mhoss32

We're getting closer to the end now! The neck is now fully fretted with EVO gold fretwire, the cavities are all finsished, and all control holes drilled. the 4 holes for the frequency/resonance controls ive recessed around the knobs in the redwood top (PRS style), the plan is to aim for a nice smooth satin finish, and so i think this will add some nice highlights on the body and allow the rest of the top to be a bit thicker and sturdier the plan is to have the 2 filter mode switches just below the bottom of the bottom pickup, next to eachother, which should make for a nicely spaced set of controls. the neck is now to the profile i wanted, so im getting the side dots put in: these are going to be the same as my last bass, brass 4mm tubs with abalone dots. this is a pretty easy detail to add, makes the dots very easy to see even in dark conditions and looks lovely and here's where we're upto, with all the shaping pretty much finished: im very pleased with the overall shape and the curves of the body now. its very comfortable, pretty lightweight, feels nice to hold and the neck feels nice in the hand, the swirl of the woods on the upper scroll carve came out really nicely, so im extremely excited to move onto the finishing. that will really bring out the contrast in the veneers that run down the middle of the S shape in the top, as well as the rope pattern on the neck!

Thanks as always guys!! @Simon., ill have to see if theres a "Bowyerchat" somewhere in the bowells of the internet so this week ive started attacking it with a router... scary times. first off i routed the recess for the bridge. the neck is very flat and very straight, and the graphite saddles are fairly tall, so this should give me the adjustability needed to get a nice low action on day 1: and then i started routing the pickup cavities. this is a tough job, the pickups are pretty tall compared to most normal pickups, but thankfully because of the internal height adjustment per string, i dont need to leave a whole lot of room underneath them for springs or foam. here you can see how high the pickup sits at its lowest point, with the "window" that shows the current mode just sitting proud of the body: with both pickups in it gives you an idea of how this is going to end up looking, and just how much space these pickups take up: and, with a little bit of gold enamel paint and a steady hand: nice gold logos! i like these a lot more with the gold logos, it'll really help them stand out. and the gold mounting screws round the edge give just the look i was going for. just enough gold to not be over the top! time for a gratuitous mockup with artsy lighting: this is a pretty good representation of the control layout. the knobs are some aluminium shadowsky style knobs, 4 smaller ones for the filter controls, and 2 larger ones for the volume and blend. there will also be 2 switches for the premap modes on there as well. quite busy, but hopefully not too "mission control" the next step is routing out the control cavitites: the main control cavity is pretty huge, but it will have to be to accomodate the preamps. thankfully the batteries will be on the other side of the body so i dont need to worry about them. the volume control meanwhile will be up on the lower horn, so i simply drilled a hole for that with a large forstner bit and then drilled an acces hole between them the hole for the battery board on the other side is a whopper as well. this is going to be a snug fit. thankfully it all lines up with the lower pickup cavity, which will let me run the power wires through with no problems. last job at this stage is the two holes for the jack sockets. these are slightly recessed, and will accomodate a single mono 1/4" jack, just like a normal bass, that will operate the two preamps blended normally and running on 12v battery power, and the other will accomodate the 4 pin Mini XLR socket that will carry power, ground and the two pickup signals seperately. the plan then is to have an outboard pedal that provides the power, but also has a switchable mono/stereo jack so that i can run to either a stereo preamp / power amp setup, or to a normal bass amp if needed. the body shaping is getting close to being finsihed at this point, and so is the back of the neck. it feels super comfy to hold, and the weight with the pickups, batteries and all of the hardware is sitting aroundabout 9Lbs 10oz. not exactly a featherweight, but not too bad for an artsy fartsy bass like this

