A 3d printed headless bass ...

[rwillett]

2 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

Have you got a flat neck to start with? It sounds like you have a lot of relief in it unless I'm misinterpreting you.

 

Basically, you have two shapes to consider here. There's the section between bridge and the neck fixings furthest away from it (the neck bolts closest to the unheadstock), and the very long thin triangle between those neck fixings and the nut. The height of the bridge at its lowest should correspond with the height of the neck and fretboard (so the strings would rest flat on the fretboard if the bridge height was minimised). The long thin triangle needs to be angled such that the strings would lie flat on the fretboard if you hold them down at the first fret.

 

If you need to work out the thickness of a shim, you can do that by considering the positions of the shim S and the fixings about which the neck will effectively pivot P (the bolts furthest from the bridge if you're putting a shim in at the bridge end to lower the nut end, the bolts closest to the bridge if you're putting a shim in at the other end to raise the nut). Then given the nut position N, the ratio NP:PS is also the ratio of thickness of the shim to the height by which the nut is to move (similar triangles). I think, anyway, my own pure maths O-levels were over 50 years ago.

 

Just put the spirit level on the neck and its slightly concave at the nut end by about 2mm. It gently lifts off from about the 12th fret. This is on a neck that is not connected to anything and has no tension on it., its just sitting on my desk.

 

I understand what you mean by "The long thin triangle needs to be angled such that the strings would lie flat on the fretboard if you hold them down at the first fret.". Thats a good position to aim for, I can work the maths out now I now I have a target position. I suspect that I may need to shim but printing a shim is relatively easy now I know the target positions.

 

So I think I need to get the aluminium backbone (wood colour) drilled so that I can start to connect the bridge module (white left), the bridge adapter (gray left), the middle module (middle white) and the neck module (white right)

 

 

Put the neck on and put some strings on it, fret at the first nut and see if the strings lie flat against the neck. If not flat then see if it needs shimming OR a slight change in the torsion rod is needed. I need the aluminium backbone to provide some strength as the 3d printing won't.

 

Thanks

Rob

[rwillett]

On 09/05/2024 at 13:44, tauzero said:

 

Would you be able to print the two centre pieces in one print, perhaps by rotating the top right square through 90 degrees clockwise to increase the length of the bottom rail included in that part and moving the bottom right square to the left to minimise the size of the bottom middle?

You can't print the centre pieces as one piece. The max size is 205mm x 205mm. It's six pieces (I think).

 

I've now done or am printing the stuff in white below. This leaves four big chunks to do.

 

 

Sadly these are hefty chunks to print. The bottom left where the controls will go is 11.5 hours.

 

 

This one is even worse at 15 hours

 

 

If I move to 0.2mm height, its 26 hours.... and 01.mm height is a mere 49 hours

 

 

 

[itu]

14 hours ago, rwillett said:

If I move to 0.2mm height, its 26 hours.... and 01.mm height is a mere 49 hours

Meanwhile you can listen to the sound of the bus where this song was recorded.

 

 

[rwillett]

A number of printer issues has slowed down printing the outside components but it's progressing.

 

Big shoutout to @JohnH89 who has been exceptionally helpful as I struggle through some of the setup. He's been utterly brilliant.

 

The neck is still being setup, am printing another neck shim to try and get things in the right place. I'm also doing the three remaining components, bottom left (control panel), top right and top middle. These aren't that important but give you somewhere to rest your hand

 

 

In deference to @tauzero I have added three strap buttons to the bottom of the bass as well. One in the middle and one either side. I can easily blank any of them off.

 

 

Added in two pickups, these are what I had to hand, though I can use Thunderbird pickups, jazz pickups or probably most others. Not soldered them yet as I need a control panel and thats still printing.

 

I might just have it done for the bass bash.

 

Rob

[JohnH89]

7 minutes ago, rwillett said:

A number of printer issues has slowed down printing the outside components but it's progressing.

 

Big shoutout to @JohnH89 who has been exceptionally helpful as I struggle through some of the setup. He's been utterly brilliant.

 

The neck is still being setup, am printing another neck shim to try and get things in the right place. I'm also doing the three remaining components, bottom left (control panel), top right and top middle. These aren't that important but give you somewhere to rest your hand

 

 

In deference to @tauzero I have added three strap buttons to the bottom of the bass as well. One in the middle and one either side. I can easily blank any of them off.

 

 

Added in two pickups, these are what I had to hand, though I can use Thunderbird pickups, jazz pickups or probably most others. Not soldered them yet as I need a control panel and thats still printing.

 

I might just have it done for the bass bash.

 

Rob

Glad to see its all coming together mate . I am now back in the land of the internet so will be able to offer (un)helpful comments where appropriate . Its nice to see the neck and hardware in its new incarnation . Keep up the good work .

