JBoman

The nut slot had some inconsistencies at the bottom. To level those out and match up with the nut, I made these strips of double-sided sandpaper and pulled through. This sands both surfaces and makes a quick work of any high spots. Oh and the nut: made this new one from a tusq blank.

Frets leveled, crowned and polished. Fingerboard treated with gun stock oil. Shiny.

Damn French, cannot be trusted.... They sent the wrong tuners. Well, kind of. They sent the older model of these GB11W's. These older models have a different shaft with sharp edges. String breakers. I was really happy to find these tuners from EU, they seem to be kinda hard to find. Found this one luthier supplier in France. They listed these as GB11W on ther website, but the model I got is this older model GB11. Sent them a message, although it is past 30 days....

Played the intonation game with some old strings. Before that, I also cut the nut slots. But the nut came out kinda ugly, I'll probably make new one later. Works now for setup testing. Had to reposition the bridge. It was not terrible, but 5mm further to the rear leaves me with more adjustability. And when intonated, the saddles land nicely along the middle area of the adjustment. Before: After:

I got to hear it a little bit. Have you ever tried this: put your jaw on the body, so that the jaw bone picks up the vibrations and sends it to your ear through your skull. With this one, I got a satisfying BRRRRRRRRRRRRR ringing in my skull.

Finding that spot. About 1h of measuring to make a single srew hole (the middle one, 5 screw bridge). But you need to get it right. Actual alignment was done with sewing equipment, meaning a thin thread. To eliminate measuring problems introduced by thick strings. Here I'm just doing the final checkup that the outside strings line up nicely.

Tuners fitted, neck screw holes finalised and electronics cover screw holes done. Did also the cutout for the truss rod adjustment wheel. The back of the neck has only a thin coat of finishing, I have a feeling that after the first notes I want to fine tune the neck shape.

Yes, I still need to add a cutout for the MM style spinwheel. After that, a test build would be possible to see what kind of noises this makes.

Sanded down and added a thin layer of lacquer to see how it looks. It's still very very very... Brown. 💩 I need more color in my life. (neck, pickup and bridge are just hanging around here for the pose)

The body... I decided to investigate what kind of result I could get with a black grain filler. It's going to need a filler anyway, so might as well try this: Grain pattern enhanced with black filler + satin lacquer using that same 50/50 method with mineral spirit. If it does not look nice, I can always spray over. My black filler is made of regular natural color wood filler + black dye powder used in staining + mineral spirits. Mixed up to a kind of sludge consistency. Similar stuff that children like to play outside with water and dirt I did the top first using an old credit card to smear it around, then I discovered a much more faster method. Just use a pair of rubber gloves, pick up the sludge with a couple of fingers and smear it all over. Just like children do outside.

Headstock face will be black. Building up more layers with sanding in between for a smoooooth surface. Tricky thing also to get a sharp transition. Scotch Blue to the rescue. Whole neck (except the fingerboard of course) will get a satin lacquer finish, using this method with 50% lacquer and 50% mineral spirits.

Here are also some pictures of the dot installation procedure, for posterity. First I figured out the middle point between frets. Then I made a small indent with something pointy, I recall it was a pin needle this time. Then I made it into a small counter-sink with just a small drill bit and finger power. This was to prevent chipping and all that nasty stuff. Then I made the final hole, 3mm I recall it was. And stuck the plastic pipe inside with a dab of regular locktite superglue. Added some tape for protection and used my mini-saw to cut it flush. The saw is just a metal saw blade cut in half and added some tape as a handle. Totally works. Then I cleaned the cavity with a smaller drill bit, just by hands. Packed in that glow-in-the-dark powder and added a drop of the super-thin starbond CA glue. It just sucks straight in, capillary action. Couple of times I even got a green flash of light due to the exotermic reaction, that was weird to see The CA glue is so potent that it generates a bit of heat when reacting. After some filing and fine grit sandpaper, et voilà!

Neck is starting to take the final curves. Also worked on the party trick 😎 White dots are not that visible on maple but it was easier to line them up with the dot center on the border of the two woods. But dots will be more pronounced with the finish.