@lowlandtrees the ACG preamps are very sensitive indeed, i agree. the EQ01, EQ02 and EQ03 are all a very wide frequency sweep. as @BassBunny says, there isn't really a "flat" response, because the idea is that the preamp is mimicking different frequency responses as you manipulate the pots. all pickups have a natural frequency response of broadly the same shape, here is a plot that shows a bunch of different guitar pickups plotted next to one another: you can see that they are all broadly flat until 2000(ish) hz, and then they have a peak and then the frequency drops away. when we say a preamp is giving a "flat" response, we really just mean it is letting the pickup's natural sound through unobstructed. with a traditional boost/cut preamp, you're then applying boost or cut of different amounts at different frequencies. lots of different preamp makers allow for different levels of cut/boost, and at different frequencies, and this is generally what sets these preamps apart from one another. with filter control preamps like ACG, Wal or Alembic, its better to think of them as mimicking the sounds of a lot of different passive setups in one instrument. in a passive bass tone control, you have a pot that slowly pulls down that resonant peak, and then starts to roll off more and more high frequencies. here is a (exagerrated) plot of a normal tone control from the tone at 10, down to the tone at 0: (with the tone at 0 you get a low mid "hump" which is the blue line, ignore that for now ) you can see more and more of the high frequencies being wicked away as the tone control is turned. and different cap values change where the resonant peak and dropoff are: what the filter preamps do is allow you to mimick these different tone controls with a smooth sweep. on the EQ02, the frequency knob sweeps from high frequency to low, and the resonance knob changes the height of the resonant peak. here is a sweep from 500hz (red line) up to 5000hz (blue line) and here is a resonant sweep from 0 (green line) up to 13db ( blue line) the reason the ACG pre feels so sensitive, is that the frequency sweep on the bass filter stack is sweeping over a VERY wide range. all the way up to 6.3KHz, and down to below 100Hz i believe. Alan then also has a treble stack, that allows the treble frequencies to be attenuated sperately. I have an ACG EQ02 in one of my basses as well, and i know exactly what you mean. with the resosnance control all the way up (10db peak), even the tiniest movement of the frequency knob can make an enourmous difference to the sound. in reality with a resonant peak like that the frequency knob is acting like a wah wah pedal. my advice on getting the best out of it would be this: try sweeping the low stack frequency up and down a few times with the resonance knob in different positions. when you can sweep it without the change feeling extremely unnatural leave the resonance control there. then treat the frequency knob as a "set and forget" control as well, find a spot where it gives you the right balance of low end and midrange growl. then use the treble stack as you would a normal tone control. the lower knob chooses the actual sound of the high frequencies, and the upper knob decides how loud you want them to be. it really does take some getting used to, and i admit its certainly not for everyone, but you can get some really great sounds out of it if you give it a little time. i hope all that hasn't just made it more confusing. if you want to learn more about low pass filtering the first page of my latest build log has some details about the different examples out there (wal, alembic, ACG etc) (also, if you want to persevere with filter preamps but find the ACG too sensitive / complicated, im working on some at the moment that are based around Wal's current control setup, but that will let you choose how wide you want the sweep to be.) id also second the general advice that you shouldnt give up on a great bass because of the preamp. swapping out electronics is a great way to change the sounds you get out of a bass without major surgery

Well... Hopefully Itll take some planning but the process of building this one has given me plenty of ideas on how to.improve next time around. That was kind of the point really, this is the prototype, the future ones will be an improvement. Ive learned a lot and need to reflect on a lot of it... But cometh the hour...

I know, i know... The floor IS filthy. @SpondonBassed i had exactly the same thoughts. Normally a volute is a really nice place to add details with laminations, when i first glued it uo i was kind of upset there wasnt going to be space for one but im happy with how it turned out! @petecarlton, thank you for following along! Im.glad youre enjoying it and thank you for the kind words. Hopefully ill get the chance to make a few more of these once lockdown is good and over! A big considerstion choosing the woods for this bass was cost, not knowing that a lot of these experiemnts would work out, all of the timber choices were pretty inexpensive. Now it looks like it'll work out the way i planned, i can't wait to have another go with some properly fancy woods

