Mando-caster kit

teb · Post by **teb** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:07 pm

So I was browsing on eBay one day and found a cheap 4-string mandolin kit. I don't play mandolin and with my fat fingertips, never will, but my brother does. He's got a couple Epiphone Mandobirds, a brand new Jetglo 5002V58, a deposit down on a matching MG one if it ever arrives and who knows what he's bought this week? As I figured, if I offered to put one of these mini Telecasters together for fun, he'd pay for it. So we ordered one and it arrived a couple weeks ago.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Solidbody-ELECTRIC-MANDOLIN-BUILDER-KIT-w-FENDER-PICKS_W0QQitemZ7387868968QQcategoryZ47067QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

All in all, the kit's pretty decent looking, especially for the price ($130-ish). The neck seems pretty well made and the electronics look OK and are easy enough to replace if they turn out to be poor. The basswood body isn't much for beautiful wood grain but is reasonably well done and comes coated with some sort of resin sealer on it (smells like polyester). I have a basic distrust for unknown resin coatings, so step #1 was to sand it off and re-seal. I decided to veneer the top with a little curly maple first, followed by several courses of leveling and epoxy sealing to get rid of the thickness variations sanded into the curls when they made the veneer.

Today it was time to start spraying color on the sides and back. It was unusually warm out today and with the help of a couple big halogens, I managed to get the temperature in the loft above the garage up to 46 degrees! I don't think the varnish makers had wanna-be luthiers who build instruments out in the driveway in Wisconsin in winter in mind when they wrote the instructions on the can of varnish.... Minimum 70 degrees - yeah, right. Well, 46 is pretty close to 70 (at least it feels like it here in February) so I fired up the compressor and readied the spray guns. My plan was to spray quickly and then run in and hang it up in the basement to dry. I'm not set up with a place where I can spray toxic stuff like the CV that Dale and Paul use, so I use KTM-9 waterbased stuff from Luthier's Mercantile. It's not as good as CV, but it's not toxic and buffs out pretty well. I probably looked pretty funny running into the house with a wet mandolin body on a stick while trying to dodge the snowflakes that were falling, but the stuff seems to be drying fine and I managed to get the color coats on. The top sealer needs a little sanding and touch-up and then I'm ready for clearcoats. I e-mailed my brother and told him that it's about a subtle looking as a pair of checkerboard pants, but has a nice "country-twangy" look to it.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/mand%20top%20copy.jpg

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/bodies%20copy.jpg

It should be pretty cool when it's done and if it plays decently, the kit price is pretty cheap recreation. As you can see in the second photo, it's a tiny little bugger. The other body is a new one I'm building for my 2030 bass. It's similar to the last one I built, but the perimeter shape has been refined a bit, the back edges have been contoured a bit more and the top is bound. It will be Jetglo and other than the body shape, all stock 2030. It's getting sealed at the moment and was built last week, literally out in the driveway on a Black and Decker Workmate. I'm trying hard to develop that discerning "Curmudgeon's eye for detail" - but it's hard to do when snow keeps blowing in your face and you're standing in real mud....

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/ljygf%20003%20copy.jpg

kcole4001 · Post by **kcole4001** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:15 am

Pretty neat stuff!
The bass body looks very Capri influenced.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:06 am

Thass a cute li'l bugger, Teb.

The ad says "snap-on connections--no soldiering (sic)"

But you "soldiered" on despite the ice on your mukluks.

Have fun. That's what it's all about...

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:41 pm

That is a neat little piece of work, Todd, although to me the headstock seems out of proportion with the rest of it. I guess strength might be a contributing factor there.

Any chance of providing the the neck width at the nut?

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:35 pm

Teb, the curly top and the tinted sides give it a kind of country look, like Elvis' old leather-cased flat top.

Aitch, I think the heaviness of the headstock could be mitigated (as a lawyer night say) by a bit more bottom curve in the Tele shaping where it transitions from the neck into the headstock, if you get what I mean. Looks a tad thick to me.

Still, no faulting Todd's workmanship here. Beautiful work!

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:00 pm

Agreed, Paul. Perhaps a full frontal shot rather than one with the headstock closest to the camera might provide a better indication of the proportions also. I do like the finish too, Todd - lovely work indeed!

teb · Post by **teb** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:40 pm

Some of it is the photo angle, but it still will get a bit of trimming and slimming. When I was originally cutting down that big paddle-head it just seemed like I was taking off an awful lot of the available wood, so I was fairly conservative. Being a rank beginner at this stuff, I'm still probably over-thinking every cut. If I was building another boat or sail I'd just hack away without hesitation, but it took a lot of years to get to that point. Here, I'm still at the stage where I fear doing something and then finding out two steps later that I shouldn't have done it that way.

I'm pretty well stuck with their pre-cut, long curve on the top side of the head from the nut to the beginning of the straight top edge where the tuners are. It's much more gradual than the curve Fender uses. I could fill it in and then veneer the head to cover it, but don't think it's probably worth the trouble. The bottom side of the head will get a little more dramatic, curvy contour and get thinned-out a bit. There is still plenty of room for the tuners. Here's a better photo, along with a real Tele head. It won't look exactly like the real thing, but it will be closer.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/head%20003%20copy.jpg

Howard, the nut width is actually better than I thought it would be. It's 28mm and the string spacing is in the neighborhood of 6-7mm apart (which is pretty similar to the string spacing on my Ric 6-strings) so I may even be able to play one of these. I think I remember three mandolin chords... or....maybe I'll just make a really short-scale bass out of it....

