Davy Posted March 6, 2010 Share Posted March 6, 2010 Hi, I'm thinking of building a headless bass, possibly styled on a Hohner B2B (bolt on neck) but with a musicman style pickup. I'm not flush with cash at the minute due to being out of work for the last 11 months so I was hoping to try and build something using parts from other guitars, with some cutting required on the body section. The main question is would I be able to take a regular headed neck, chop the head and fit a headless string retainer? I heard that if I was going to do this then I would need to look for a neck with the truss rod open at the body end. I've noticied that the Yamaha RBX170 has a truss rod access at the body end. Does anyone think the Yamaha would be a decent bass to try this with, bearing in mind they can be picked up fairly cheaply or would it be better to try and source a piece of wood and custom build a body, maybe using the modified Yamaha neck. Or would it be just as well to custom build the whole thing from scratch to a budget. Has anyone ever attempted this before and if so, do you have any advice? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karlthebassist Posted March 7, 2010 Share Posted March 7, 2010 I'd say that would work quite well. Are you planning on buying the string retainer or making one? You need to find out what the width of the nut is on the RBX170 neck and find a retainer that would suit if you are looking at buying one. I know the current style Status Graphite retainers are 42mm wide, so that's one option. ABM also do a system (i think the tuning bridge rails for the status basses are actually ABM, but I could be wrong). [url="http://www.abm-mueller.com/index2.html"]http://www.abm-mueller.com/index2.html[/url] have a look there. The system they do is more steinberger style. but they are not cheap! Making the body would be best rather than trying to chop one up - and probably a lot easier, as I imagine you would run into all sorts of problems. A nice bit of ash to do a B2 style body would cost you less than £40... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davy Posted March 7, 2010 Author Share Posted March 7, 2010 Thanks for the info. I've seen a string retainer and bridge combo on Ebay from the states for $52.00 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200436150663&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT) but I'll need to check the dimensions of the retainer to see if it would fit a Yamaha RBX170 neck. The body wood sounds cheap enough though and if I was going to build a body myself, I might decide to create a slightly different style....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alien Posted March 8, 2010 Share Posted March 8, 2010 Take a look at this thread [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44673&hl=headless"]here[/url]. Might give you a few ideas, or at least a starting point. A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davy Posted March 9, 2010 Author Share Posted March 9, 2010 Thanks for that, a great project and interesting to see that a standard pickup configuration can be changed by infilling the body and re-routing the new pickup holes, never thought about that. Perhaps I can tinker with a Yamaha RBX170 after all. Anyone know of any other cheap basses that have the truss rod access at the body end? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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