Thanks again as always guys, really glad you're enjoying the thread! @Kiwi Im hoping that the hollow areas inside the neck will contribute to a nice low weight and good feel. the rods in the neck aren't solid carbon, meaning that a fair amount of space inside the neck profile is hollow space. youre right im sure getting it right is trial and error, but thats what this bass is, all experiemnts! as for the filter sweep range, i think the balance really is going to be getting the range without the controls becoming over sensitive. you8r point about the 250 hz low end i think is pretty much spot on. that experimental board i showed a couple pages back let me try a bunch of different sweeps, and i learned 2 really key points: 1. the low end being too low wastes a huge amount of the pot travel. with the low end down around 100hz about 1/4 of the whole pot turn makes almost no difference to the sound without boosting the resonant peak to ridiculous levels (18+ db), which, as @Hellzero pointed out, at that low in the frequency range isnt very useful 2. the top end of the sweep being too high means that diling in midrange-boosty sounds is really tricky, as a tiny amount of pot travel results in a huge difference in the tone. im sure there are people for whom this would be ideal, but for me its a bit too tricky to dial sounds in accurately when working with 2 seperate pickups and preamps. Thanks for the heads up on the fret noise! alongside this setup i was doing some work on a multi-filter (low pass, band pass and high pass filter modes) with a pick attack, and i was surprised how low in the frequency range the boost needed to be to get the growly pick attack noises that still sound natural. Back at the workbench- ive started work on the headstock (finally!) the headstock is going to be farily simple in terms of its look, but its a look im absolutely in love with. the Bolin steinberger bass headstock is my personal favorite of almost any bass, and the relatively low break angle of the strings means that it works well for tuning stability using the bigsby the first step was trimming the back of the headstock flat, and then planing it ready to accept a redwood cap. on the back i want the walnut/purple rope to run all the way to the top of the headstock, with redwood either side, and then a simple redwood face on the front. I picked a nice piece of my redwood offcuts to make the front and rear faces out of. on the headstock i want the grain running vertical up and down, with the ripple running straight across. The rope patteren actually extends up into where the rear cap will be glued in place, but im hoping to create a nice carve in the back of the headstock so that the pattern matches up perfectly at the top. this will involve a lot of carving, but so far ive enjoyed all of the carving so a little more is no bother! on the front, i also needed to add in the small wooden blocks in the gap between the rosewood that makes up the sides of the neck. this is the point of no return for adding extra stiffening to the neck. up until this point the circular holes in the carbon rods were exposed, and wouldve let me run additional cabon down through the neck and set them in place with epoxy to increase the stiffness. i even went so far as to buy some solid 8mm carbon rods, and som 8mm cabon tubes with a 2mm wall thickness, but ive decided not to add them. this neck with the ebony fretboard in place is now noticeably stiffer than the hard maple neck i used on the last build, and so theres no need to just add extra carbon for carbon's sake the first piece has a hole drilled through to allow access to the truss rod nut. most of this will be carved away: this piece and another block are glued in place and planed flat. this picture was taken for reference so that when i cut the central hole there would be a good reference picture for me to use. and then the facing is glued in place (with 2 layers of black and white veneer to demark it from the rosewood) and then the rear stripe is once again cut and planed nice and flat The first step after this was to start the archeological dig to expose the rope pattern again ive got a good idea how i want the rear carve here to look once its finished. the thickness of the neck and headstock at this point, along with the fact that the carbon extends about an inch beyond the end of the pattern into the headstock means that this area should be plenty stiff and strong regardless of its final shape! my first cut through the headstock was a very conservative one. you can see here how the front cap will need to be cut away beyond the nut. the face is pretty mcuh flush with the top of the fretboard, which is a little different to the steinbereger ones, but i think it'll add a really nice smoothness to the overall shape, as well as meaning the headstock won't appear overly thick when seen from the side here you can see the carving shape im going for in the back, the walnut and purple stripe will be a sharp peak in the middle, with smooth curves out to the sides. i want the stripe to really look like a rope with the the rope pattern wrapping around it. a bit artsy fartsy i know, but just a little touch that adds a bit more interest to the transition where there would normally be a volute. this is where it ended up: im pleased with this overall, the colour difference between the rosewood and redwood should add to the look here once finish is applied round the front i rounded it over quite a lot, giving it a nice soft shape. you can see the hole for the truss rod here, as well as the white and black veneers that sit between the redwood and rosewood. this need quite a lot more smoothing and the tuner holes drilling an d things, but having removed nearly 3/4 of the length of the rosewood block with the hole, a normal allen key fits in there and is able to do about a 1/4 turn at a time on the truss rod. i think its subtle enough and in a dark enough wood that a cover won't really be necessary, result! now we're getting towards the routing of the body cavities for the pickups and controls, and then onto final sanding and shaping! the end is slowly approaching!!

