Building A P Bass

[o'malley]

I'm mainly a percussionist, but I've started learning to play bass. I love building instruments, and latley I've been toying with the idea of building a bass.

I'm thinking of making a Fender P Bass clone. I don't have a very big budget, so my plan was to buy a crappy Squire P Bass from the flea market or something. A really cheap one, but with the neck in good shape.

I would use the neck from that guitar, but make my own body, I'm thinking Zebrawood. I could use the crappy old body as a template too. I'm pretty comfortable working with wood, I've built furnature, art pieces, percussion instruments, and a bunch of other stuff.

Does this sound like a good idea, or am I crazy?

Any other ideas?

Cheers,

o'malley

[Primal]

Zebra wood on a tight budget? I would go for alder or ash, personally. Zebra wood seems rather expensive for someone on a tight budget, as well as for a first build.

I would also urge you to at least try to build a neck. Maple neck blanks are pretty cheap, as are rosewood fretboards and a truss rod. My first bass was a neck through and I made the neck without any major problems -- without hardly ANY woodworking skills.

People seem to think that necks are extremely difficult, but they really aren't.

Hope that helps.

[GregP]

Also, if you're just wanting the neck, the quality of the Saga kit necks can't be all that different from that of a Squier neck, and you'll only have to pay for the neck itself. Come to think of it, you could even buy the whole kit just to get your feet wet, and then if you didn't like the end product of the kit, you could still steal the neck, pickguard, and bridge, and just buy new pickups and tuning machines for your new build.

You can find them on eBay by searching for Saga kits, or have peace of mind that the kit has been at least looked over before shipped by ordering from Universal Jems: Click me For Store. Actually, a quick poke around shows me that the P-Bass kits are on pre-order, and that the individual necks aren't listed, though I bet they're available.

Contact Brian via the website or PM him here (Brian is the username, too) with specific questions-- otherwise, there are other places online including the 'Bay but also other vendors.

Greg

[thedoctor]

I think I would buy a new Rogue or Squire and just have at it. For a little over a hundred bucks you can start out with something that at least works. I lean towards the Rogues because I really like the necks. You can't feel too bad if you screw up a Rogue.