Magical unicorn is telling that it's time to connect A to B

By the way... I was also trying to figure out that neck pocket depth. I have some ideas abou this, but it would be interesting to see what this dimension is in general: the distance from the top of the body to the top of the fretboard, to the wood, not the frets. From basses that do not have a pickguard. If you can, can you measure this from yours and post here? I'm thinking about a couple of things regarding playability and such, so I would like to know what is the general approach for this measurement, ultimately affecting how far from the body the strings will end up. Thanks!

Got started on the neck shaping. Weapons of choice: Shinto saw rasp and coffee. At this point, this project definetly moves from science to the art regime.

Frets went in. Slots turned out to be ever so slightly too tight. I managed to sand them more spacious with lining up some sandpaper with feeler gauges. Tight fit, should stick in there firmly. I went a bit overboard and seeped in some CA glue, probably overkill. At first I hammered the ends and tried pressing in using my radius block. Was not really working, still needed hammering. Eventually I skipped the radius block and just hammered away, with a plastic tip hammer. Trimmed the ends and sanded a bewel to the edges using my sanding beam.

Frets came today in the post 😍 Supplied by https://gasguitarworks.fi/en/ Appropriate name for this company 😁 Got these pre-bent, I had no intention to make a bending jig for just one project.

Neck pocket started. Not yet in final depth, I'll do the final depth after I have frets installed and decided on what bridge to use. Routing a neck pocket is a bit stressfull as well, it's very easy to mess up the centerline and the overall fit. But I managed to nail this one, phew.... Also drilled the screw holes, quite a moment to have the neck installed, even for a brief time.

Be sure to use super-thin CA glue, preferably with this kind of whip-tip. In my testing I was just using some random bottle of locktite, for the actual installation I'll use this starbond. The key is to get the capillary action, it will suck the glue inside, but the glue needs to be really really thin/low viscosity. Oh, and it was not my idea, copy with pride:

Side dot markes... I got some plastic tubes and glow-in-the-dark powder from a hobby store. Much cheaper than luminlay. Here I'm experimenting by packing the powder in and drop-filling with superglue. Totally works. But that green is a bit obnoxious 🤢😁 I'll probably get a different colour eventyally.

I played most of my "carreer" like this: bass -> tuner -> amp But during the past 3-4 years, I gravitated towards this: Bass -> Tuner -> Compressor -> Preamp -> Amp I have a mini-pedalboard with a Korg Pitchblack tuner, Darkglass super symmetry comp, Darkglass Harmonic booster preamp. Zip-tied to a veneer board and tucked inside an old laptop bag. This is my "sound in a bag", I use this for recording, live, home training with a USB interface + headphones, and band practice. I usually drive the amp with a flat eq and rely on the harmonic booster for the eq and sound. And since it also has a kind of "cab simulation" going on, it's really great for recording as well. I don't really "use pedals" in the way that is usually implied (stomping on/off), I just dial in my tone using my "sound in a bag" depending on the situation (live/recording/band practice/pick or fingerstyle) and run with it For me pedals is a "yes", for flexibility and portability. I can take off with my sound bag and a bass in a gig bag and you can pretty much throw me into any situation.

One interesting thing about this bass will be the scale lenght. It will not be exactly 34". I was checking the measurements on that fretboard with pre-sawn fret slots. There is a systematic error on the positions that becomes visible at around 12th fret. Here I'm comparing with a printout from my plans. That difference is about 1mm, making the full scale lenght about 865,6mm or 34.08". Since this is a systematic thing, the fret slots are actually correct, but the scale length is 34.08". I sent an email to the shop where I purchased this board, just to let them know that their saw jig might be out of adjustment.

It was a good thing to continuously check with a radius gauge. Here I'm intentionally scratching the surface to reveal high/low spots. It's very easy to sand a "roll-off" on the edges, be mindful of that. I imagine it could cause problems when installing frets. I'll do a couple of passes with some kind of sanding beam, then it's ready for some frets! PS: sanding Ebony is hard work. And wear a respirator. The dust is like coal dust, you don't want to breathe that in. 💀

I checked my MM P-bass neck. It has this "effect". So it's normal. I ended up slanting the fingerboard slightly towards the nut. This will also make the neck very slightly skinnier towards the nut. Can't be a bad thing And it will be countered with string tension and relief.