This build diaries thread is a goldmine at the moment!! Cant wait to see this

@Ltsal Thanks so much!, i cant wait to hear them together. ill have to see if i can find a good way of making some recordings to share on here. ive realised that its just going to be a long job of getting component values just right to get the best sounds, but i dont mind a bit of soldering I carried on working on the neck transition for a very long time. its a tough area to sculpt as the neck gets in the way of getting the tools at the right angle to remove much materal at a time. thankfully its still good fun and seeing the shape come out the way i wanted it to was a thrill. i also started carving the back of the body, a simple scroll carve at the top of the upper horn and the belly carve: you can see the big sweeping curve that i was going for here, and the sketch of where the volume control cavity will eventually be: before i got the fretboard on, i decided to give the top a quick wipe over with some alcohol: this should give you a good idea of the colour contrast in the body, but also the "swan matched" effect i was going for, with the flame of the redwood meeting up at the thin veneer strips in the body. im very pleased at how this turned out, and hopefully one day in the furutre ill get to repeat this experiment with some more exotic woods! im thinking maybe a maple burl on one side and a darker (maybe madrone or amboyna?) on the other side... oooh and maybe a snakewood freboard with brass and abalone inlays.... Focus.... with that job well underway, i decided to get on with getting the fretboard on the bass. the first step here is to sit the truss rod back into place and get the top surface ready: i used a small square block made of some of the rosewood at the bottom, and 2 very thin pieces of carbon fibre at the top to hld the truss rod in place lengthways. with these how they are the end of the truss rod nut is pretty much flush with the top of the carbon rods one slight peculiarity with this construction is that the surface of the neck that the fretboard will be glued to will partly (about 50% by area) be carbon fibre. and carbon fibre and wood glue dont make the strongest of bonds. as such i glued a black "sacrificial laminate" to the back of the fretboard with normal titebond, and then the whole thing will be glued to the neck with an epoxy. this means i can remove the fretboard in the future and plane off the laminate if theres any issues with the truss rod a long way down the line. based on what i can feel now though, this neck is STIFF as hell. im not sure there will be much need for truss rod adjustments once all is said and done. i neglected to take any pictures of the whole lot clamped up, but once it was all in place, you can see how far the carbon extends beyond the fretboard at the neck end: you can also see there the first strip of maple veneer binding that will border the fretboard. i cut the sides back by 3mm all round to make room for binding on all sides first the maple all the way round. good thick superglue makes this pretty easy to do without getting it in the fre slots and the second layer is kingwood binding all round. unfortunately i managed to do some minor damage to the inlays at this stage, which im kinda annoyed about, but its not a deal breaker. i think nexk time around id probably go with a thicker banding, as the contrast here is kind of hard to see. its certainly moving in the right direction!!

Love the look of this already, that wood combinbation is going to be a stunner. padauk and wenge are a cracking combo colour wise id say. beyond pickups any idea on electronics/controls? looking forward to seeing this come together! and +1 on working on the dining table/a workmate, a proper workshop only makes things faster, not easier do you think there's a woodworkers WAG's forum somewhere where they all meet up to complain?

Thanks guys! its good to be far enoughy through that people can start to see in reality whats been going on in my head! @Simon., you and me both. I was aproaching it really gingerly, but switching to the tighter grained woods for the marquetry was definately the right way to go. for the most part its been pretty painless so far @durhamboy welcome to the thread there really was not much else to do during lockdown 1 than come up with zany schemes and daft ideas, and then lockdown 2 has given me the free time to actually try them out

Busy week this week, but been having a whale of a time, coming down to the garage to this: having done a little more shaping to the body, at the end of last week i ended up here: in terms of actual shape and lines, its getting fairly close here, so its time to start work on the neck. there is an awful lot of material to come off. using the laser cut templates and some careful routing, the neck is brought to the correct width and alignment with the body. as you can imagine, this caused a huge mess, but the closer i get to putting the router back away for good, the better. with the neck closer to its final width, i can start work on the transitional areas where it meets the body. on the front, this means carving into the areas around the bottom of the fretboard. i had orginially intended that the white maple stripe would follow through from the upper horn to the lower, but now im leaning towards having it how it is in the picture above, curving up toweard the fretboard where it transitions. it just looks a bit more organic to my eye Meanwhile, round the back this should give you some idea how much material ive got to remove. thankfully a lot of this can go without losing much in the way of stiffness or leaving a weak area, but its going to be a big old job. But starting to remove some of the material from the back of the neck is super satisfying. its starting to let me see how the pattern is going to look, and the gorgeous grain of the namibian rosewood. theres a hell of a lot of wood left on up at the headstock end, but this is mostly because i want to get the neck profile down to where it should be to test the stiffness before starting on the headstock. this way i can add additional carbon to the neck if needed. at the moment it feels ridiculously stiff, but we shall see what happens as more is removed. ive got some plastic templates cut out to make sure i dont carve too far. up at the headstock end there is not a lot of wood between the carbon rods and the outside of the neck, so need to take care up there especially. one of my big worries with this build was that the neck marquetry wouldnt look as good once it had been rounded over, but thankfully im starting to see it come together and i like what i'm seeing. it actually helps to keep the neck profile symetrical, as i can use the pattern to judge how much to take off. and this is where i got to. theres still a huge amount to take out of the bottom of the neck to get the transition looking nice and smooth, and i haven't started the carving on the back yet either, but im happy with this progress so far. honestly the first time taking a rasp to that marquetry to start shaping the neck felt terrifying, but you soon get into a rythm and start enjoying it. it will be interesting to see how it looks, and how heavy it is once the shaping is all done and the cavities are routed out as well, so stay tuned!

