Barden for doing difficult bits which I didn't have the tools or experience for and Fender3x for encouragement and endless agonising over cases!

[Marcel]

I'll give it another go....

PBA-4 - Precision Bass Ash body - It is very simply done, nothing too fancy, pretty much a basic build. Complete and playable/gigable, though over the past few days there are changes that are niggling at me. Mostly just minor details on the pick guard that I might do one day...

Finish is rattle can Vintage White Nitro to a slightly better than satin finish with very slight patina of the wood grain of the Ash body just showing through, and '63 Strat tinted clear gloss Nitro on the Maple neck/headstock. Wilkinson tuners, Bone nut, Stock kit bridge and PU's, and CTS 250k pots on a replacement Black guard. The tone is quite full and great, and intonation is spot on, with quite low action for a bass making it quite a fast player.

The body was pore filled with Timbermate and then sanded back. As far as the Nitro goes there was one coat of clear primer over both neck and body and then lightly sanded with 400 w&d. Three coats of the White and then three plain clear gloss coats over the white to the body. The Neck got four coats of the '63 tinted clear gloss and just one coat of plain clear gloss.... With use it should relic up nicely.

[basham75]

This is my first build, which I completed with my 15 yr old daughter, making it a great bonding experience. Initially, I decided to give this a go as a possible project to teach at school as I am a woodwork teacher. Upon undertaking this build, my daughter and I researched for ideas through this forum and we loved another persons steampunk bass guitar. So, as I was building this for my daughter, she wanted steampunk theme.

We purchased the PIT BULL DMS-4 ELECTRIC BASS GUITAR KIT (2 PIECE MAHOGANY BODY), and stained the body with Japanese brown and the neck with Japanese black. We coated the whole guitar with a satin varnish. We also purchased all black components to match the darker colours.

Unfortunately, the guitar did not come with shorty strings, so we have to purchase some new strings. The pick guard was white, so we had to paint it with hammered metal effect brown amber spray paint and a small crystal clear resin for paint protection.

I sunk the cogs into the body by using a 22 mm forstner bit and filling the hole with the same resin used on the pick guard.

I used a radial arm saw at work to cut a 30 mm section out of the body, and then carefully marked out where to drill the holes to place in the copper pipe.

It was a slow build, about 10 months due to my health, but for a first build we are happy.

The only things needing to fix are the screws in the pick guard and one holding the neck to the body as they were missing from our package.

I took it to our local music shop for them to adjust properly and they were amazed, telling me I should sell them. I may give making and selling a go. If anyone has experience selling these, please pm me if you have any advice.

[wazkelly]

Very interesting build basham75 with rather small horns compared to a typical P Bass shape.

[ozzbike]

This one is done....completely.

I have finished all that needs to be done for this one today. I even recorded a shitty video of me doing some scales on a clean and a crunch channel on a cheapie modelling amp.

Kit:- the nice PBG upgraded one here...

https://www.pitbullguitars.com/shop/...hardware-copy/

Hardware from PBG:-

Set of Grover locking chrome tuners and a bone nut at the time of purchase. EDIT:- Forgot about the set of noiseless Entwistle pickups.

Parts:-

Push pull Bourns pot in the volume position. 2 x bourns pots in the tones position. PIO Black Candy Capacitor. Switchcraft Jack socket. CRL five position switch.

White knobs to suit CRL five position blade switch, end of tremolo, 1 volume knob and two tone knobs.

Wilkinson WVP6 oval shaped screw holes tremolo bridge....straight drop in change with PBG bridge cut out.

2 x barrel string-trees.

Finish and Prep:-

Body and neck sanded to 180 grit and both hit with one coat of Cedar/Blackwood Timbermate. (Fingerboard not done.)

Body stained with three colours of Japan Brown, Jarrah, and Golden Teak Feast Watson Prooftint alcohol based stains.
Body then had four coats of Feast Watson Fine Buffing Oil in total. Left to hang for two weeks eventually.

Three coats of hand rubbed Gillys Cabinetmakers Wax...and lots of buffing. Left to hang for two weeks. Then three coats total of Gillys Carnauba Polish and even more rag based hand buffing.

Fretboard received three coats of Fine Buffing Oil, then three coats of Cabinetmakers Wax and two coats of Carnauba Polish.

Neck:-

Back of neck prepared the same way as the body. Front of headstock sanded and filled with timbermate....then decals applied and about ten coats of Tru Oil laid over the face of the headstock.

Back of neck and face of headstock finished with a number of coats of Carnauba Polish and buffed a lot.

Setup:-

As usual the setup on a tremolo start was crap.....still don't like them....but I like the options they give.

The rear of the bridge floats at 3/32 of an inch above the deck. This gives you a full step lower and a 1/2 step higher on the trem.

The bridge saddles height matches the radius and the neck is shimmed with two pieces of business card on top of each other at the headstock end. This lifted the fingerboard up and left me with some adjustment in the bridge saddles.

The strings were changed today from the kit strings to the Ernie Ball strings that came along as well. I was amazed to have to adjust things....then looked at the strings....they are like 08 to 42.....hmmm.

The bone nut was a drop in fit. The string height at the first fret is close enough for me. Once flattened the neck bent up to give 0.10 inch relief once strings applied.

I have string height of 3/64 to 4/64 across the fretboard at the 17th fret. Not too bad for an amateur like me. Pickups are set away from the strings at about 3mm on bass side and 2.5 on the treble side. No buzzing etc along the neck...only my fingers making bad noises.

A complete fret level, crowning and polishing was done. All ends of the frets filed and sanded. Edge of the fingerboard rolled and sanded. All hit with wax again and then one more carnuaba polish when done.

Intonation required adjustment on the fat E and Fat A string....the rest were good.

Issues:-

The Volume pot is push pull and the Seymour Duncan diagram for this was followed. The suggestion that a toggle switch may have been easier to use is probable closer to the mark. However, if the extra two sounds are not needed in a big hurry then the push pull volume pot is fine.

I found my missing tone connection and all is soldered good now.

The wiring diagrams on the net to give the bridge pickup a blend in the lower tone pot do interest me.....maybe later.

The pickups are very ringy like a telecaster even. My limited AMP setup skills are put to the test when I use a clean tone on the bridge pickup on the treble strings. The tone sustains extremely well....but the output is full of treble.

Drop the middles and trebles on the AMP...grab a chunk of Crunch or a Blues Amp Model and I like the sound. I love the spankiness of the fat strings in the slightly gainy Clean Tone and the bite they have in Crunch makes me smile.

The pickups make no noise at all. The pickups themselves and the worlds biggest collection of copper tape has seen to that. They are very impressive in that way.

Time for me to use this to make myself learn guitar to go with my average Bass playing.

McCreed especially for you......against my embarrassing wariness here is some video....just blues scales at the fifth fret in clean and crunch.

https://youtu.be/0kv3mwJMeJQ

[ozzbike]

Just a few more for the mix....