St Vincent 5 string

[Joe Nation]

Finally made a start on building my second bass, about 25 years after starting (but never finishing) my first. I've decided to buy a neck for this one to save time, money and effort. But I am aiming to make a neck next time...

 

This is going to be a replica/reimagining of the Musicman St Vincent guitar - there were rumours they were going to make a Pino-backed bass a few years ago but it never came to be. I've only seen two other homemade ones, both look very nice but I'm going to try and go one better. Firstly it'll be a 5er, partly because I've always wanted one and also I got a deal on some Fishman Fluence 5 string pickups.

 

The neck I found (£70 on Reverb) has a reasonably good MM-shaped headstock so the overall look should be fairly authentic. The body shape may however be slightly different, as I don't happen to have a genuine St V lying around to copy. I've looked around online at all the plans and photos I can find, and I think it'll be somewhat closer to a modified/truncated Explorer, rather than a straight copy of a St V - no particular reason for this, it just felt like a nice shape to me (I wonder if that might be where they started with the original St V design process anyway). It's still all on paper anyway so who knows? I'm also going to do front and back binding, partly thanks to Basvarken and his beautiful Explorers. Colour will be a deep metallic; I'm undecided between red, blue, green and purple but red is currently in the lead.

 

After watching a bunch of Matt Estlea's videos about sharpening and setting up a plane, I've started smoothing the top and back of the ash body. Feels good to actually move some wood around - I recently redid our front hall with some lovely herringbone T&G, the woodworking genes kicked in hard. Next step is to finalise the body shape and geometry - any tips for establishing neck angle? (saddle height is 12-17mm over the body according to Schaller, bridge is a 3D-5).

 

I've also got a bunch of other things to work out and research, like doing the binding. Everyone says to use acetone for gluing, leave it a hair's width proud of the wood and scrape it back, and do the finish after the binding is on. But should you scrape it flush then do the finish, or finish then scrape? And clear lacquer over the binding or leave it plain? I'm also going to paint the headstock to match the body, should I bind it too?

 

Progress will be slow so don't expect weekly updates! If I've got the body routed out by New Year's I'll be happy.