CDP 2017

What Happened to Mitch's Bass?

All well organised and set up. However, note the location of the bass amp just left of the fridge. Bass player is only guy with his patch cable going backwards across the path. All the guitar amps are in front. Next year, we will move the bass amp over to the far right. Why?? well, because as someone passed behind poor Mitch, his chord got stepped on an OUCH - broken pick guard. Sucks... Mitch's bass is a classic 70's Fender beauty. arrgh...

Electronics are OK. That's a relief. But poor old pickguard has end snapped off. Missing a small piece too. Note that it had been modified as Mitch had a really nice pickup upgrade done in... apparently... 1988 by Stevie Ray Vaughn!

Pickguard sites galore... looking at pictures, not sure about the hole pattern for the screws matching perfectly. Plus that modified pickup. hmmm. Turns out the material is easy to get and pretty inexpensive. Let's give it a try!  I have one of these cool shape gauges to grab the shape of the missing piece from the fading on the body. Dave gave me th esuggestion to make a wood template and then use that as a router guide to cut the plastic and get the bevel. Makes sense to me. lets try it!

Put the old broken one in the scanner. Cut that out, double sided tape it to the plywood and cut it out. Use the drum sander to get it perfect. Try it out. Hey Mitch, what about a wooden pick guard?!?!

The wooden template looks like a boot? It needed some hand sanding to get the edges really smooth, the first try at router showed that imperfections in the wood get amplified and look bad on plastic. The sheet of material is big enough for me to have 2 tries at this! will I need both attempts - likely, eh? I did a practice run using a bit of the leftover after the rough cut. Worked pretty well, but was upside down - arrgh... good thing i did a practice run!