I believe that there are a lot of factors when it comes to tone.

The difference may be slight but detectable.
- Different types of woods.
- Different brands of strings.
- Different brands of cables.

I enjoy high quality, low noise microphone cables for playing my instruments.
The cables that I like the best, have a higher strand count.
AC signals travel on the outer surface of the conductor.

In regards to the ToneWood debate, whatever makes you happy...
I believe that anything that vibrates can cause something else to vibrate.
If I put my ear against the wood body of an electric guitar and can hear the string vibrating, then in theory the string should be able to feel the same vibration echoing back to it. The electro-magnetic pickup can only react to what the string is doing. If you have ever experienced something going into resonance, you will see that the vibration can magnify exponentially.
https://youtu.be/3mclp9QmCGs?t=65
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y_tyUjkkhA

Nevermind, i deleted this post. Usually i know better than to get involved in a tonewood debate

At the risk of cries of sacrilege I've added linear style markers to #1642 using tape. 'Violin' tape seems to be less available here in the UK (the sources I found were imports from the US), but 3mm wide 'graphics'/whiteboard tapes is readily available in a range of colours and seems to be pretty much the same thing? I started by putting a piece on some scrap wood for a few days, after which it could be pealed off (with some effort, which is good) and didn't leave any obvious residue, so...

As I didn't want to de-string just to add the tape I used a piece of stiff plastic cut from an ice cream tub to 'lead' the end under the strings. In the picture you can see from the already applied marker to the left that the marker tape extends down the side of the neck too (it doesn't continue on to the bevel).



Here's the full set (2, 7, 12, 17 and 22)



Being used to guitar/bass a whole perfect 4th between markers seems like an awfully long way. I fully appreciate and approve of the logic of teh 4ths, but it still feels like a long way at this stage.

Studying the marker logic & how it gells particularly nicely with some of 'offset' tunings to give relationships such as LH2-RH12 & LH7-RH17 on classic I came up with an idea that I've not seen mentioned (I did try searching), i.e. a second set of 4ths markers 2 frets lower than the usual ones, i.e. at 5, 10, 15 (& maybe 20).

As well as giving a second set of 4ths intervals & reducing the 'gap' it would that also add some extra interesting relationships e.g. LH7-RH5, LH10-RH10 & LH17-RH15 on classic, or LH2-RH5, LH7-RH10 & LH12-RH15 on Baritone Melody (& middle 10 on 12 string 6+6 classic).

I've not 'taken the plunge' with the real tape but I did do a mock using 4.2mm PostIt cover-up strip.


I can't recommend the cover-up strip as a marker (far too 'low tack') but it did allow a few minutes of experimentation. I think I like the idea, but I'm in two minds about adding the extra tapes or not...

Any thoughts?

Whatever floats your boat. Have you seen some of the Sticks on fb with markers all over the place? All the C's (or is it E's?)...I'm of the opinion "less is more" but I'm also not very "disciplined" in my studies.

I just put red dots on all the "C's", but I expect to be able to remove those at some point. For now (being less than two months into this adventure), I'm finding it extremely helpful in getting a sense of the relationship between specific notes and the markers. I know the guitar fretboard quite well, and the note-name relationships are identical on both the bass and melody side, so I'll be ditching the dots as soon as possible. They're ugly!

I'm thinking of adding tape also, but just to accentuate the markers, nothing additional. My Railboard will have the linear inlays, so I don't foresee needing to continue with that.

After a couple of sessions with the '2, 7, 12, 17, 22' tapes in place I think they give a definite advantage over the 'dot' inlays alone.


Though Railboard inlays are not full width...

This weekend I've restrung #1642 for Baritone Melody. I didn't notice till I was doing the restring that SE had sent 12 screws in total, the 3 shaved for 2, 3 & 5, plus 9 of the normal.

I guess I could have just changed 2, 3 & 5, or just the melody side, but as these screws have the newer 'cupped' head I swapped all 10. That leaves me with 2 over. I'm not sure if they're meant to be spares or if there's an intended purpose? Maybe they could be used as 'better' nut screws for the 'fat' 6 & 7 strings which balance pretty precariously on the original flat headed nut screws?

A long powercut started just as I'd finished the restring late yesterday afternoon, which was at least better than it happening during (here at latitude 57N it was already dark before I'd finished). As a result I didn't get a chance to tune up. Initial tuning is the next task, then playing with the set up since that will have been disturbed by all those bridge screw changes.

Prompted by a comment by Greg in Re: Vintage Stick vs newer developments: affect on tone? I decided to adjust the protruding pole pieces.

Before I started 4 of pole pieces protruded significantly, & a few more very slightly (before now I'd not adjusted any of the myself at all).

Both string 1 pieces & the sole string 5 piece protuded by around 2 'threads', and string 6 neck by around 1 thread.

Before adjustment


After


The block itself was already raised to fret height (or a fraction higher?).
My analogue vernier caliper gauge puts the last fret at
1.3mm at string 1
1.4mm at string 10
(that tiny difference could be 'operator error').

It's a little awkward to measure the block height, but again using the vernier I get
Block neck end string 1 1.7mm
Block neck end string 10 2.1mm
Block bridge end string 1 1.3mm
Block bridge end string 10 1.2mm

Here's a side view


After doing that I was able to make further adjustments to the bridge screws, lowering the action further.

Here's the current state of play