[Muzz]

1 hour ago, rwillett said:

A number of printer issues has slowed down printing the outside components but it's progressing.

 

Big shoutout to @JohnH89 who has been exceptionally helpful as I struggle through some of the setup. He's been utterly brilliant.

 

The neck is still being setup, am printing another neck shim to try and get things in the right place. I'm also doing the three remaining components, bottom left (control panel), top right and top middle. These aren't that important but give you somewhere to rest your hand

 

 

In deference to @tauzero I have added three strap buttons to the bottom of the bass as well. One in the middle and one either side. I can easily blank any of them off.

Oh my sainted aunt, that looks great...please tell me it's light...

[rwillett]

Currently it weighs 3.3Kg = 7.27lbs.

 

Things to be added:

1. Control panel = 198g
2. Top Middle bit = 179g
3. Top left = 205g
4. Pickguard <== estimate of 150g with screws
5. Control knobs and wiring <== 70g

This theoretically adds up to 4.1Kg/9lbs

 

Now the previous bass I made weights 4.4Kg and I know I have reduced the weight for the headless one. I have a narrower backbone which saved 300g, the headless neck is lighter. The neck clamps and bridge may be heavier but not to a great degree. lets see what it comes out by. The aim was to get under 4Kg and I'm close. Perhaps I won't paint it a la Formula One cars

 

Rob

[rwillett]

Good progress overnight. Managed to finish off the last two body parts. 

 

 

Strap screws in place for neck and bridge.

 

Earthing wire in and not working Need to resolve this.

 

Am now printing off two pickguards, one for the neck and one for the control panel. 4-5 hours each.

 

@JohnH89 still offering advice, the guy must be a saint putting up with my witterings

 

Weight without pickguards and control knobs, 3.9Kg. can't see it being under 4K as each pickguard is 50g and the control knobs and wiring will be around 100g, so 4.1Kg. The last bass was 4.4Kg so I have saved 300g. TBH was hoping for more. The body is a little longer so more filament, may look at printing with less infill or tailor the infill for certain areas. My MIJ 97Jazz is 4.4Kg, my medium scale Mustang is 3.5Kg so just about in the middle.

 

Rob

Edited May 14 by rwillett

[rwillett]

Fitted the cheapest, nastiest control panel I could get from Amazon to make sure I have something that works. Well it was cheap but it was wired incorrectly with the cables to the socket reversed. I assumed it was my connections or soldering or anything, but no, it was the sodding wrongly wired socket. No doubt there's a chinese forced labourer chuckling to herself in her dormitory how she's going to bring down Western capitalism, one badly wired socket at a time. Two sodding hours to find that as I thought it had to be me.

 

Anyway, fixed that, left a review on Amazon so the next sucker knows what to change.

 

Plugged in and there's sound. Not sure if its the right sound, but there is something coming out of it through the mod_dwarf. There's also a lot of hum, even without the bass plugged in, but thats a problem for another day.

 

Got both pickguards on, weight is 4.02kg which is highly annoying as it's 21g more than I was working for. I'll change the metal knobs for plastic or fit lighter strings. It's 400g lighter than the last one though.

 

It still needs to be setup properly, it's almost there, but I prioritised the build over setup so that its ready for Sats Bass Bash. I'll post pictures tomorrow, but I now have a working headless bass.  First post for this was May 6th, so eight days from start to finish. For some reason I thought it was significantly longer, it feels a lot longer, especially as I got up at 02:30 this mornning to add some embedded nuts for the strap mounts.

[JohnH89]

Loving the JP pickup configuration . Not one I've seen before . Is it wired with two volumes or volume and blend ? Hum without the bass plugged in can't really be blamed on the bass . You will get hum with the J pickup soloed if you are in an RF noisy environment . I suspect that your problem may be with the control plate wiring as it is of suspect quality . If you need any assistance with either the setup or wiring debugging , let me know either here or via DM . 

Astounding progress in such a short time Rob . I will be interested on peoples thoughts after your bass bash this weekend . 

[rwillett]

John,

 

These were the first pickups that came to hand Literally. I wanted to check that these all worked.

 

Its wired volume/Volume/Blend (or it should be). I'll sort the hum out, may be a noisy PSU, I suspect that my home office is bloody awful for RF as I have a large colour laser printer, 2 x 3d printers, 2 x UPS's, network switch, EXSI server, multiple laptops, desktops, monitors, ipads and servers.

 

I might change it to use two Jazz pickups, or something else. I really like my P90's on my home made Tele and once I get the guitar winder working, that'll be my first design.

 

Here's what pickups can be fitted. The red squares are for Thunderbird bass fittings, the blue squares are for Fender neck and Fender bridge pickups. The neck pickups are 38mm apart and the bridge pickups are 40mm apart.  The yellow squares are for precision type split pickups. I forgot to add them to the neck position in the design <doh>. However since this is a modular design, I will put the split pickups screw mounting holes in to the neck position as well. I need to print off a single new plate. It does involve dismantling some of the guitar as it's right in the centre, but probably 45 mins each way. Six hours to print as well.