Thanks Guys!! @roman_sub, its certainly something ive considered. the new string tension bar holds the strings a bit higher than a normal bigsby, and hopefully with the bridge sunken slightly into the body the break angle shouldn't be too bad. we shall see! @PlungerModerno, don't worry, i will this stage is actually pretty enjoyable and im generally doing an hour or so at a time, a couple of times a day. i've not shown the back in this post, but there is an awful lot of material to remove there as well!

Exciting update time With the top glued up (and with a thin layer of white veneer glued to the back of it), its time to get the body glued together and start doing a bit of shaping! you can probably see from the redwood top and my pencil lines that i was pretty conservative with the jigsaw first time around, so there will be a fair amount of material to remove around the edges. More clamps is best clamps this all went plenty smoothly, and after a few very careful passes with the router: ta da! one body ready to start shaping. im not cutting the neck down to size just yet, mainly because i dont want to put any big nicks in the area around the heel until im sure what im going to be doing with it. there is a lot of material to remove and im really just going to be doing the shaping by eye. no roundover or other router bits used here, just a lot of rasping and sanding. as i start to remove some of the material, you can see the colours that will be on display. redwood, maple, cherry, walnut padauk. The areas where the redwood is missing are where there are going to be some very tricky transitions to carve. its a matter of moving around a lot so that you see the transition from a lot of angles, to make sure the right amount of each colour is exposed. and its the same story on the other side, only moreso. the angles need to be carved so that they not only blend together perfectly, but also catch the light in the right way, tall order. so far, just taking it nice and slow and taking a lot of breaks seems to be working pretty well. this is not going to be a short or easy process! the upper horn is going to resent a bunch of its own challenges. carving this shape isn't all that difficult, but normally you get to sort of "choose" where the high point in the carve is. with this one its defined by where those veneer stripes are, and so again theres a lot of walking around and looking at it from funny angles to ensure the shape and colours are all correct. it might be TMI, but on that workbench with the neck sticking out, its all to easy to get hit in the Junk doing that. at least it makes sure im taking lots of regular breaks! after a couple days of work im starting to get an idea of how i want the shape to end up, and how i want the lines to flow. but its still a long long way off. in the meantime, ive started working on the bridge. one thing i found on the last bass with a bigsby was that in order to accomodate the bigsby and the bridge, the body needed to be unweildingly long. so to address this on this bass ive made a couple of changes. firstly, 26 frets instead of 24, this decreases the space needed between the end of the fretboard and the bridge. secondly, a 33" scale length instead of a full 34. this will also shorten those distances and i find it more comfortable overall. Finally, the use of a much shorter bridge. this reduces the space needed beyond the bottom of the scale length and leaves more space for the bigsby. The only issue is that tune-o-matic bass bridges dont come with low friction saddles, and the string spacing is 19mm, instead of the 18mm i need. so heres the plan: remove the metal saddles and replace them with new, TUSQ graphite saddles. this allows me to have narrower spacing and much lower friction. a single TUSQ nut blank is enough to do all 4. ill be using some brass threaded inserts to keep the intonation adjustable, just as it would be with the standard bridge. The nut was cut into chunks for each saddle, and a hole drilled to accept the insert. the insert is then glued firmly in place with some CA Glue. once all 4 are done, its just a matter of putting them in place and putting the adjustment screws back in. i then used the same 16" radius block to shape the saddles so they will follow the contour of the fretboard perfectly: speaking of the freboard, ive managed to get all the inlays in! These are far from perfect, but im still very pleased with them. if i ever do decide to start doing this semi-pro, i will certainly need more practice before id attempt this on someone elses instrument. and there are the first 24 fret slots! ive got 2 more to do, these were done with a fret slotting jig i treated myself to as an early birthday present. absolutely great piece of kit and fantastically made. GMC luthier tools! and finally for today, the gold screws for the pickup adjustment screws arrived: i like these a LOT more than the black, really makes the pickups stand out a bit. there will be 3 more gold screws holding them in place, and i think im going to buy some gold enamel paint to colour in the little MH logos as well, opinions? too flashy?. and, as ive done a bit of carving and got my nice gold screws, lets have a gratuitous mockup and spread sawdust through the house! its going to be a tight squeeze! but i think ill get it all in. the wires between the batteries and the preamps will just run through the bottom of the lower pickup cavity, and im pretty sure ill need to muck about with the preamp positions a bit. the master volume control will be on the lower horn, so in total 6 knobs and 2 toggle switchs, plus the two 4 way switches on the pickups. if theres one thing i won't be short of, its tone options i hope!!