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/head%20004.jpg

I did manage to at least get one clear coat on the maple top and over the color coats on the back and sides today, but it was only 34 degrees up in the loft and dropping, so I figured I'd better quit before I found out how to make artificial snow by atomizing water-based varnish.

Wouldn't this sucker look cool in a little tweed case??? I might have to try it...

teb · Post by **teb** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:01 am

I'm starting to appreciate power tools that heat up in your hand as you use them... Sunny today, but only about 21 degrees in the garage so far. Don't know whether my dark green roof is going to soak up enough sunlight to get the loft up to "varnishing temperatures" today or not. This cold wave is interfering with my creativity! Anyway, here is the revised head. I'm pretty happy with it. Watcha think?

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/cut%20down%20001%20copy.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/cut%20down%20004%20copy.jpg

Love the flame in the sunlight (at this point, the sunlight, all by itself, ain't half bad.)

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/cut%20down%20005%20copy.jpg

The basswood grain on the back and sides has a few points of interest considering that basswood tends to be kind of bland and the mix of Colortone mahogany red and tobacco brown dyes made for a nice warm color.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/cut%20down%20009%20copy.jpg

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 11:46 am

What a difference a silly 1/4" makes to the lightness of the headstock, appearance-wise...

ozover50 · Post by **ozover50** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:00 pm

Absolutely! Looks much better.

teb · Post by **teb** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 2:15 pm

I did just a touch more trimming and think I can live with the head shape. I'd better quit before I screw it up. Clear-coating on the body has begun, but I'm only getting about two coats a day on because the 40 degree temperature window in the loft opens about 2:00 and by 4:00 its already started to cool off quickly. The KTM-9 varnish is pretty thin and it takes a lot of coats to get that thick glossy clear-coated look. I did test fit the neck with the plate and screws today and it seems to fit. It really is a tiny little bugger when you hold it in playing position. Then again, it's not the size of your instrument....it's how many watts you can arrange to pump it through....

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/tw%20copy.jpg

I'm getting anxious to get it done and plug it in to see how it sounds. Since I can't play mandolin in the first place, I figure I'll just crank-up the distortion, play really fast and sound like one of those annoying kids at your local Guitar Center.

The big bugger ain't coming along half bad, either - though there are times that I could really benefit from Master P.W.'s basic spray-painting class. The black is on, my cobbled together, home-made binding scraper with rip fence allowed me to get the binding cleaned-up without destroying the color coat and I managed to get the first clear coat on.

Scraping the binding clean:

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/blk%20001.jpg

This one could be my ultimate Ric bass, even if I did have to wait 35 years for JH to bring out my signature model and then finally give up and build the signature part myself... It already has a killer neck and the sound is superb. I was planning to go with gold guards and TRC on it, but I'm also digging this sort of reverse-tuxedo look with the old white guards from the other body sitting on it. I've even considered back-painted guards that are gold with about a 1/4" white band around their edges. I'll have to do some testing and see what looks best.

The project certainly makes you appreciate the folks at the factory and the quality of work that they turn out. I will never understand though, why Rickenbacker has never made this bass (or one similar to it). The 4005 looks like an over-inflated pig by comparison (no offense to any 4005 lovers, but that's the way it's always struck me). The 4000-4004 wave shape is nice, but some of us have always wanted another option. Somewhere out there, there is an old Mapleglo Capri with a short-scale fretless bass neck on it. I know because I had the neck built and installed about 1974. It wasn't a great bass, but it had the look I wanted and I used it as backup. Just sitting on stage in the stand the thing was beautiful. In this case though, the 2030 both plays and sounds as good as anything I've ever tried, but the body looks like Mickey Mouse's head... Oh well, the last thing J.H. probably needs is me telling him what he should be building, but this one is going to be really pretty!

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/blk%20002.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/blk%20003.jpg

jps · Post by **jps** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:25 pm

That bass is starting to look great but I think the PG is too large and overbearing, try one sized more like that from an over-inflated pig! Here is an example:

Sorry, I mean this one!

teb · Post by **teb** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:35 pm

Yes, the white guards shown are a bit big as they came off of my first replacement body, which was a little larger. For this body, they would be reduced some, though I'd probably shoot for proportions kind of like a 350, which has always been my favorite Ric look.

The other very interesting possibility with a cool look is no guards at all. Sort of a semi-blackout. Since the control cavity on a 2030 is on the back, the top just has little holes for the knob and switch shafts. I don't play this bass with a pick, so a guard isn't really needed at all and is just cosmetic. I actually seldom even pluck the strings over the body and instead use a weird folk-guitar-style, thumb-and-finger-picking combination over the tail end of the fingerboard. Other than doing some time in the proverbial bad high school rock band in the '60's, my roots are in the Chicago Folk Music-type stuff, playing bass for a bunch of acoustic guitars. Rather than hard and loud, it needed to be fairly soft and very clean. There is a sound sample of my 2030 here that's played that way and shows what a great clean sound it's capable of making.
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/Ric%20Bass%20test%202005.mp3

Anyway, without the guards, you just stick some little felt washers over the shafts which keep the knobs from scratching the top and then add the knobs. The pickups are black with no metal surrounds and I'd probably switch to a black bridge. The tuners would still be chrome, but my all black Pedulla has a black bridge and chrome tuners and still looks pretty good. The TRC could be either black or white. I'll most likely start that way and not drill holes for the PG screws until I'm sure I want to add one.

http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/no%20guard%20005%20copy.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/no%20guard%20006%20copy.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/tbradshaw/no%20guard%20007%20copy.jpg