Sup TalkBass.
Pinging some peeps who were with me on the journey, thanks!
@monsterthompson
@Fuzzbass
It is all done, you guys
Today was the day! Today was the day of delivery of some small parts and some big parts for my "project". Actually, it was two or more things all going on at the same time:
1) I was building my first ever pedalboard
2) Changing some metal parts of my bass to ebony wood parts (machine head pegs and potentiometer knobs)
There is more planned, i.e a wooden truss rod cover but that will have to wait simply because... well, I am happy for now. Need to come up with a good design idea first, then I will go with it.
Anyho! Here are the parts.
Let's see some of it first.
So today I picked up some wooden machine head pegs and wooden potentiometer knobs made out of ebony wood, a pedal from Old Blood Noise Endeavours called "Dark Star", some premium flat, angled power and patch cables, a power supply unit for my pedalboard and the pedalboard itself.
Let's start with the potentiometer knobs.
The ones that came with my bass were fine but they were just plastic. Basic plastic. Kinda soft plastic, actually. They don't feel bad but they don't feel like anything special anyway, right?
So... I'm a sucker for metal/wood stuff on my instruments. Even on one of my custom painted pedals that I did I have exchanged the knobs from, again... flimsy plastic to nice, brushed, shiny aluminum, like here. Look!
So, naturally, I just had to do the same to my little baby ax, my Spector
From plastic...
To fantastic!
They came kinda dirty with some goop on them (yuck!) so I took some of my lemon oil, soaked the cloth a bit and just rubbed both the pegs and the knobs to clean them up and give them some of that nice lemon smell.
I wasn't sure if the pots would take on these shafts on the potentiometers that my bass has, so just to be extra sure I also bought some potentiometer shaft sleeves made out of brass.
Like so.
And just to make sure everyone is on board here, this is what I was working with - my Spector Euro LT 4 in tiger eye gloss. Note that outstanding figuring on the top, makes many jealousssss!
And the tiny sleeves mounted on the pots.
Thing is, both the sleeves and the shaft/knobs are of a 6mm diameter, so naturally with these sleeves installed, the pots wouldn't fit.
I've tried and tried, cut one of them thru, tried folding it over and even if the sleeves were nicely tucked inside of the potentiometer knobs, there was not enough physical space left for everything to fit together.
So... I went ahead and took them off and started to mount the new ebony wood knobs on these shafts and, kind of to my surprise, it worked. It worked really well, actually. So yeah, no brass sleeves for me here. Cool. (also ended up tightening some of these pots, one of them was slightly loose)
New on the left, old on the right.
And done! Look at them, they're so cute and round
As I am going along, I am saving all the old parts in zip lock bags, in the original gigbag. Who kno(b)ws, maybe one day someone will want them or something, I dunno.
Next - machine heads!
Really cool and really simple to do. Took a few minutes to change, all being held by one screw per machine head. Easy peasy, lemon oil squeezy.
Well, that was it for the bass itself. Now what is left is to downtune her a bit and check the rest of the stuff out - oh yeah, my pedalboard/mobile rig that I completed today, finally...
So, from the left -
1. Falken power bank (PSU)
2. Phil Jones Bighead Pro (Amp/Interface)
3. OBNE Dark Star (Reverb/Delay thing)
4. Darkglass B7K Ultra V2 Limited ED (Pre)
5. VSC - Volume-etric Shi# Compressor - (Markbass Compressore compressor painted etc by me)
All hooked up and ready to be played at any time, anywhere. This baby is fully mobile, outside, inside, whatever, whenever - THE FUTURE IS NOW! Just flip a power switch on the PSU which is mounted underneath and BAM! Off you go!
Thanks for reading and a big shoutout to my plant and to you, E!
Love you!
Thanks Talkbass
Pinging some peeps who were with me on the journey, thanks!
@monsterthompson
@Fuzzbass
It is all done, you guys
Today was the day! Today was the day of delivery of some small parts and some big parts for my "project". Actually, it was two or more things all going on at the same time:
1) I was building my first ever pedalboard
2) Changing some metal parts of my bass to ebony wood parts (machine head pegs and potentiometer knobs)
There is more planned, i.e a wooden truss rod cover but that will have to wait simply because... well, I am happy for now. Need to come up with a good design idea first, then I will go with it.
Anyho! Here are the parts.
Let's see some of it first.
So today I picked up some wooden machine head pegs and wooden potentiometer knobs made out of ebony wood, a pedal from Old Blood Noise Endeavours called "Dark Star", some premium flat, angled power and patch cables, a power supply unit for my pedalboard and the pedalboard itself.
Let's start with the potentiometer knobs.
The ones that came with my bass were fine but they were just plastic. Basic plastic. Kinda soft plastic, actually. They don't feel bad but they don't feel like anything special anyway, right?
So... I'm a sucker for metal/wood stuff on my instruments. Even on one of my custom painted pedals that I did I have exchanged the knobs from, again... flimsy plastic to nice, brushed, shiny aluminum, like here. Look!
So, naturally, I just had to do the same to my little baby ax, my Spector
From plastic...
To fantastic!
They came kinda dirty with some goop on them (yuck!) so I took some of my lemon oil, soaked the cloth a bit and just rubbed both the pegs and the knobs to clean them up and give them some of that nice lemon smell.
I wasn't sure if the pots would take on these shafts on the potentiometers that my bass has, so just to be extra sure I also bought some potentiometer shaft sleeves made out of brass.
Like so.
And just to make sure everyone is on board here, this is what I was working with - my Spector Euro LT 4 in tiger eye gloss. Note that outstanding figuring on the top, makes many jealousssss!
And the tiny sleeves mounted on the pots.
Thing is, both the sleeves and the shaft/knobs are of a 6mm diameter, so naturally with these sleeves installed, the pots wouldn't fit.
I've tried and tried, cut one of them thru, tried folding it over and even if the sleeves were nicely tucked inside of the potentiometer knobs, there was not enough physical space left for everything to fit together.
So... I went ahead and took them off and started to mount the new ebony wood knobs on these shafts and, kind of to my surprise, it worked. It worked really well, actually. So yeah, no brass sleeves for me here. Cool. (also ended up tightening some of these pots, one of them was slightly loose)
New on the left, old on the right.
And done! Look at them, they're so cute and round
As I am going along, I am saving all the old parts in zip lock bags, in the original gigbag. Who kno(b)ws, maybe one day someone will want them or something, I dunno.
Next - machine heads!
Really cool and really simple to do. Took a few minutes to change, all being held by one screw per machine head. Easy peasy, lemon oil squeezy.
Well, that was it for the bass itself. Now what is left is to downtune her a bit and check the rest of the stuff out - oh yeah, my pedalboard/mobile rig that I completed today, finally...
So, from the left -
1. Falken power bank (PSU)
2. Phil Jones Bighead Pro (Amp/Interface)
3. OBNE Dark Star (Reverb/Delay thing)
4. Darkglass B7K Ultra V2 Limited ED (Pre)
5. VSC - Volume-etric Shi# Compressor - (Markbass Compressore compressor painted etc by me)
All hooked up and ready to be played at any time, anywhere. This baby is fully mobile, outside, inside, whatever, whenever - THE FUTURE IS NOW! Just flip a power switch on the PSU which is mounted underneath and BAM! Off you go!
Thanks for reading and a big shoutout to my plant and to you, E!
Love you!
Thanks Talkbass
