JBoman

Sure did!

I guess everyone is keen on hearing it as well, eh? I been having this thing lately where I keep all my basses in different tunings with different string gauges. This one ended up in C standard with 115-55 strings. It sounds like it was made for low tunings, YAYY METAL!! \m/

More speculations in CAD.... hmmmm... hmmm...

The nut seems like a logical place to start a build? Some experimentation: I still had a piece of brass from some previous attempts in making a brass nut. This time I started by making a template in CAD. Picked up some brand new drillbits that are close to the regular 105-45 strings. I glued the template on the brass, drilled through and then hacked off the extra material on a belt sander + files. This way I need to use the actual nut files only in the final touches. I actually made 2 prototypes with this method. I'm not yet sure if I'm going to use a brass nut in this one, but at least I know I can make these quite easy and fast.

I experimented on the shape a bit more by re-using my drawings from the previous project. I wanted to make the bass shorter, therefore 2+2 tuners. I reused the headstock shape but making it shorter. Body shape is also a bit re-used, but made less tall and added some "hooks" or what you could call those in the horns, something that would kind of mimic the headstock shape. I really like these shapes, how it reflects my 2 favorite designs, the P-Bass and the Music Man.

No no perfectly good point! Of course the spoke wheel cutout would be done before radius cut. But other option would of course be to attach the fretboard to some scrap wood for the radius cut process. Using masking tape and super glue trick Both are doable. But I think having the fretboard glued on the neck and having the whole piece over-sized would minimize/eliminate tear out.

I didn't actually yet watch the video, just saw the part with that table router and the radiused blocks and realised immediadetly that this is a good idea. But having a bigger block of wood is better. It's more stable and less prone to flexing when you move it around. And when you work piece is more heavy it makes the routing more stable. Less mass is harder to hold in place when doing anything with a router.

Note for myself:

Logically it makes sense. But who needs logic when we are speaking about instruments! And sorry, headless basses are just ugly....

Some doodlings in cad.... Headstock and body shape obviously not final

Yep It's brewing in my mind. Since I completed this, I have been thinking about something that is the complete opposite: - Natural finish, just the wood + oil and/or wax - Passive - Maybe neck-through - 2+2 tuners, instead of 4 in line - Separate bridge pieces - Laminated 5-ish piece neck My biggest question at the moment is the truss rod. Well, actually the combination of neck-through and my favorite truss rod desing: the spoke wheel. As far as I can see, this kind of design does not exist. You always find spoke wheel truss rods only on bolt on necks. Having this rod design on a neck through would mean carving this area and after finger board glue up, the spoke wheel would be "permanently" buried there. With bolt on necks, you at least have the chance to access the spoke wheel and remove it for possible lubrication needs in the future.... Hmmmmm, thoughts on this?

Some final shaping on the neck, bit more laquer and we have lift-off A stanley blade is a very effective scraper. Just be careful. Made also a handy neck rest from scraps and some old leather.

Neck dive: I decided to change the tuners to something lighter with the same hole/post diameter. So I only need to plug the screw holes. I can live with that.

Also, we are back at fret leveling. Still had some "waviness" to level. I don't mind 🙂 I have gotten quite good and fast at this stuff, only took a couple of hours and oh so shiny again. Found also some suitable screws for the string retainer. Did also some neck shimming with scraps to figure out a good angle, found a good setting, bridge adjustment looks now way better. Shim just needs to be replaced with hardwood.

Aaaaand we have a neck dive. Tuners might be too heavy. I'm considering swapping them for some Gotoh Res-O-Lites. I've had a good experience of them in my P-bass. Current tuners are about 315g total. The res o lite option I'm considering is 236g total. About 100g difference can be a big thing when you have the whole neck as a leverage.

The string tree needs longer screws, it needs to be quite high up and the original screws are not long enough, so still some parts hunting to do. But the longer barrel jack finally arrived and electronics are now done. Battery clip is not perfect either, but it functions, maybe I will later turn it 90 degrees.

