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Bassworks

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Everything posted by Bassworks

  1. Bassworks
    Here's a close up showing the cavity geometry and the recess for a cover plate that will be bonded on over the cavities, made from the same tonewood billet that the body blank is made from.
  2. Bassworks
    As a player myself, there's nothing more wearing than wielding 6Kg or so of bass around a stage for 2 hours. Even if it does sound amazing. My current JPJ5 and PPJ5 instruments are coming out at 4Kg all up, hardware, strings, batteries and all! Part of this is down to selecting my body woods carefully based on density (it's remarkable the variation in density of the same species even from different boards from the same tree) and by placing chambers in the body in the areas that have no contribution to strength and tone.
  3. Bassworks
    Today, let's move on to the body for a bit... Here we have Red Alder and Swamp Ash bandsawn body blanks up for their first machining operations, which require registration and workpiece hold down features being put in. It looks busy there on the machine bed and that's down to lateral cam action clamps and vertical hold down fixtures.
  4. Bassworks
    Final post for tonight folks. Stay tuned for more soon! This is the detail of my 3D headstock plate meeting with the fretboard. The Surf Green PPJ5 sports a Nitrocellulose Surf Green painted neck, satinised down to P3000 for a super-slick fast playing surface. Sort of inspired by Larry Graham's all white painted bass. Please feel free to ask any questions Bass chatters!...
  5. Bassworks
    See what I mean? No gap to be filled here folks! 😉
  6. Bassworks
    Block inlays are a luxury item. Why not? You're worth it you know. If you have watched the usual mass manufacturers's factory tour videos, you'll see inlays being floated into large pockets filled with (usually) black epoxy where the epoxy fills the gap between the inlay and the fretboard pocket sides. My word. No such thing on a Bassworks instrument. Each inlay is a light and precise push fit in its pocket and absolutely no "filler" is used. A water thin CA glue is all that is needed to get this job done.
  7. Bassworks
    One of my favourite moments in production. I form the headstock, milling out a scoop down into the headstock by 1mm in depth and put the tuner recesses in and the pocket for the Bassworks logo.
  8. Bassworks
    Fretboards are glued on next. I am able to adjust the truss rods during the manufacuring process if I need to to ensure parallism with the plane of the CNC router bed. The middle neck is the one destined for the Surf Green. The right-most is a Macassar Ebony fretboard destined for the Surf Green bass' sister, in Daphne Blue. More on her later in a separate Build Diary...
  9. Bassworks
    All my bass necks and indeed my guitar necks feature aerospace quality cabon fibre stiffening rods, bonded in with aeospace epoxy and high quality two-way adjustable truss rods.
  10. Bassworks
    On the flip side... I use Hipshot Ultralite tuners exclusively. My headstocks are thicker than the traditional headstocks putting mass around the tuners and contributing to structural rigidity around the nut. In string physics this is of fundamental importance to the clarity of the sound from fundamental through the hamonic series. If the two end points of a vibrating string are not themselves rigid, all is lost frankly! Destined for the woodburner in my shop! I also sneakily recess both the rear and the face of the headstock to accommodate the precision milled Hipshot tuner rears, so they sit flush and nuts and washers to the front.
  11. Bassworks
    My headstocks are generally lightly chambered North of the last tuner, where mass does not contribute to the sonics of the instrument and potentially contributes to unwanted "neck-dive". The headstock plate is not simply a flat piece of timber, but a 3D carved 5mm thick plate, finished to 4mm in final form, where the curved element matches the curve from the top of the fretboard down to the deck of the headstock. The detail is often unseen my anyone but the player. But if you know, then you know 😉
  12. Bassworks
    Necks. Arguably the most important part of the instrument. Mine start to take shape slowly, removing material in stages and allowing time for the internal stresses to equalise and for any movement to occur. These blanks are bandsawn with a good 10mm of excess material on their profiles at this stage.