@binky_bass haha thanks! I shall remember that if i ever encounter one in the wild And i hope it lives up to that prediction, long way to go yet!!

its also a learning process, i've done a lot of "builds" but the first ones i did (and some of the later ones) were off the shelf parts with custom bodies and pre made necks and then i started to buy a half finsihed neck with no fretboard, but bought the fretboards pre slotted and as you work with more pre made stuff and modify it more and more, and you understand how it was made and how to do it yourself i dont think anyone is confident enought to go balls to the wall scratch built everything for a first build, but id still call them builds!

Im not sure im familiar at all with wishbass? not one ive come across before, although as you can probably tell im a big fan of basses for an "acquired taste" Im getting straight on with the leaf inalys as well off the back of getting the branches in These are just laid on the top, but will give you an idea of their final positions. the plan is to use some evo gold fretwire, so lots of gold on this neck! Im hoping these wont take me too long, but im enjoying the process as i go. woodwork that you can do in a comfy chair in a nice warm room is the kind of woodwork i like most Meanwhile ive cut the neck blank down to the rquired thickness front and back. i first glued an extra block to the back of the same pattern as the ends of the marquetry beam, and then cut the back off so that its nice and flush. this was another job that wouldve taken 20 seconds on a bandsaw, and instead took 20 minutes of elbow grease. keeping me fit during lockdown though! for the ffront i used 2 aluminium beams as a flat and stable guide for the router, and slowly took it down to the correct depth (well nearly, i left it a few mil proud of where it needs to be so that i can plane it flat to the wings once theyre glued in place). this depth is to accomodate the redwood top that will be on the front of the bass. speaking of which... using the 2 laser cut templates you saw in the last post i got the 2 pieces cut and routed to the exact shape they need to be, and started adding the veneer strips as you can see the curve here is pretty tight, so its a matter of soaking the veneer in hot water to get it to bend round and behave. i did have a little help however, mitre bond now make a pen for superglue activator! genius stuff, just apply to one surface and the CA glue to the other and they bond instantly. need to be a bit careful with it but it works like a charm: after the first white layter was on, i repeated the process with a black dyed veneer: soak first, then apply with glue and activator: and then again with a third white strip: this came out fairly well, and fit perfectly together with the other side, giving me this: one redwood "Swan matched" top! albeit with a couple of cracks. overall though im chuffed, and i think itll look really good when shaped with the rest of the body: starting to look like a bass a little more now! this will all be glued up and then the neck area routed around the bottom of the neck template, ready to accept the top, and i can't wait. once its all together i can start shaping it and thats when the personality starts to come out in the meantime though ive got plenty to keep me happy, ive now got both pickups and preamps all finished, although a few of the components may change once ive got them into the bass and tested them for real. these component values soung great on one of my other basses, but that might not be the case for the multi coils. i bought plenty of spare PCB's though, so no worries there. and my little sticker for the bigsby arrived! not the biggest or most important part i know, but little touches are what help make the bass my own creation top to bottom.

phenomenal stuff andy!

