Bastav

Ok, this bass is now in the finishing stages so it might be time to reveal what I came up with. I'm about 90% sure this is gonna work... well maybe 85... Anyways, it has taken on a life of it's own. Now we're looking at a headless design with the strings going through the body and then through the body again, ending up at the tuners located at the side of the body. First I removed some wood with a saw, then went on to routing the rest away Then I drilled for the tuners Then I went out and bought myself a very long drill and drilled sneaky stringpaths I've made a small cover to hide away all the holes and the mess I made after this picture was taken trying to achieve smooth travel for the strings. And here's a pic of the headpiece... before sanding and final shaping Since these pics were taken I've leveled/crowned the frets, sanded everything smooth and begun putting oil on it. So... what was already a quite unique bass has gotten stranger looking still... Oh well, if it ends up playing I'm calling it a win

[quote name='Andyjr1515' timestamp='1465936607' post='3072323'] I love the top carve, Bastav. It's going to look stunning once the finish has been applied [/quote] Thanks Andy, I hope so The walnut is very cool looking but the burly bits change color quite drastically from when it's freshly worked to when its been left alone for a while, from almost yellow to a brownish orange. We'll see what it looks like when a finish is applied

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1465831869' post='3071382'] This would have been the perfect opportunity to add the Spector/Warwick bow back as Andy did to my Silk Bass: [/quote] I might go for a slight bow but probably not as big as the one on your (very nice!) bass

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1465830949' post='3071369'] Nice progress. How is the wenge to work with? I've heard it described as a bunch of splinters bound together [/quote] Thanks, yeah I wouldn't argue with that description You need sharp tools and patience and perhaps a little more thought put into how you're gonna go about shaping it in the design process (the veneers I used on the shortscale comes to mind, those were a pain in the a**).

Then, much to my own surprise, I went on to level and crown the frets. Hadn't planned on doing that yet but I'm glad to have that out of the way... I found the crowning to be quite enjoyable. Sunshine and slow work goes well with each other. Feeling good about this one, running pretty smoothly so far, knock on wenge

Then came the frets. It went better than last time (note the shortscale without the headstock which fell off during fretting).

Made some progress this last week. roughed out the fretboard on the bandsaw. glued it up and trimmed the edges with the router. Pre glue up Glueing Glued Also roughed out the headstock

Now that the initial disapointment has subsided im thinking i might try to remove the fretboard and adding a scarf headstock... Bu how to remove the fretboard i wonder? Btw i tried bangin a few more frets in with a hard hammer head and that worked great... The first one was kind of rubbery which seemed like a good idea at the time

Well im in mourning. I was banging the frets in and the head fell clean off. I might have been banging a bit excessively but i couldnt get the damn things to seat properly. Dont know what i was doing wrong in regards to the frets but i already had my suspicions about the headstock. I didnt think it would fall off during fretting but i was a bit nervous about it surviving string tension... Oh well, live, learn and all that crud

That walnut will be putting the front of the bass to shame! Beautiful

Routed for the truss rod, then cut the neck out on the bandsaw and finished the taper off with a top bearing router bit and a straight edge, the router bit is getting to be of a certain age and I did get some tear out, luckily it was in the portion of the neck that will be carved so all is good with the wood. I had been contemplating what to do for the back of the neck down by the body. I didnt have any big enough pieces of wenge or Imbuia and I didnt want to add another wood to the mix so I decided to do a upwards bookmatch of the last piece of imbuia I had left. I had some cracks in it but I think I'll be able to work around those... I'll fill them with some epoxy and sawdust just to be safe. I'm also working on a tailpiece in wenge that will serve as string anchor/bridge, more on that later I hope

Looks great! Love the string anchoring

So this probably won't be headless, the healess with regular tuners solution would take up too much real astate for it to work with the neck I have. I'll go with gold hardware as it looks nice against the wenge... I used a bandsaw for the first time this week, cutting out thins for a control cavity cover. I finished it today. And after a initial shaping I also did some shaping of the other sid of the body (beautiful day out today ) Hpoing to start the neck this week!

Im also contemplating grain filling the wenge with some kind of reddish grain filler... Has anybody done this?

The thought has crossed my mind... Hmm, i do have a headless with regular tuners idea... Might have to think it over for a bit, thanks for the comment!

Thanks, I feel good about it so far. Today I routed out a control cavity (free-handed it ). Then I did some more work on the hoop, and carved away.

I got the body down to thickness with a router, then I started the veneer trickery Glued the veneers on and cut out the shape, I oversized it quite a bit to give me some room to work out how i would go about shaping the veneers, did some carve tests. I think it might actually work out the way I thought it would.

So I haven't quite finished the 25 inch scale bass yet... but as I'm lacking in the motivation department when it comes to frets and sanding I decided to get a headstart on my next project. Not that I need another bass, I've just gotten real fond of building them. So this will be 34'' scale with 5 strings. Pickup will be a Häussel oldstyle P. Here is the drawing I'm currently working from The body will be Brazil walnut (not sure but I think it's Imbuia) and wenge, with some additional wenge veneer stylings. Neck will be wenge, fingerboard will be wenge. I'm getting rid of all my wenge (almost) with this one. Even though it smells and looks nice, it's no fun to work (which makes me think this bass might mean trouble. Wood! Glue up! I'm hoping to complete the bodyblank tomorrow. The Imbuia has got some really nice figureing, unfortunately the biggest peice is the most boring one...

https://soundcloud.com/organicpulseensemble/the-dog-in-me There it is. Couldn't quite get the mix to sound right but it might just be the sloppyness in the timing in some parts that makes me feel that way... or the fact that Im singin on it... or maybe it's just the dog in me Anyway it was a fun track to make.

Ive begun sculpting a ridiculous sounding dog-funk track, complete with ridiculous lyrics "sung" by me... Ideally they would be sung by a dog impersonator but oh well

I used the schertler bluestick in my first build and im happy with the sound, warm and acousticy. I should mention that i have no experience with other under saddle piezo solutions... Its not really a piezo though, but a very small microphone in the disguise of a piezo element. They dont make them anymore so you would have to try your luck on ebay or some such and it'll probably still set you back a fair bit

Thanks! Just got done routing out the pickup cavitys... Had been putting it off for some time and it was quite nerve wrecking but it went well. Now i just have to finish the neck and sand everything an put the darn frets in!

Got some more work done, first of, knobs! They turned out quite petite, we'll see if they work out, otherwise I shall have to think of something else... Next up, I had a bit of a screw up. I had the bright idea to start experimenting with the headstock very late one night, perhaps not the smartest thing to do on a close to finished bass... Long story short I ended up with a hole in the headstock, not all the way through but it wasn't pretty. I started contemplating an inlay of some sort, after one failed attempt and some sleepless nights I settled on a design and an approach that seemed doable. Turned out pretty good I think, not perfect but for a first crack at inlay work I'm calling it a success. Also inserted som grade AAAA toothpicks as side dots Thats all folks

Congrats! Well played all👍

Right now its about 23 mm at the first fret and about 25 at the 12th including the fingerboard... A little thicker than average but i think i like it. Its also a matter of the truss rod being quite deep... How many mm of wood is standard under the truss rod?