Electronics will just be an Artec mudbucker, volume, tone and output. I thought about wiring the tone control like the Peavey T20/40 system; dumping one coil of the pickup to ground when the control is fully turned up. I'm more in favour of simplicity though, and having a small brown bass that really rumbles. I could only find 250 k ohm pots in my spare parts box, so this might just cement the rumble further.
Since I last posted I've been doing the fiddly wee jobs. I had to level and re-crown the frets as there was quite a lot of roundwound chew on the lowest frets. As a flatwound player I never seem to dish out this abuse on frets, but I've encountered a fair few basses with ground out frets. As such, I wonder if some guy put thousands of hours on this bass, or just had an aggressive technique with lots of vibrato?
I took this photo today, which captures the colour a lot better than the artificially lit photos I've been uploading:
The lacquer has totally stabilised. It has sunk a little into the grain since I last buffed it, but this has countered the 'dipped in plastic' look. If anything it looks a bit like nitro. I've seen Rustins plastic coating described as being somewhere between 2K and nitro, so maybe there is some truth to this.
The body is stuck on the stand here as I'm touching up one small bit where I blew through the lacquer into the wood. No such thing as a free lunch... the apprentice still has a lot to master...
Having done the frets, my attention is now turned to the neck itself. I sanded this back to bare maple, with a view to using an oil finish of some sort. I slowly started to think that this wouldn't look right, pairing a glossy and overtly 'finished' body with a rustic, satin-finish neck. The obvious solution is more Rustins!
This time I've been brave and mixed wood dye into the Rustins to give it a colour. Maple seems to take in dye quite unpredictably and inconsistently, so I figured I might as well add the colour to the lacquer.
After one coat it looked a bit warmer, and less pinky-white, so I was suitably encouraged.
After these photos I added three more coats. I'm going to review these tomorrow before adding more colour coats or simply adding clear Rustins over the top. Unfortunately I've had one run which has given me a darker line. I won't make this mistake the next time!