im trying a new technique that was suggested to me for marking the fretboard for inlaying the branches. holding the branch down and using a spray paint to mark the area to be cut away: im pretty pleasantly surprised by how well this seems to work, very easy to mark the edges with a scalpel and chisel, and then just work up to the line. once id got the 2 branches cut out and the areas for the inalys chiseled away, i set them in place with some CA glue and flooded around the edges: This is the lower of the 2 branches, and you can see the colour contrast with the macassar ebony fretboard. should look really nice with the leaves in place over the top Meanwhile, im getting ready to cut out the 2 top pieces with some laser cut templates: these have been made to leave a perfect 2mm gap down the S shaped join in the body, so once these top pieces are cut and trimmed, i can run 3 layers of veneer (white, black, white) down the middle. this should give an effect similar to the rendering on page 1, and should look pretty cool with the flamed redwood top. im not sure this approach would look quite so good with a burl top or something like claro walnut, but with flamed wood with a grain running one direction and the chatoyance running perpendicular, i think itll be a nice effect. in the future if i make any more of these with those woods ill just to a straight bookmatch. I also cut the laminated beam that will make up the body wings into the 2 pieces i need. this also lets me line up the laser cut template with the top to make sure the carbon fibre extends down the the right distance all looks good to me, so time to cut the wings out. again, i am missing a bandsaw bigtime here, but patience can normally replace industrial equipment: here you can mostly see the pattern that will be visible at the top and bottom of the body wings. the innermost piece of walnut doesnt extend all the way to the end, however, as it only needs to match up where the wings meet the central beam I also put together another little helpful gadget for this build: its a test prototype for the preamp, that allows me to test lots of different component values without de-soldering. the 8 dip switches let me test 3 different values for the top and bottom of the frequency sweep and the top and bottom of the resonant peaks without endlessly swapping out resistors. its a bit too big for installation inside a bass in reality, but its a useful tool in understanding how these things sound. im just using it plugged into one of my other basses at the moment. the single pot controls the frequency sweep, and the push/pull function selects between high and low resonance. im hoping that once ive got this all buttoned down, i can get another version of this made smaller for retrofit into another of my bass guitars.

That control layout is perfect. Reminds me of some of the cool eastern-bloc basses from the 70s and 80s, awesome!

That top is amazing! Love it

@Andyjr1515 Just following your example Andy! i've been lurking in the build diaries thread since before i knew one end of a hammer from the other

Thanks guys!! @Richard R, im keeping track of some things and not others. Woodwork, pickup winding, soldering i am yes, so that i know roughly how long it might take me next time round. But drawing up plans and simulating circuits and things not so much. Im hoping that once those bits are done once i wont have to do them again!

