6 Steel Grinder / Skully's Bass VI Build

[Zork]

Hopefully it's nice to play once it has the bass vi neck. 30" scale is quite a bit on a small Tele body with normal bridge placement. Actually I'm really happy to have the bridge set back on mine. But anyway, it looks just plain awesome, that's for sure!

[skullservant]

I hope so too! We will definitely find out for sure soon haha

[skullservant]

Neck has shipped. Should be here Tuesday. Just need to order strings tonight

[skullservant]

STRINGSSSSS. Went with Circle K, 102 being the thickest string. I DONT WANT NO FLOP.

Also ordering the brass nut today. I forgot that I needed one. Getting it cut to spec by Axemasters, so I should hopefully have that by the end of next week to wrap this guy up

[skullservant]

Neck is in! It's awesome. Exactly what I ordered.
Going to try to put it all together between today and tomorrow. I need to pick the brass nut up from the post office tonight at some point.

[Moose]

I really like the neck blank without any inlays, makes it stand out more!


You better post a demo of this once it's all together and finished

[skullservant]

Thanks man!

It's my first guitar that doesn't have neck inlays on top (this one does have them on the other side though, so still a little bit of help there) but I like the look of it too. Was going for SUPER minimal on this one and I think this is icing on the cake.

Really excited about the brass nut. I bought it off of ebay, and I've bought a few brass nuts from the seller, and he was able to spec this one exactly the way that I wanted/need it to be for the Bass VI- 14" radius, filed for the gauges that I will be using, with a 1 5/8" width, flat bottom. So it really should fit like a glove.

I'm also really excited about the tuners. You can see I did a test fit of one of them before I had to leave out for work this morning, but they just seem really nice. A good step up from Gotoh.

[Moose]

I really like the minimal look man, that neck is suweeeet!

I don't think I've ever come across a brass nut on a guitar, but it sounds like the builder of it is awesome. I can't begin to imagine how much of a nightmare it would be to try and get that kind of service over here!

What are the tuners you're using?

[skullservant]

I've got a brass nut on the Stratoblaster. Same dude. He's pretty great!

These are Grover Mini tuners!

[Moose]

Oh yeah so it does....brass nuts look pretty damn funky!


Ahh right, I know some who installed grover mini's on one of his projects, said it made a hell of a difference with tuning stability. But then the guitar was a beginner's one that he used as a beater guitar, so I'm fairly certain any other tuners on it would have been a replacement

[skullservant]

Yeah I think they look funky but I'm a fan of metal on guitars so I'm never going to say no to a brass nut haha

I've got Grovers on my EGC. They're a lot nicer/smooth than the Gotoh's I've installed on a budget

[Moose]

That's fair enough, I have to admit it's really swish on the stratoblaster, and I reckon it'll suit the stain on this one nicely.

I've never changed over/installed tuners myself. Might give it a go on the jagmaster when I get off my ass and get the neck!



But anyway, looking forward to seeing the grovers installed and the whole thing put together man

[skullservant]

Yeah, I think it'll blend nicely. I wish that aluminum was a little more rugged, would be nice to have an aluminum nut to get a bit of silver in there, but the golden color will do just fine here too I think.

Tuners are interesting! I've actually installed quite a few pairs of them over the years on various projects. I think this might actually be my 5-6th set that I've installed, but the first non-Gotohs

[Moose]

I think brass works because whilst it's gold-ish in colour, it's not the same as gold, you know?

It's more like the working man's gold hahaha

I'll look into grover tuners for my jagmaster, see how easy they are to come by and how much they are over here

[skullservant]

All done! I picked up the brass nut from the post office last night since I was out of town on Saturday and gone all of yesterday during the day.
Sanded down the nut a little bit (they make them a little bit tall) but I was able to take off a little bit of height to lower the action.
The only real modification that I had to do was gauge the string ferrule and string-through hole on the bridge for the low E string to be able to fit.

I'm glad that I added in the tone circuit that you can take in and out. It's got a powerful sound, but it can be really cutting sometimes. But when you put the tone circuit in, it really does sound like a bass.
The action is surprisingly low. I wanted to make it a little taller than a normal guitar, just because I feel like a little higher action on bass is what I like, but it's still low which is awesome.
I didn't have to fiddle with the truss-rod at all. Surprisingly not hard to play without top dots.
The reverse headstcok is definitely different! I've never played a guitar with one, I dig it though. Just took a few minutes to get used to.
Favorite sound so far (after only a few mintues of being able to play it last night) was Bass VI -> Bottom Booster -> Rusty Box.
The Bottom Booster gives a tiny bit of growl and some fatness, and then the Rusty Box just sends it over the edge.