Nut slots done, nut still needs some minor refinements, just needs some trimming of the edges ever so slightly but it's now functioning. Installed also: string retainer, vol and tone pots and strap buttons that accept the Schaller system. I'm using the same strap with all of my basses, nicely broken in 20 years old leather, mmmmmmm. I discovered that I need to shim the neck. Not bad, bridge still has adjustability but it's almost bottomed out at the E and G strings, so I need to put a slight angle to the neck, no biggie. Don't really know what happened there, it did not need a shim during test assembly. Maybe the finishing contributed to that much of extra "lift" to the dimensions. Who knows.

Finishing done, finally. Bridge and pickup went in (EMG MMCS). Strings just hanging there loose. Next up: nut slots.

Beaten up P-basses, my soft spot.

An insurance that actually has value.

Slow progress.. I started to wet sand the finish to smooth it out and ended up sanding through the paint. Good thing it was only a couple of spots in the back, but had to spray the back again to fix it. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing over and over and over and over again..." Now I'm attacking again trying to build up the final lacquer layer again. This time I have a new weapon. I got this cool little airbrush second hand and with 50/50 lacquer/mineral spirits, it's producing a nice aerosol. It's a slow process with such a small spray, but much easier to control and I'm avoiding extra buildup and "pools" of lacquer that otherwise would have to be sanded down. Specifically, it's now easier to get more lacquer on the edges where it's more needed. Spraying the neck is also producing an extremely satisfying surface.

Testing here if this kind of a homemade sawing jig works for the fret slots. I also got an accurate fret position template printed out on a piece of sturdy paper. If this works, I would then attach the paper template on the board and just saw through the paper. I have 4 printouts, so I would be definetly testing on some scraps first.

So.... I had this one failed neck. Headstock cracked during routing. But it had enough wood to make a fingerboard.. so .. Maybe this will become something.

It will probably be fine. It's so minimal. I also installed the rest of the tuners and with all 4 strings I get the proper relief with no string buzz. And truss rod still not engaged I'll let it settle in for a week or so and see what happens. Then it's time to take it apart (again!) and continue with the final touch-up. I'm still missing a string tree and the jack. String tree would probably have to be a bar-type that catches A, D, and G strings. Output jack, I have it on backorder, it needs to be a bit longer that usually, since it's going through 5-6mm of wood instead of 2-3mm of pickguard.

It's been a while since i posted. I've been working on the finishing. For the neck: just adding more layers of laquer, slowly building it up with 50/50 mixture of PU laquer and mineral spirits. For the body, I finally decided on the paintjob: I went for this kind of gray/black burst. Not easy to get done with spray cans and of course it does not look like something that came from a factory. But I'll give it a B+. It's also getting the same laquer treatment, with the goal of achieving some kind of semi-gloss finish eventually, with progressively finer grit of sandpaper ending ut with 2000 grit. Then some bad and good news. It's full on winter over here which means wood will shrink. Frets are sticking out ever so slighlty so I need to do another pass on the fret ends, which means I will break the finish, oh well.. more laquer after that. Then second thing: neck went into a backbow. Which is not always a bad thing. The effect is that currently with string tension, truss rod does not need to be engaged at all. The bad thing is that even with string tension, I'm not getting enough relief, or lacking the adjustability. I have a 2-way rod in here, but even if the rod is helping and pushing the neck to more relief, it's still not quite there. The neck is simply too stiff, imagine that being a problem . I still have the option to remove some material, since it's still quite thick on the maple, thus making the neck more flexible. Also, the small bit of relief I'm getting is at the first 4-5 frets, nothing in the middle (where it should be). It could be that the neck is too thick towards the 7-12 fret area. Lastly, the neck has developed a slight twist towards the E string. It's barely noticeable with just eyeballing it, but it's definetly there. When laying the neck on a flat surface with the heel and headstock on the surface, it's rocking side to side about 1mm. Wood is unpredictable. That's both a bad and a good thing, because I believe I could do something about it if I reshape the neck strategically, making it less stiff on either side. Need to think about this. EDIT: I'm also experimenting what an off-set string tension might do for the twist. I put it togethere like this with just the E and A- srings pulling it against the twist. It's been overnight like this with the truss rod completely loose. So far nothing. Let's see...