Big update today! First off, i started to cut out the Malee Burl scales into the branches that will be inlayed into the fretboard: The knife scales themselves were about 10mm thick, so idivided them down the middle so i could get both of the branches out of juat 1 scale. waste not, want not. this kind of cutting looks complex, but its pretty easy with some patience and a sharp coping saw I have another branch to cut, then i'll inlay these to the fretboard, and then inlay the leaves over the top. at least thats the plan! as with my last bass, this bass is going to have a Bigsby modified for a bass. this worked pretty well last time around just by drilling a new string bar with 4 holes in it and stringing it up as usual, but it did present a couple of problems: 1. the angle that the strings had to wrap around the string bar was a bit too tight for bass strings 2. a normal bigsby tension bar (on a b50 or b5) is probably a bit too low for big thick bass strings, making it a nighmare to string up without damaging the finish of the bass so i decided that this time id try a new approach. firstly, the whole colour theme for the pickups and hardware is a nice mix of black and gold, so i started off buying a matte black bigsby 500 clone and immideately binning most of it first i decided to tackle the string bar, which last time around i turned from a 10mm piece of brass round stock on a lathe, and then drilled 4 holes through for the strings. this time started much the same way, with 10mm brass round stock, but this time i used a dremel to drill 4 smaller holes only halfway through. I then used a tap to thread the holes, so they would accept an M2 steel threaded standoff. I tested this with a few sets of bass strings, and the ball end of the strings fits very snugly around this post. this means that the angle of the string wrapping around the bar isnt quite as harsh as last time, and these threaded posts are much stronger than the small split posts on normal guitar vibratos. The Brass polishes up really nicely just using some fine sanding sponges and some brasso applied with it mounted in the drill. i will later use a diamond file to cut the groove needed for the clip to hold it in place. ive tried this on a test piece and it works remarkably well. you can see in the second picture the snug fit of the string ball end around the steel standoff The tension bar was a little more complex. i added some threaded rivet nuts to shrink the tension bar holes from 9mm down to a threaded m4 brass rod. this was so that i could use some of these brass thumb nuts as tring rollers. this gives me a few advantages, a less steep angle to the bridge, less friction as the bigsby i used, and finely adjustable string spacing to ensure the strings run dead straight from the string bar to the bridge. ill also get a little gold sticker printed up with my logo for the small indentation where the bigsby logo would normally go. the balance between black and gold is about right, and i think if i mount it with some nice gold scres, itll look pretty classy Over in Pickup land, things are coming along swimmingly even if i do say so myself! The 3 pickup wires (Hot cold and Voltage for the LEDs) are soldered on, and the 4 LED's are in place. these are 3mm box LEDs, in bright blue, which fir perfectly into the 4 small square holes on the pickup cover i showed earlier. you can see that there are small round cutaways in between the bobbin mounts. the pickup covers have 3 more brass standoffs mounted to them, that then slot down through these holes and line up with 3 more holes in the PCB, which i can then secure with screws. this means that the PCB and cover all all ridgidly attached together, but allow the colis to move freely up and down inside: on the right hand picture you can see the 4 larger standoffs that the coils are screwd onto pointing up, and the 3 smaller ones that connect the cover to the base inbetween and ta da! one bass pickup assembled and ready for a test. the 4 screws im using at the moment are black, but when it all goes together i will use gold screws for both these and the 3 mounting screws around the edge. taking a bit more inspiration from wal there! as a quick test i hooked up one of the preamps to the pickup, with 2 9 volts wired in series to provide 18v. i had to switch out one resistor as the voltage was a bit too low for these LED's (the preamps will be powered by 24v phantom power in the finished article) and it worked just as expected! I had a little frosted plastic window cut to fit in the small recess to diffuse the LED light a bit but this is how the display looks: Those are "P", "reverse P", "J" for Jazz and "H" for humbucking. this lets me see with just a glance down what mode both pickups are in, without having to have bright LED's shining out the front of the bass, result! and back down in the garage, ive cut the two rosewood neck/body beams and got them glued up to each side of the marquetry beam and truss rod channel: you can see in the background of these some of the laser cut templates for the neck and body, looking forward to the next parts of this build! and heres the whole assembly glued up and ready for the next steps. if youve noticed the big hole in the left hand piece, dont worry. i measured beforehand and that will be past the edge of the neck. gived you an idea of just how much of the bulk of this neck will be carbon fibre. ill rout the body end down so that its flat and ready to accept the top of the body before i cut and glue the wings in place, but im going to leave the headstock end untouched for the time being. this will let me shape the neck to its final profile whilst still keeping the option to add more stiffness by adding additional cabon rods down the 8mm channels i showed in the last post. im looking forward to getting the body together and seeing it start to look a bit like a bass!

I shall take a look at both, thanks for the tip! The marquetery beam is now planed down ready for the truss rod slot to be built on it, so a few gratuitous beauty shots are in order of the flattened side before it gets covered up: the next step i loosely tape the carbon rods around the double action truss rod, so that it will fit snugly, and get the positioning right on the neck: The carbon rods will run the whole length of the neck, over the body transition and up into the headstock a short way. this way theres no weak points along the neck where stress could build. The rods are then epoxied in place, with a 6mm wide strip of cabon between them. they're slightly narrower than tyhe beam, as i changed the design slightly to use the new woods, but i will re- veneer both sides so that its all perfectly flush before building up the rest of the neck blank. these things are stiff... like really stiff. as you can see the rods have 8mm holes down the middle, and i bought additional 8mm rods to go inside if i felt it wasnt rigid enough, but i now think thats not going to be a problem very pleased The first 8 coild for the pickups are done now, so i started building one up! Each pair is wired together in series (the little red wire) and then wired onto the PCB. ive removed all the standoffs and screws to give myself some more space. Then the next pair... and before you know it: all 8 coils, nicely wired together. i tested the switch and the DCR values are all as expected Next i start glueing the bobbin mounts in place. these are what will determine the height of each vertical pair, controlled by turning the black hex screw. this is done with a very small amount of CA glue, so little that i can easily take them apart with a sharp scalpel if needed. the magnets sit perfectly flush with the top of the bobbin mounts, giving nice consistent heights across all the coils. and heres one all together! nice and neat, and it looks like itll fit perfectly into the cover. ill save that treat for my next upload though here you can see how it all works. the vertical pairs are mounted over a brass standoff, and pushed up by a spring and some foam mounted beneath the coils. as the screw is tightened, each assembly can move up and down independently. the 4 holes in the pickup cover leave these screws exposed, so you just bolt the pickup in place and move the coils within the pickups to set the volume

the combination of woods and that shape are just perfect! love it