 

I may just go back to my Wilkinson Jazz pickups, all that entails is taking out the split pickups and putting the jazz ones back in. All the cabling is modular as well, so thats not a problem. I will need to print a neck pickguard, but thats a few hours and easy.

 

 

The other screw holes are for pickguards, or attaching the outer frame.

 

Thanks

Rob

 

[rwillett]

here's the full length with pickguards, dodgy control panel and quite nice knobs. I can see better pots wiring and capacitors on the horizon. None of this is difficult to solder up using decent CTS pots, and decent wires.

 

 

A close up of the front. if this was a Hollywood film, you;d be able to reverse engineer my DNA just by looking at the reflections in the knobs Strap points in, pick guard screws aren't quite right. Will probably move to silver button heads as opposed to countersunk.

 

 

Here's the back. This is a 60mm wide backbone rather than an 80mm backbone. Seems fine though and saves circa 300g.

 

Things that still need to be done.

1. I still can't get a decent glossy finish so all my guitars are still raw. Six months and no tangible progress.
2. The pieces that make up the outside are not glued together yet. There is tiny movement between them. This needs to be done but I don't want to screw up before Saturday.
3. Rewire the contol panel. probably not before Saturday though I might have a sneaky look on Amazon today for next day shipment on CTS pots.
4. Reprint the pickguards as they aren't perfect.
5. Probably change the pickups to my new Wilkinson ones and design a new pickguard. Thats thne nice thing about this bass, don;t like the pickups, try somnething different. Perhaps a telecaster deluxe design or a strat type design with three pickups. Not a massive problem to do.

 

 

[JohnH89]

Did you volume/volume/tone ? If not I would like to see the wiring diagram as that may be your hum problem if not wired right . I have a noisy power supply on my bench which I will sort out one day . I use a home made 40W amp that runs off a drill battery to test . Took that up to island in Scotland last week and between use with the bass , and as a bluetooth speaker , a 2mAh battery lasted over 8 hours . 

[rwillett]

The hum problem is in the Mod Dwarf somewhere. I've been playing with it and I may have screwed something up.

 

I do have a decent bench power supply (60V 10A) which I might hook up to the Dwarf to check things over.

 

Just looking at 500K CTS pots, four for £23, some guitar wire, a couple of capacitors (not sure if they need to be paper in oil or 'ordinary and cheap' ones). I've got some spare sockets as well as copper tape.  I might even have some spare capacitors in the box. Its not that difficult to make one IMHO.

 

Always happy to take advice and learn. One day I may teach somebody else something useful (possibly).

 

Thanks

Rob

[JohnH89]

Bog standard poly caps is where you need to be . Don't buy in to the whole mojo tone cap thing Rob . Snake oil salesmen . Paper in oil capacitors died out about the time of Marconi for good reason . 

[rwillett]

@JohnH89 Thanks for the advice on the capacitors. Some of the capacitors were £10-£11 which sounded insane money. I decided not to mess too much with the bass before Sat.

 

However one of the advantages of a modular bass is that I can change the pickups around quite quickly. I created a new pickguard design for jazz type pickups, printed it out, took the old pickguard off and the split pickups and put the bridge pickup from Wilkinsons. Printing the new pickguard took a long time, but once done, took around 15 mins in total.

 

The old pickguard is still usable, as are the pickups.

 

I actually prefer the Wilkinsons to the splits pickups, however they were in the wrong place

 

Edited May 15 by rwillett

[rwillett]

And now I've built it, I'm going to change it again

 

Based on feedback from the weekend at the North West and Scotland Bass Bash
 

1.  The body shape will be more curved to avoid the high edge that presses against the wrist.
2.  I'll try and cut the weight down a bit. Making it more curvy will actually help. The target is less than 4Kg.
3.  Countersink the neck screws rather than them sitting proud with flanges
4.  Replace the electrics with something nicer. Possibly active, this means changing the control panel pocket to allow a battery. Mmmm......
5.  Simplify some of the pickup mounting holes and add some more in different places. Perhaps a single high quality pickup?
6.  Redesign the back to allow more access to the headless bridge.
7.  Redesign how to channel the pickup wiring so it's neater and not just laying there. Might be as simple as a velcro strap, cable tie and a loop hole or similar.
8.  Look at better finishes. There were some gorgeous basses at the weekend, I need to step my game up

 

 

Sat down on Sunday and worked out how to get both sides of the frame to be sculptered. Really tricky to print.

 

Rob

Edited Monday at 08:53 by rwillett

[Andre_Passini]

Amazing job Rob!

[Richard R]

Stunning!