  13. Bassworks
    Hi folks, following on from Sam's Custom PMM4-T "The Mule", here's a build diary for a stock instrument now for sale at a crazy "Black Friday" deal that I'm honouring for a little longer. I'll start with a finished instrument shot (next to my personal JPJ5 in Sonic Blue) and then show you how I built the instrument "from soup to nuts" as they say! Hope you enjoy. Please feel free to comment and ask questions along the way and thanks for stopping by to take a look.
  14. Bassworks
    Thanks @GarethFlatlands, Jon is a truly remarkable luthier. You say a Shuker "build" ? I presume you are modifying one of his basses? or do you work in Jon's shop?
  15. Bassworks
    Just picking up on Pea Turgh's question. The control cavity is indeed designed "for but not with" a retrofit John East 3 band UNI Pre, one of my favourite circuits. The cavity is not so massive though. I deliberately left mass there by only routing down 10mm. Just enough to get a bearing cutter to follow the cavity profile with a manual router later down the line. As it happens, the client having been an ardent fan of passive circuits for years, experienced a MM 18V active two band circuit recently and was suitably impressed. He pressed the button on a retrofit active circuit a couple of weeks ago. He picked the John East MMSR 2 Band EQ instead of the UNI Pre 3 band, but it all went in perfectly. If it was not for the copper shielding work, he could have waited whilst the work was done! The devil is in the detail folks! PS: The EQ on this circuit is something else! Fabulous wallop of bass boost is available but it's really musical and the treble boost just sizzles! Leo Fender got this one absolutely right.
  16. Bassworks
    Thanks for the great feedback folks!
  17. Bassworks
    Thanks Sam and all those great bits of feedback from the group. Yes my headstocks have extra mass where it counts and less mass where it does not. So for example on my extended range instruments there is light chambering behind the logo North of the last tuner. Mass is unimportant there in terms of string vibration physics and also helps avoid neck dive. Regarding the heel pocket, there is no overspray into it and if there was it is cabinet scraped away. Sam's bass features my proprietary neck pocket which is as far as I know unique and I own the IP for it. I don't show this detail even though I own the IP as there are sadly too many unscrupulous copy cats out there. But suffice to say it confers exceptional sonic transfer throughout the instrument ensuring that the materials of construction contribute their disctinctive properties to the overall sonics of the instrument. The frets are something I have done manually in the past. This time round I have developed more IP in terms of processes/tooling to semi-automate fret preparation, helping keep costs down. #custombuildnotcustompricing Thanks again folks, have a great weekend and shoot me some questions if you like and if anyone wants a quote for their dream guitar or bass, I'm here to serve. No obligation for initial 30 min consultation.
  18. Bassworks
    That's right Sam, mass important in terms of physics at both ends of a vibrating string. I do therefore put more mass here than the mass manufacturers do (see what I did there). However on my other models I also lightly chamber the headstock to take some mass out North of the tuner where it does not contribute to the physics of the vibrating string.
  19. Bassworks
    My own JPJ5 in action folks... I'm currently finishing off a complete re-finish of this bass as she never got a photoshoot and went straight into recording and gigging. The audio is the actual bass recorded at Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, cunningly re-synching a live video of the song from a gig in Kent. Hope you enjoy the noodling!...
  20. Bassworks
    Hi folks, thanks to Sam for creating this thread and for all the kind words from you Bass fans. It means a lot. Just picking up on a few questions raised.... Jimothey asked about holes to the rear of the body. If that was to do with Sam's Custom PMM4-T, then if they are underneath the bridge they are holes for the Hipshot string ferrules for through-string option on the Hipshot bridge. If they are beneath the pick up: I use a tri-point PU height setting and lock-down configuration. Basically the three screws at the rear of the bass set PU height. Because there are three the PU cannot wobble so it's a breeze to set up. When the PU heights are set the top screws (3 in the case of this Bartolini MM PU) are simple screwed in to lock down the PU in the desired position set by the rear screws. I have to credit Joe Zon of Zon Guitars for the engineering solution here. The only bass I have ever seen with this feature was one of his. There may be others. Have a great day and keep it Funky!
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