Brought home the new toy last night

[shawn_a]

Being a guy who suffers from the occasional case of buyer's remorse, I love the layaway idea. So I've had something put away for me at the local music store and I brought it home last night. Here's my new piece of gear: a Peavey Grind 4 BXP NTB.



Not a pic of the actual bass I have, mine is way lighter in color and doesn't have the carving done on the bottom cutout. Absolutely has some of the best sustain I've ever found. Thank some decent wood selections, a neck-through-body design and through body stringing for that I guess. Super fast neck (not Modulus graphite quick but not too far away from that frame of reference) and, most importantly for bassists with short and stubby fingers like myself, a rather narrow neck.

I played for a short time last night before I started nodding off in my chair. More tonight for sure. I'm trying to dial in the tone controls to where I like the sound but it's got the goods for popping and slapping. I've already been toying with the idea of dropping some active pickups in place of the passives it came with but the stock units are pretty decent.

If someone is looking for a not too pricey axe that has some great features, give one of these a test play.

shawn

[brianpowers27]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Darn, now you are going to need a nice tube pre to go with it.

[johnnyrichards]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Couple strings missing on that guitar, Shawn... Oh, wait. It's a bass;)

[JRT]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

...my new piece of gear: a Peavey Grind 4 BXP NTB.



Not a pic of the actual bass I have, mine is way lighter in color and doesn't have the carving done on the bottom cutout. Absolutely has some of the best sustain I've ever found. Thank some decent wood selections, a neck-through-body design and through body stringing for that I guess. Super fast neck (not Modulus graphite quick but not too far away from that frame of reference) and, most importantly for bassists with short and stubby fingers like myself, a rather narrow neck....already been toying with the idea of dropping some active pickups in place of the passives it came with but the stock units are pretty decent.

Congrats... Is it more similar to the one depicted below?

[shawn_a]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Precisely that. Knew I had seen a better, more representative pic somewhere and you found it. Thanks.

shawn

[panterra]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

As much as I hate playing bass clef, I always wanted to lean to play one of those.

[romanbednarek]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Congrats Shawn! That sure is a pretty looking bass and I'm always attracted to the natural wood look (my Fender B-34 has the natural "walnut" finish).

[shawn_a]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

As much as I hate playing bass clef, I always wanted to lean to play one of those.

Parallel to my youthful pursuit of being a drummer I was a mean clarinetist. When I got up to 7th grade my music teacher (tip of the hat to Mr. Burkhardt) asked if I would be interested in baritone sax. Big honkin' instrument and, of course, bass clef. Truly a WTF moment for me at that age. I went back to the licorice stick after that one year experiment but it was a lot of fun to learn another instrument. Which reminds me that I need to get my old clarinet out and get it sent off for reconditioning. I might keep it or I might just go ahead and donate it to the school music program to give to another kid.

It's not too hard to grasp bass clef though. Notes are just in different places is all :D.

shawn

[shawn_a]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Congrats Shawn! That sure is a pretty looking bass and I'm always attracted to the natural wood look (my Fender B-34 has the natural "walnut" finish).

Thanks Roman. I saw this at the the local mom and pop music store and it really caught my eye. Of course the staff at The Music Pantry is always eager to let you sit down and plug in and that was that for me. The neck-through-body construction and neck width were the selling points to me. I haven't had a bass that felt this "right" since my Warwick Corvette. That bass was simply on another plane of reality though. For a relatively inexpensive bass I'm rather impressed. I figure on upgrading to some Bartolini pickups eventually and going active with them.

I think the next bass to get for me is a 5 string. That one will most likely be a Warwick because I miss the one I had so much. I played one of the Double Bucks a few weeks ago and it was so sweet. Worth the money for sure.



So how you would rate the acoustic kit you got from Stew-Mac on the difficulty scale? I'm playing with the idea of getting the same one you have just to have around to have it around ;).

shawn

[Jason]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

My GW Bass has Bartolini pickups and an OBP-3 18V preamp. Every tone you could imagine.

