Bass Guitar 4 String

[Starpainter]

Hi all

Been lurking around the place for a while now, and decided to make myself a bass guitar (well, am going to try my best that is).

I have been thinking about posting or not, but what the heck, the only thing that can happen is that one gets help in avoiding disaster.

So, let's see where I am at at the moment.

The wood

Maple

Poplar

Swampash

Pau Ferro

The template

The flatsawn maple cut

And glued with pau ferro veneer

And then the scarf cut

Trussrod channel

And scarf clamped

That's where I'm at at the moment, to be continued ...

Thx

P

[dpm99]

Nice, clean work. You're doing a good job.

[crazygtr]

Looking good. Is this your first? If it is, you've got my respect for going all in on a laminated neck.

[Starpainter]

Thx for the replies, and yes, my first, we'll see where it leads us I guess

[pan_kara]

Nice, looking forward to seeing this progress! How thick is the poplar top?

[Starpainter]

The poplar top is 8mm thick.

[Prostheta]

Fantastic Poplar burl. I've wanted to use some of that myself ever since I saw it on a couple of Warwicks and an Ibanez S. Not managed to come across any unfortunately. Your laminations seem nice and clean. Hand jointed?

[Starpainter]

Well, the veneer effectively is veneer, the maple was flatssawn, so cut up and turned to create a quartersawn laminated neck.

I did get assistence of a machine my grandfather (may he rest in peace) had. It isn't perfect anymore, leaves bumps one needs to adjust afterwards by hand and all that, but it does help. It is from before WO II and I was happy to be able to use it (it is at my grand uncle's place now)

[Starpainter]

On that note (for some reason I can't edit my own post?) a question.

This will be a 34'' 4 string. Should I put in some fiber reinforcements or is the truss rod enough power?

[Prostheta]

No, in general I would not reinforce it for the simple reasons that a. the design does not need it and b. that it can make the neck inflexible and unresponsive to adjustments that you do want to make. If it stays dead straight from building through to final stringing up for example, you would need to induce in an artificial amount of up-bow in order to set it up well. No big disaster there but usually a neck is a balance of tension between the up-bow caused by the string tension and the counteracting force of the truss rod. It is perhaps just me, however I prefer the instruments I build (or own) to have this balance of opposing forces rather than forcing an instrument out of whack against its natural rest state.

A neck on say a 35"+ scale and/or five or more strings might have so much string tension that reinforcement is needed so the natural up-bow from the strings is not too much for the truss rod to counteract.

Millions of instruments exist out there with flatsawn Maple necks with no reinforcement added. It seems somewhat unnecessary to add in a complication that the basic design does not require, especially when you have specifically re-oriented the grain to be perpendicular to the force of string tension.

That said, there are reasons for adding reinforcement or at the very least making the neck more like a composite of materials outside of neck flex. Fender necks are quite well known for having definite common spots over the neck where notes are either dead or produce "wolf tones" mostly because many of them are one straight flatsawn piece of Maple. Necks with laminates or made up of several differing materials seem less prone to this phenomenon. I never bother considering this as almost all necks have their weird points.

Your mileage may vary. All designs, tastes and experiences with instruments differ.

[Starpainter]

WO II

Oops, in English that would be WWII

Thank you for the elaborate explanation Prostheta. Without fiber it will be

[pan_kara]

Poplar burl is a great looking wood. I found one place for it in the EU with reasonable prices here - Prostheta you might want to check it out.

[Prostheta]

Thank you for the elaborate explanation Prostheta. Without fiber it will be

Don't let me dissuade you, just help you make an informed decision either way.

Poplar burl is a great looking wood. I found one place for it in the EU with reasonable prices here - Prostheta you might want to check it out.

Awesome, thanks. Going to check it out....even though the only thing I really need on my plate right now is ANOTHER project.

[pan_kara]

I hear you

I'm currently scraping binding back to white after painting poplar burl veneered top blue (in fact that guitar has a 3x maple laminated neck just like Starpainter's bass here, just with padauk instead of pau ferro veneer - laminated necks on first builds FTW) and I have another sheet ready for the future... but I'm still eyeing that store. They have plenty of nice looking tops at pretty reasonable prices.

[Starpainter]

Poplar burl is a great looking wood. I found one place for it in the EU with reasonable prices here - Prostheta you might want to check it out.

Dang, thx for sharing that one,definately cheaper!

Prostheta, I was already thinking, why fiber to make it immobile and then add a trussrod to move it.

pan_kara, what does FTW mean?

