rwillett

Or you can have my Jet Black one (thought it is home made). In another 40 years it will be vintage

@Reggaebass feel free to contact me if you ever want to sell one of your basses at a big loss. Always happy to help Rob

That's interesting. I will look closer into this. Suspect it won't be this year though.

@SpondonBassed I earlier contacted a specialised carbon fibre manufacturer and asked them about replacing the aluminium backbone with a slimmer and lighter CF backbone. They were really quick and helpful, I paraphrase their response below. CF is about as strong as aluminium (a little stiffer) but its approx 30% lighter. The current thickness of 15mm will probably need to stay but the replacement would be lighter. The CF piece could be made stronger by going to Unidirectional fibres, but multiple test pieces would need to be made. Structural calculations may help. So thats not an option here. The CF rods will be less stiff than the plate (unless they are bigger), so need to put the thinking cap on again. I include one of their futher comments as its very helpful and really explains it. As I don't have permisison to use their name, I'll hold it back, but they were very good. "A lot of people hear comments about “carbon being stronger than Steel” and although not untrue, its very specific - eg in reality “weight for weight” carbon IS stronger than steel but the volume or dimensions of a carbon part replacing steel would be bigger but the low density means it is still much lighter overall. Certainly we have seen people use carbon rods etc in instrument necks but to replace what you have, you are likely going to need to bond a lot of pieces together which is not so practical." Thanks Rob

Useful

Who is Daisy? She sounds like a good person to know

I had a large CNC machine that I built, it would do 800mmx600mm, theoretically I could have made a bass body with it. A neck would be a challenge as it would too long. Also just looking at every guitar neck I have and all of them would be tricky on a CNC machine. There are 3D objects and whilst the heal would be easy, the head would be non-trivial (as far as I can work out). As I've never made a neck and have no idea where to even start, I could be talking complete tosh and will certainly bow to other peoples greater experience in neck making. I'd be happy to tackle a body, certainly a slab body wouldn't be that difficult, but I reckon using a hand router and a set of carefully designed templates, I'd make a reasonable stab (probably bad choice of words) at it. Then again, I couldn't easily do the lovely Veroni shapes with a hand router easily. For one offs I suspect printed templates, a careful eye and a hand router would do a good job. Wouldn't want to make a hundred of them like that. Might be an interesting project for a group to take on and make 4-5 guitars at the same time. Rob

Good question... I don't think that moving it to the top would make it much less succeptible to bending. I suppose that it would reduce the leverage as the height connected is lower. However it would significantly complicate things as a lot of stuff connects to the printed section that sits on top the aluminium backbone. Other ideas have included L shaped aluminium sides that would reinforce the current backbone. Not investigated this idea yet.. Carbon Fibre seems the obvious option to try.

At the moment it's 4.2Kg, however I'm not sure I trust the scales, so it's not light. 1.2Kg (or more) is the aluminium backbone. After saying that, it doesn;t feel any heavier than my 97 MIJ Fender Jazz. I am a little surprised as the printed bits are 1.2Kg, never weighed the neck, but there's 2.4Kg+ on the neck and body, there's the bridge, pickups, controls and the tug boat strings. I reckon a carbon fibre backbone would take 0.75Kg off that easily. Rob

Thanks. I'm quite pleased but already thinking of the next version. Too many compromises and not enough thinking in advance for my liking. I've learnt a lot though so that's good.

Yes thanks 😊

Feel free to hijack. If this thread gets people talking, then that's good. Also I'll learn soomething along the way

@JohnH89 Plans now are now to try and work out what the finish on the body needs to be. I have my V1 six string body in the garage, its full of filler, primer, has been attacked by various sanders and tomorrow will be attacked with wet and dry paper to work out how to make the body look good. I still have the V2 body and neck. Even after thinking about what to do for a long time, I still made a load of mistakes that I won't make with the next one. Whether I go headless or not is something I'm thinking about. If I go headless I want the body to look good, so thats a big driver. I have thoughts already.... The bits I want to change for the next guitar mean every single piece has changed. I will also make a glue fitting tool to let me glue bits together safely, quickly. Glue works, but even a 0.1mm alignment issue is noticable. So I may be in touch about your very kind offer. I wouldn't have a clue about making a neck. To me thats the heart of a guitar and its as difficult as heart surgery. IIf I can control it with a computer, I'm good. Power tools and me are not a good combination. 3d printing is easy, trust me, I know All the best Rob

