New Bass Project

[bluespresence]

I fianlly am making time for a new bass project!! The design is laid out in CAD and I am working on full scale drawings and templates right now. I have the body wood in stock and the neck is on order from Gallery. Actually I am going to make two of these at once. The body will be maple back with black walnut top and neck through. The neck will be european flame maple / black walnut 5 ply laminate (M/W/M/W/M) and I plan on putting in two Bartolini's with active 3 band EQ and one volume - this is open for now and I'll probably change my mind when I get there

Here's a link to the drawing:

New Bass Layout

EDIT: You'll have to click on the "enlarge" box that pops up when you scroll over the drawing to get a bigger and better image.

I haven't decided on the headstock design yet either. Everything I come up with looks like something else so I am continuing to draw them out before I attach it to my CAD drawing.

Comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome...............

[basey]

very nice design so far.

It reminds me a Guild B301 bass I used to have... with a ric upper horn.

How many strings?

[bluespresence]

Thanks basey! Yeah, I love the Ric cresting wave. I had about 7 designs on the table but the wave beat them all out. That's the problem I am having with headstock design too....it always ends up looking like a Ric! The right one will come to me when I get some sawdust flying

It will be a 4 string fretless. I want to make a 5 string fretless eventually but the cost of components is limiting me to build only two 4 stringers for now. I really like the LightWave pickup system but that gets a bit pricey too. I'll have to compare it to the cost of Bartolini's before I make a final decision.

I do have a nice "non-Ric" design too and one of these may end up as that. You know how it goes!!!

[skibum5545]

Sounds nice, and I really like the body design.

Now, the suggestions:

What if you were to bulk up the body in comparison to the neck? I mean, keep all the contours and proportions, just take the whole body section into Microsoft Paint and blow it up a couple percent. I think it'd give the body a better look.

Second, if you're gonna build two identical basses, why don't you use this as an experiment for comparison of some feature. My vote would be try different body woods while keeping everything else the same, but since you already have your wood that might not be the best plan of action from your point of view. Maybe one with lightwave and one with Barts, or one with a different fretboard than the other? Your call, but it seems you are in a good position to answer some of those questions guitar builders have been constantly wondering.

[bluespresence]

Good points skibum. I do have a nice fat chunk of curly maple laying around here that would make some beautiful wings!! I think it may even be thick enough to do a solid wing on each side since I'm going to keep the body at 1.5".............hmmmmmmm

I am leaning toward ebony on the fretboard....maybe ebony with the walnut and maple with the maple???

Re the body bulking....I have this in AutoCAD and I scaled and scaled until I liked the look of what I have now. The body is about 9" at the waist and 13.25 at its widest. Those are pretty standard dimensions on a bass. I think what makes it look so slim is that the neck at the body in the drawing is still at its 5" width. That will be slimmed down to 2.5" in its final stage. That will make a big difference. I was having trouble getting my .dwg CAD file in a format that I could post. I used a "middle stage" drawing rather than my final drawing. I can't give away all of my secrets until the bass is done