So a decent amount of time has passed since my last update, let's blame, work, life and Covid!
So while I kinda liked the build up to a point I didn't like it enough to not just ditch it and start again... I know, It's just me, it's how I am, If I'm not happy I start again.
So I had this timber, luckily quite a bit of it was off cuts or pieces I had around so it wasn't an expensive restart.
I absolutely love the figuring on this Wenge block I had, but I want this bass to be more understated than that, so I used the more straight grain.
A lot simpler in it's appearance.
I got the wood for the neck planed up and checked the fit, it's my fave looking lamination of Wenge and Ovangkol.
Originally in this photo I have used Ovangkol as the sandwich between the two wenge wings, this was then removed and I replaced it with Swamp Ash.
This piece of Purpleheart I machined for the pickup cover was absolutely lovely, but again far too flashy for this build so it was benched for another build at a later time.
I placed these inlays to indicate the centre of the pickups underneath, i'll do this on the final pickup cover I make too.
So this is the bass with the swamp ash sandwich, and you can see on this picture the pickup cover is WAY OTT! This is also the hardware I have pulled together for the build, I got some lovely old brass Schaller tuners and I managed to get a period matching Schaller bridge and Schaller strap locks! I have gold knobs that'll sit on an old very cool EMG BTC circuit with EMG J5 pickups. I will be using brass fret wire and using brass for the fret markers. I will also be using string trees due to no angle on the headstock.
Just don't look at the floor
Testing the hardware on the body, really love the look of the gold / brass hardware.
Brass frets and inlays installed on the fingerboard, might not do top dots... might do them too...
I know I should get a brass nut however the Warwick one (which is pretty much the only nut I really like) is too much money right now so this black one will do, I'm planning two string trees, think the B string is going to rip the top string tree out though... might need to test that.
I'm taking some inspiration from Ritter on the placement of the jack on this bass and it will be mounted to the back of the control plate. Spot the 10 bolt holes too! Got some lovely brass inserts for the brass screws that'll hold the neck in place.
It's almost done from a building point of view, just the new pickup cover to machine and then final sanding and finishing, will be using Tung Oil and Wax again as the wenge loves that!
This is the block I'm using for the pickup cover, I had two pieces of Wenge i profiled down and glued them up, will just route the insides out of this and then it'll need profiling and then sanding!
Cheers everyone.