And another couple of shots. Doors within doors!  

 

  It should be done later today. Then I just have to reinstall the electronics.  I've been debating about moving the XLR output to the side of the bass. Or maybe still on the top but closer to the bottom (i.e., where the strap is).   Any thoughts about side mounted vs. top mounted jacks?

Nice job, Edwin, looks great.  I have always prefered top mount jacks.  I like to be able to see it when plugging in and taking out the cable, just makes it easier for me to do so.  The cable tucked under the strap hangs down the same way with either top or side mount, so that's not an issue.  Also, with top mount you don't have to worry about it when you sit down and play.
 
Rob

And side mounts often interfere with stands.
 
Bill, tgo

Thanks for chiming in, Rob and Bill!  
 
I'm pretty set on top mount at this point. It's also going to be easier to mount.
 
(Message edited by edwin on February 24, 2016)

 

  Shielding all done, with all the various parts tacked together with solder. Now I just have to put all the stuff back in there.

Bill.. And side mounts often interfere with stands.  
I hope you don't leave your guitars plugged in when they're on a stand !  I've seen several guitars crash to the ground when clumsy stage hands (and even musicians) have tripped over the cable.
 
Graeme

I went to see Phil Lesh in the Grate Room at Terrapin Crossroads shortly after he got his medium scale Series II. He was out on stage before the show tweaking his rig. When he finished he put the bass in a stand with cable attached, started to walk away, and caught his foot in the cable. Luckily the bass didn't come crashing down but he had a less than pleased expression on his face. Strangely he just left it the way it was and didn't remove the cable.
 
Beyond the stand issues top mount seems the way to go.

Recently I was in a rehearsal studio where someone stepped on the 1/4 line out jack of a synth keyboard to the amplifier ( it was not the keyboard player himself)  Long story short; as a result of the jack being pulled out by stepping on it there was resulting damage to the PCB mount 1/4 jack. I quickly saved the rehearsal by taking a feed from the keyboard's XLR balanced out instead. The resulting damage was not an inexpensive repair !

Weirdly, when I put everything back in, somehow the outputs are shorted to ground. I'm having a hard time figuring out where. This is happening even with the preamp card disconnected. I'm sort of wondering if some piece of metal got into the pickup selector switch.
 
I'm hoping to figure this out soon!

Weirdly, when I put everything back in, somehow the outputs are shorted to ground. I'm having a hard time figuring out where. This is happening even with the preamp card disconnected. I'm sort of wondering if some piece of metal got into the pickup selector switch.
 
I'm hoping to figure this out soon!

OK, all back up and running. The noise is significantly less, so mission accomplished. I'll post photos of the reassembled bass soon.

phew! : ))
Great news about the noise...that's gonna be nice.

Well, even more noise reduction accomplished. After talking to Ron, it became obvious that the hum canceler had to come out front, so Mike from Woodsongs routed a nice hole in there. Ron also informed me that grounding the cover via a wire is trouble, because of its width to length ration, it can act as an inductor, so I got rid of that and installed tabs of copper shielding.  
 
Got it home, tuned in the hum canceler to the best balance with the other pickups and it was indeed much quieter. It would be barely noticeable in a mix, even from a recording made sitting in my basement studio in front of the computer, etc.
 
Then came the leap of faith. Ron told me that the big problem with having the humcanceler in the body was all the shielding around it. While shielding protects the wiring, it also, as far as I can understand the brilliant mind of Mr. W., disperses the radiating fields of electromagnetism floating around in a very disruptive way so that the humcanceler is seeing a very different EM field than the pickups are. In fact, any metal does this, it doesn't have to be shielding, connected to any part of the circuit or otherwise have an electronic function. Even bridges, metal battery covers, etc., do this. What does it less than the copper shielding inside my bass is, wait for it, silver paint! Silver paint does its job as a shield but is thin enough that it doesn't create havoc from ambient fields.
 
So, armed with that knowledge, I decided to see if I could take things a step further. The luthier, Matt at Woodsongs, who had installed my Alembic pickups had very carefully, and with a large amount of skill, had shielding the pickup cavities. It was a thing of beauty. But, heeding the words of Ron, I yanked all that stuff out of there.  
 
I'll be, well, you know what, if it isn't even quieter still! Removing shielding to decrease noise seems counterintuitive, but in this scenario (since the pickups are already shielded), it really made an audible difference.  
 
I'll have to post a picture of the front.  
 
Next experiment at another time: try out the old pickups. The new humcanceler is there to stay, but apparently it should work.
 
Much gratitude to Ron, and James, and Mica, and Susan, and Mary, and all of them. It is a wondrous thing they've got going on there.

Wow,
Love it!
 
   Interesting about the ground strap.
 I recall a noise conundrum Ron solved by cutting some brass pickup rings so they weren't loops.Another example of unexpected induction I guess.

Here's the front.