Monday 10th December '07

let me OUT... No.., let me IN!!!!

Today is the day, at long last, that this replacement neck becomes one with it's body..

first off the fingerboard is oiled and buffed up..

and then bit's and pieces need to be don to the body..

the replacement battery cover is carefully made to match drawings of the original

and works well..

This lovely old Vox looks pretty harmless hey?..

welcome to the scariest electrickery I've EVER seen!  At this point Vox had bought an old electric organ company and they decided to use some of the old stock in these guitars! .. they sound amazing but are liable to give poor luthiers a heart attack!

after finally finding where the wire that had become desoldered lived verything is put together, the bridge installed with a new ground cable and the neck fitted... more with this beastie later..

This Wizard bass pickup needs a home..

the template is cut carefully to size..

and the slots are pre-drilled and routed to fit the pickups..

the carving points are marked out roughly

and after an hour of carving and rough sanding the front is good to go..

The back is a lot more work...

but after some graft we have an almost-guitar..bass.. thingy..

back to the Vox, the angle of the original headstock (slavishly copied on the replacement) is very low so this block of aluminium will go underneath the tuners to pull them down a bit and thus create a greater string-break angle..

though cutting 2mm thick aly is a bit of a chore!!

after filing and polshing with wet and dry paper it is polished with jewelers rouge..

and the main post holes cut..

at this point Mark arrives to finalise the neck shape of his new soon-to-be bass.. I rasp to the required shape..

mark out the control layout..

and end up with a slightly dusty.. but very happy customer.

Till the morrow when we will be having an 8-string touch guitar design marathon..

VB,

Ben