Harmen's new Jazz bass project completed

My new home built kit, Jazz Bass 

Today I finished assembling my new bass guitar.
I spent some time screening all the cavities in the body prior to fitting the electronics. I chose to use aluminium foil from some pie dishes obtained from our local store. I cut and fitted each piece of foil to shape, and set them in place with double sided tape. The wiring cavities I shielded by rolling foil around the stem of my Philips screw driver to create tubes which linked both the pickup cavities with the control assembly cavity. It was a simple matter to slip these tubes into the predrilled holes and terminate each end by cutting tabs into the protruding ends of each tube and folding these back against the shielding in the cavities.

I found that after assembling and doing a rough set up yesterday that the neck needed to be set back a little  to get the string action into the right range. I downloaded a PDF from the Fender website which turned out to be an absolutely brilliant reference for me during the dry run and final set up.
I fitted a .5mm shim in the lower end of the neck pocket and screwed the neck firmly in place.
I then fed the strings through the saddle and adjusted the intonation of each string with the help of my Boss tuner. They were all a bit flat so I unscrewed the adjusters until I achieved a true octave from open to the twelfth fret.
Next I set up the action, adjusting the string heights at the saddle and measuring the clearance at the 17th fret. After this came the pickup height adjustment, a simple matter of turning the four height adjustment screws..

I then re tuned the guitar and went up to our studio and switched on my beautiful 1961, Jansen 50 Bassman valve amp and plugged in my new guitar.

 My 1961 Jansen 50 Bassman valve amp and quad box.

You can't imagine my delight at what came out! It sounds just like a bought one. My new bass feels amazing, solid and positive to the touch. It really is incredible to me that a group of inanimate objects, assembled in the right way, with some care and attention to detail can produce such a quality instrument. YAY!

I finished the guitar body in Sanding sealer then automotive primer (Grey) followed by several coats of water based enamel each coat was sprayed with a small  De Vilbis  touch up spray gun.
The neck got two coats of sanding sealer, and 4 of semi gloss polyurethane varnish applied by spray gun as well.
The fret board is finished in 3 coats of Danish oil applied by brush and wiped back with a cloth.

My semi rigid, bass guitar carry bag arrived from Lenker Music also by courier.
It's constructed from 600 denier nylon, closes wit a heavy duty zipper. The padding is high density polystyrene with a black velvet liner. It's lightweight and very durable.

I made a guitar strap from an old webbing belt to which I hand stitched some synthetic braided spectra line.

Harmen