Jabba_the_gut

Neck shaping is now mostly done. I'll make a few measurements to ensure the thickness is correct down the entire length of the neck and make sure it feels right. I'm leaning towards rounding the fretboard on this neck and trying a flat board on the other neck. I also need to sort a logo out for this headstock - I'm thinking the using one is too large for this so I'll look at options for making it smaller. I'm tempted to use mother of pearl of similar by way of a change!

Hi Richard, I've got literally 10 mins if you would like me to join to test this. Cheers

One tip I picked up from someone for when you want to stick stuff together with tape to stop it sliding but to make it easy to separate later and leave minimal gunk is this. Stick masking tape to each of the two surfaces you want to hold together then put the double sided tape in between them. Works a treat for slotting fretboard or holding templates down whilst you use a router. Look forward to the next steps of your build. Cheers

Cheers for the comments. I'm hoping this headed version works well - we'll see!! I've finished veneering the front and back of the headstock and I'm pleased I decided to do it - I'm really pleased how it has turned out. Next job will be lots of shaping and sanding on both the body and the neck.

Reverse of the headstock veneered - now to do the front which will be a little trickier as not to get glue in the truss rod. As I posted before, I'm not doing this in the correct order as I decided to do this a little later down the build process than you would normally plan!! Glad I've done it though as I think it looks quite nice so far.

Completely in the wrong order of doing things but I actually think a spalted veneer headstock would look quite nice...that's the next task then!!!

And the last job to be done before I start with lots of sanding on the body was to make a control cavity cover. Again, I made a template for this and used an offcut of spalted beech to make a cover.

Next job - use the template to cut the pickup pocket (after carefully measuring to make sure it was central and square). And check again before cutting...

Next task was to make a template for a Musicman style pickup. I've got one template but it was just a little too tight fitting. First thing was to mark out a piece of mdf with the key dimensions Once that was done holes were drilled for the mounting lugs and a few others for cutting out it out using a coping saw. After that I used some pieces off wood pinned to the board ready to use the router to neatly trim the template with a bearing cutter. And the finished template

Titebond original.

Cut the excess off the necks then tidies up using my neck templates and a router. The scarf joints have turned out okay. Now time to start shaping the necks. I'm going to leave one or both of the board flat - will save a job with a radius block but I'm also interested in how a flat board feels.

Both of these necks are going to have a zero fret so I needed to work out where the end of the board would be and the nut. I trialled a fret slot position on an ebony offcut to make sure the force of inserting the fret didn't chip any of the wood. Next task was to glue the fretboards to the necks. And plenty of clamps! I always use a couple of tacks to stop the fretboard sliding when the clamps are applied especially when the fretboard I slotted first and needs to align with a specific point on the neck. One of the tacks is just visible near the heel in the section that will be cut off.

Very nice!

And slots cut.

Next task was to slot the two fretboards - good old StewMac jig.

Glued the two parts of each neck together and left to set. I used Titebond on one neck and Cascamite on the other just as an experiment to see how they would look when sanded. Next up was to route the truss rod slot. Once this was done I trimmed a little wood from the sides of the scarf joint to see how it looked. I checked the strength of the joint on the offcuts; the Titebond one was good but the Cascamite not so for some reason. I put the neck of the bench, pressed down on it hard and the joint separated cleanly. The picture below shows where a chunk came away cleanly from the joint. No idea why. I've used Cascamite enough in the past and this was a new tub. I resanded the join and made it again with Titebond - I'll investigate the Cascamite again later.

Cheers Andy!

Once the two parts of each neck were sanded I clamped them together prior to gluing.

First up, I cut two neck blanks at an angle for a scarf joint. I then sanded the joint flat using a jig a made for a previous build. Nothing clever here, just sanding and more sanding.... The sandpaper is just fixed to the work surface with double sided tape and the jig is just used to move the wood to sand the required face. Takes a little while but not too bad if you make an accurate cut when sawing the wood.

I'm also setting on an EMG MM TW with a BTC preamp for this headed build - hopefully will give quite a bit of tonal variation and will fit in the smallish cavity space on this bass. Strings for this will be source from Newtone - I've got a set already for the 25/5 neck and have ordered some for the 27" neck.

I settled on trying 25.5" and 27". I'm also going to make these necks with a scarf joint as I think that would look pretty decent and I've only tried that once before! I'm also thinking of making a 27" neck for one of the headless basses with a different string clamp. This is a mock up of a 27" headless and a 29" headed bass.

It's been quite a while but I have eventually had a bit of time to carry on with this. I've also looked at the possibility of a couple for different scale lengths for this. This started as I looked at the neck length for the headed bass vs the headless one and realised as the headed version bridge sits further back the scale length could be increased by a couple of inches (to 25.5") without changing the overall look. I then thought about 27" and 29" scales as well. So I made a few templates to see what it all looked like:

Cheers @Pea Turgh. I'm still tinkering with these short things - currently making a headed version that I'm trying 25 and 27" scales on. I'm also in the process of making a new neck for the headless version at 27" scale that I'll put on the other headless. I'll start to add the details to the build diary for these very soon in case anyone is interested. Cheers!

I quite like that too......

I’ll be there.