[AJ]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night



That's an awesome Peavey Shawn. Being a PV lover with my lowly Milestone, i can now honestly say i hate you. ;)

[romanbednarek]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Thanks Roman. I saw this at the the local mom and pop music store and it really caught my eye. Of course the staff at The Music Pantry is always eager to let you sit down and plug in and that was that for me. The neck-through-body construction and neck width were the selling points to me. I haven't had a bass that felt this "right" since my Warwick Corvette. That bass was simply on another plane of reality though. For a relatively inexpensive bass I'm rather impressed. I figure on upgrading to some Bartolini pickups eventually and going active with them.

I think the next bass to get for me is a 5 string. That one will most likely be a Warwick because I miss the one I had so much. I played one of the Double Bucks a few weeks ago and it was so sweet. Worth the money for sure.



So how you would rate the acoustic kit you got from Stew-Mac on the difficulty scale? I'm playing with the idea of getting the same one you have just to have around to have it around ;).

shawn

Since I have a habit of not trying to duplicate instruments, meaning I already have a 4 string electric bass, if I got another it would probably be a 6 string bass. 5 would be nice but I figure I would be better off going all the way and my fingers are fairly long so I shouldn't have issues reaching all of the strings.

I'll say that the Stew-Mac kit is an exceptional value but I'll have to think back about 8 years to try to remember the tricky parts of building mine. If you order one make sure you get the rosewood version because if you are going to spend all of the time building the kit you might as well build the better one. Compared to the classical guitar that I built in 1991 it was a bit easier because the neck is already formed and the sides are pre-bent (I remember boiling the mahogany boards and then clamping them down to a mold that my guitar teacher had from years ago. I cracked the first set but got it right with the second set).

Part of the problem that I had with the Stew-Mac kit was not having certain tools which are required. I needed "cam" clamps in order to hold down the braceing for the back and soundboard... these are deep clamps that allow you to get far into the board and clamp the critical spots for each brace. My dad and I ended up fabricating a bunch of them ourselves out of plywood and maple and they worked well enough. The other option is to build a "go-bar" box which is basically a platform for the soundboard or back with another platform above it and you use flexible pieces of wood that you wedge between the top platform and the soundboard braces (check the Stew-Mac site for a pic if you are confused). You can make one of these fairly easily and it might be a better option, I just didn't know about it at the time. So, that was the first thing I did was glue all of the bracing to the soundboard and back as well as shaped the bracing prior to that step and this was fairly easy to do. Then I think that I glued the sides together using the neck block and tail block and a very flat surface for the soundboard side of the guitar, because the back is tapered. Then the kerfing was glued to the inside edges of the guitar sides which was fairly easy but required a ton of clothespins and they can't be super cheap because they have to open up enough to reach over the thickness of the kerfing and the side. Then the kerfing had to be notched so that the bracing wouldn't interfere and chisels work well for that. Don't forget to write your name on the inside of the back of the guitar at this point because it is really tough to do it after it is all glued together (you can see the "RJB" that I put on mine below, along with my full name and the date). I forget the order of things a bit from this point but I'm pretty sure that the soundboard and back had to be glued on at this time and this required another set of easily made tools... spool clamps which I made from carriage bolts, large dowel with a hole drilled through the middle and pieces of felt to prevent damage to the soundboard during clamping, but you need to build a ton of these to clamp the whole guitar. Once again this step wasn't too bad but as with most of the steps it is easier if you have done a good job up to that point (meaning is something is warped or glued out of line you'll have a heck of a time getting the soundboard or back on, but keep in mind that the back has to bend slightly to conform to the tapered sides).

You have to cut out the material that is covering up the dovetail joint "socket" in the body of the guitar and then glue the neck on. Getting the right neck angle is critical at this time. With mine I intentionally used a little bit more neck angle than recommended because I've seen way too many older acoustic guitars where the string tension on the bridge has caused the soundboard to warp to a point where the saddle can't be lowered any more to improve the action. As a result this meant that I had the bend the fretboard down slightly at the body and this is what I was working on a few days ago because the fretboard began to lift at the body. I fixed it by lifting the fretboard at the body using a thin hot knife and then adding a shim under the fretboard at the body to relieve the bend (and with a little fretwork it now plays beautifully again). However, I still have a saddle that is slightly higher than most but it doesn't cause any problems and if someday the soundboard starts to bow out I will have room to lower the saddle to improve the action.