If nothing else works, you can always buy a canoe and have a trip round Brighton pier. For this I'd draw it up in Fusion 360 and really check stuff. I'm happy to help with that bit, but no idea what the ideal measurements should be. One of the things I learnt from the bass was that the pickups, bridge and nut all need to be thought about at the start, rather than what I did, towards the middle I made so many mistakes that I am already thinking about V3 Not sure if the headless comes before or after V3 Rob

Sam, To me the neck is the most important bit. I can change the pickups, I can do a new body, replace the tuners etc etc, but I can't make a neck. I've seen the one with an aluminium truss rod and it was OK as an intellectual exercise, but would Geezer play it? Probably not. Thats why I made the design to handle just about any neck, because I couldn't make a neck. Now your problem, finding a headless five string is tricky. Necks seem to attract a lot of money. I was very lucky with the MIM Jazz neck. I also have a lovely Aria Pro neck as well as a decent Ibanez neck for the next bass projects. One of these, probably the Ibanez will be the headless bass, simply because the shape of the head makes it easier to convert to headless. Mind you I'm probably wrong as normal. I have four eBay searches setup for guitar necks and most of the results are rubbish, but occassionally one pops up thats worth a punt. I am assuming that a wide four string neck can't be repurposed to a five string neck with a new nut? Its going to be headless so the number of tuner holes is immaterial. Rob

The rakish angle was driven by necessity rather than design. I do like them now. The body is using the veroni shapes you suggested. I have done no work on the finish. That's being thought about and tested in the garage on some old bits.

Well after an evening of glue sniffing and the like, I bit the bullet, pulled everything together to see how it worked. Nothing worked for a while until I realised that the metal control plate acts as an earth and as I hadn't used it, plastic wasn't the solution. A quick application of copper tape on the back of the control panel solved that little issue. The pickups actually look good and work well. Not set anything up beyond screwing it together and tuning it. Plugged it into GarageBand and it sounded fine, plugged into a NUX micro headphone amp and sounded fine. Plays OK, zero neck dive. The neck is great, the Hipshot tuners work well and it's a good guitar. Not tried to compare it to my Fender Jazz or Mustang, but good first effort. Will now try and set it up properly. The last photo was coz I left the camera in black and white mode. It is a very black guitar.

Never thought of using it for that. Still working out what I can do with it. My aim was to simply cut out the right shape in the aluminium. It's far too powerful for printed filament and it needs some care and attention. I suspect shaping plywood will be a doddle if I make a six string again.

Oh God. Birthday year and I'm driving back near Pudsey in a few hours.

Still need to think about finishing it. Sanding, spraying and lacquer/epoxy resin comes to mind. Epoxy resin wasn't a great success but I'll try again.

A busy weekend of rugby and finishing things. Pickguard and control panel facia now done. Bottom of guitar glued in place. Pickups are currently slanted as I think they are too wide for the strings to sit in the middle of the pickups. My Fender Jazz pickups aren't perfectly aligned but still better than this. Is this normal? Intending to have this finished middle of the week now. Need to glue the top of the guitar on and then get into setting it up.

Anybody regularly selling on Ebay will be aware of distance selling regs. It all comes down to how much hassle they create. I took a company to court over a Bluetooth speaker, nothing nothing nothing until we walked through the door and they settled. Told the magistrate all done and they moved on.

Distance selling regs invalidates the "No returns" claim. They can say what they like, but they can't ignore the law. even though they try to. Local trading standards won't do anything, but a small claim is easy to make. 90% of people in this position will settle out of court. Now whether somebody would take them to court is another issue, but the small claims court fees are quite low and I would suggest that have a 100% chance of winning their case. I'm running something like 4-0 on small claims. over the last 20 years. Rob