Assembly

Frets were fitted using a rubber hammer. I had a slight problem with my heavy handedness when fretting. The fingerboard began to split away from the neck at the nut end. This stopped play for a short while, until I injected some glue at the damaged part and re clamped the fingerboard to the body. Once the new glue had properly set, I was able to continue fretting without trouble. A lot of work went into the fingerboard and my heart missed a few beats thinking about having to redo it. I used a deep tang fret wire and the fret slots were been deepened after the fret board was glued to the neck. It would have been unlikely that I would have been able to remove the fret board. All went well however and I have had no problems since.

I  finished the Bass in Tung Oil and Bees Wax. The first coat of Tung Oil was applied with a cloth, after lots of sanding with fine paper. Later coats were applied using 0000 grade steel wool.

And here is the finished article. I was, and still am, very pleased with the results. It looks right, it feels right and it sounds right, much better than I expected. The Piezos needed slight mods to the electronics. This was not a surprise, as the piezo amplifier design was a guess due to not being able to get any technical details for the piezo elements. The electronics cover in the photo below looked a little naff. It was later reworked with a stiffer plastic and now looks like a bought one.

When assembled there was a little fret buzz at the 14th fret across all strings (this must have been a high fret but I couldn't measure any out of true) and at the 7th fret D string only (I can't explain this one).  This was rectified with a very little fettling with a fret file. The bass then played perfectly, much to my surprise.