Okay, back to the kit. Some of the trickiest parts involved cutting the groove for the binding/purfling. I used a router to cut the groove on the soundboard using a bit with a bearing which wasn't too difficult because the soundboard is fairly flat. I ran into issues working on the back due to the taper and actually had to make a jig so that the router didn't hit the body at an angle near the narrower top part of the guitar body. You also have to chisel out a groove at the bottom for a few strips of purfling near the tailpiece which was tricky. To glue the binding/purfling on you have to use a ton of rubber bands and the tricky part is getting it to stay in the indented part of the guitar sides and mine has some issue there where the binding is starting to lift a bit but it doesn't affect the sound. So based on what was discussed so far I would have to say that the binding/purfling step is one of the most difficult parts to get perfect.

Putting the veneer on the head is easy, drilling the holes for the tuners is easy (I went with Schallers which are excellent in my opinion). You have to glue the fretboard on before hammering in the frets and it is nice because the fretboard is already radiused and slotted. Of course the truss-rod goes in before glueing the fretboard on. It can be tricky getting the frets in all of the way, especially near the body where there is very little support on the backside (I think I recall using clamps there). Once all of the frets are in, fully, then you can start working on filing them flat to remove high spots and this part can be tricky as well but is no different than what most shops do to repair guitars with similar issues. A good long file and a good straightedge is handy at this point and you're probably going to want to invest in a "crowning file" because you don't want flat frets after sanding off the original crown (this will hurt sustain). I think I went out of order by glueing on the bridge prior to finishing because if you see in the picture below, the guitar is unfinished with the bridge on. I forgot how I located the bridge, but this is very critical in order to get the intonation right (and if this is off it throws everything off in terms of notes and tuning). Finally, I finished mine using the guitar lacquer spray cans that Stew-Mac sells. It is pretty easy to use but I made mistake (maybe not a mistake in hindsight) of going a bit thin on the body/soundboard (this made my guitar louder and crisper than the Martin HD-28 that this kit is a clone of because the soundboard isn't damped by a thick layer of lacquer). I do find that this lacquer scratches easily, even where I went thicker on the neck and my guitar has some war scars as a result, but I care more about how it sounds than how it looks.

Well, I think that covers it. I really can't say how difficult it is to build but it is quite a bit different than building speakers because there isn't much room for error during each stage and if an error is made early in the build it makes it so much more difficult to compensate for it later. My guitar teacher, who has built a few guitars over the years, always has nightmares about the bridge popping off under the stress of the strings (it has happened to one of his in the past), but I would have to say that mine has help up pretty well other than the binding lifting in spots and the recent fretboard repair. The sound of this guitar is simply amazing and I have yet to find another guitar that is as loud as this one.

Let me know if you have any questions (I had more written here but the post was too long and got rejected).

[romanbednarek]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

Here's a little sample of how this guitar sounds (mp3, 192kbps, 4MB). I recorded this yesterday using the dual mic (12th fret/bridge) method but I EQ'ed it a bit (boosted bottom and top to compensate for lack of other low and high frequency instruments in the mix) and added some reverb. This is a song that I am working on, I wrote the parts recorded here yesterday but haven't had time to practice it yet and this recording is extremely sloppy and spliced together because I just wanted to get the ideas down before I forgot them. So consider it a collection of ideas that I still have to learn how to play well. Anyway, forgive the poor performance, but judge the sound despite the processing that I did.

http://www.rjbaudio.com/misc/March M...JB1 reverb.mp3

[brianp]

Re: Brought home the new toy last night

As much as I hate playing bass clef, I always wanted to lean to play one of those.

This is why I think every musically inclined kid should receive basic piano lessons, even if they want to specialize in a different instrument. Learn to read full staff, both clefs at once, and its easier to read for ANY instrument. (Except of course viola, with that wretched clef that puts middle C on the center line of a 5-line staff. I arranged a bunch of Irish folk tunes for a student string quartet a few years ago, and kept wondering why they couldn't just teach violists to read treble clef).