SignsOfDelirium_bassist Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 A little while ago, I bought a P bass off of Moos3h for £50. It's a damn fine bass for £50 I'd say, quite a nice neck (Shame I'll be getting rid of it really). Luckily for me, a family friend in Manchester has offered to teach me some guitar building stuff, said he might even be up for helping me build my own bass from scratch if he's got the time. I don't want to inconvenience him too much though, and I'll only be able to go up for a week at a time. Originally I bought this P bass to practice some routing/re-finishing on, haven't gotten round to it yet though...To be honest I'm just loving the look of it hanging on my wall! haha. So anyway, basically i'm thinking of taking this bass up to Manchester with me, and modding it severely while I'm there. I want to try to convert it to a fanned fret bass! It's only a 4string, so i'm thinking 34"-32", nothing too severe I hope, I'm not sure if that will be a severe fan or not, might just go for 34"-33" instead. I don't want anything on the dingwall scale, I want to be able to use standard scale strings! How would I work out where the frets would go? I'm assuming it's a % thing? like the first fret is roughly...Oh I dunno, for the sake of arguement lets say 5% down the neck from the nut, the 2nd is an additional 3% etc etc. Obviously this means I'm going to get some single string bridge pieces, but besides that I don't want to have to buy much else besides whatever's needed for the neck. I'm fully prepared to rout out some of the body to fit the neck in by the way, I'd like to have more than 20 frets. I'm guessing the best thing to do would be to have the fretboard overhang the end of the neck? I'm going to be going for a simple maple/maple neck, tinted finish If it all happens I'll make sure there are many pictures I don't suppose there's some crazy website that would work all this out for me is there? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me Cheers Jack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_b Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 Try Google. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BottomEndian Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 About halfway down [url="http://www.liutaiomottola.com/formulae/fret.htm"]this page[/url]. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonBassAlpha Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 DangerBoy on here had some individual bridge units for sale within the last week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SignsOfDelirium_bassist Posted March 19, 2011 Author Share Posted March 19, 2011 Excellent! I was hoping for something like a calculator to work it out for me As good as I used to be at maths, I don't think I'd trust myself to work that out! Does it not matter where my parallel fret is then? In terms of playability that is, obviously for intonation etc it wouldn't. I'm guessing you'd want the parallel fret around the 5th-7th fret? I play a fair bit up near the dusty end, so I don't want the frets to get [i]too[/i] slanted on either side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waldemar Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 I came across this a while back and bookmarked it: [url="http://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fretfind2d/"]http://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fretfind2d/[/url] looks pretty comprehensive to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markstuk Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 Are you going to have a slant nut as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SignsOfDelirium_bassist Posted March 19, 2011 Author Share Posted March 19, 2011 (edited) Yea that's the plan, I feel like my hand is a little twisted when playing the lower notes, I'm sure it would be alot easier if they were slanted at the nut as well. I could be horribly wrong, but it seemed pretty comfy when I played a Dingwall Combustion... Wow, thanks Waldemar! Looks like the perfect tool! I'm a bit confused with some of the stuff on page, but i'll figure it out I'd want it to be vaguely jazz width at the nut, so I'm guessing putting 1.5 in for the 'String Width at Nut' part is the way to go? Oh well. Thanks again for all the help guys 'n gals, most appreciated! Jack. Gah, I'm an idiot, never mind the stuff about that ekips page, just realised they've got little help things on there already! Edited March 19, 2011 by SignsOfDelirium_bassist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted March 19, 2011 Share Posted March 19, 2011 The parallel fret can be where ever you you want it to be. On the Dingwall it's the 8th fret. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SignsOfDelirium_bassist Posted March 20, 2011 Author Share Posted March 20, 2011 I think i'll go for that then. The dingwall was comfy, just a tad too slanted in my opinion! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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