[Prostheta]

Reinforcements don't make a neck immobile, they just increase its stiffness or more accurately its resistance to bending under the force of string tension. A neck will always (or should always) have a natural degree of up-bow to accommodate the deflection of vibrating strings so a completely flat neck is not ideal. A neck that is too stiff will stay straighter than as not meaning you are having to add in the up-bow that the strings would normally give you anyway using the truss rod.

I'm probably completely wrong about this, however I just feel that having two forces (strings and truss rod) acting in one direction to create the necessary up-bow against neck stiffness is just not as "correct" as having the two forces working in equilibrium and the neck being closer to a natural stable state.

I suppose the closest analogy would be a tug-of-war between two teams with ropes pulling a sapling tree one way or another. The cancellation of the two opposing forces is far more stable then two teams pulling a sturdy Oak tree from one direction.

Having not thought about this at great length until you mentioned it I guess that I have realised I do this as habit because it "seems right". I don't like the idea of larger cumulative forces against immovable components. It seems inelegant, overly forceful and more prone to problems. Reinforcement to my mind is a spice you add to the mix when the neck needs it rather than the main ingredient. Dialling it out afterwards is difficult if you add too much.

Not sure whether I am explaining this well enough or merely pouring my brain out!

[Starpainter]

I do get what you mean. I decided on leaving them out because of what you stated, and also because history has proven it not necessary.

And, what have I been up to? Well ...

A fretslottingjigthingy

Roughly testing it out (shallow) and found to be quite ok

Roughly tapering the neck (and finding out that the veneers do go straight after glueing the scarf)

And then the headstock, a question coming up.

The headstock ofcourse is too thick. Now, should I take off wood from the top (which ofcourse means the nut moves) or the bottom?

Thx again for your time

P

[Prostheta]

It depends on how you want to do it. Planing the face is the easiest because you are not restricted by the neck. The way I thickness headstocks is to clamp a vertical fence next to the radius part of a vertical belt sander leaving a gap into which I feed the headstock. Can be a little touch and go but works. Can be done on a spindle sander also. If the neck can be supported vertically, reliably then a bandsaw with a fence is an option too.

What power tools are we talking here?

[Juntunen Guitars]

Poplar burl is a great looking wood. I found one place for it in the EU with reasonable prices here - Prostheta you might want to check it out.

Dang, thx for sharing that one,definately cheaper!

Prostheta, I was already thinking, why fiber to make it immobile and then add a trussrod to move it.

pan_kara, what does FTW mean?

If you used the carbon fiber to make it immobile you wouldn't be able to move it with the truss rod A bunch of companies use carbon fiber reinforcements but they aren't necessary. Just remember to check out string tensions on existing instruments and compare them to what you are building. D'addario has a list of string tensions for their strings and an equation to figure out others on their website. For a 4 string bass I wouldn't worry about it at all unless you were using super massive strings that would pull a lot.

I'd just stick with a truss rod regardless though because you want to be able to adjust the neck (esspecially if it's a flatsawn piece) and you want to be able to maintain a couple thousandths of an inch or so up bow in the neck to help keep fret buzz down. I built my first few electrics and set the neck up stick straight and had fret buzz whenever I tried to set a low action until I put a slight up bow in it, then everything worked. Don't worry about the strings warping and deforming the neck either since that's what the truss rod is for.

[westhemann]

If you used the carbon fiber to make it immobile you wouldn't be able to move it with the truss rod

That is not correct.CF rods make the neck stiffer but not "immobile".I built my first three or four with dual CF rods and a truss rod and guess what?They adjust just fine.

Having said that,I don't use them anymore.A lot of trouble for not very much IMO.

I built my first few electrics and set the neck up stick straight and had fret buzz whenever I tried to set a low action until I put a slight up bow in it, then everything worked.

I still don't buy this myth.I set all my necks as dead flat as I can...IMO "neck relief" is nothing more than urban legend based on half thought out theoretical principles that I have personally never seen proved in practice.Fret buzz is something you get when you don't do proper fretwork and "relief" just sometimes gives a convenient excuse for imperfect action.I feel the same way about "ramping" the last few frets....

Of course,I only discarded these notions after doing my own legwork...meaning I tried all methods and did all of the testing myself with no bias...and that is how I reached my current biased stance.I recommend everyone does the same for themselves.

[Juntunen Guitars]

That is not correct.CF rods make the neck stiffer but not "immobile".I built my first three or four with dual CF rods and a truss rod and guess what?They adjust just fine.

Having said that,I don't use them anymore.A lot of trouble for not very much IMO.

I built my first few electrics and set the neck up stick straight and had fret buzz whenever I tried to set a low action until I put a slight up bow in it, then everything worked.

I still don't buy this myth.I set all my necks as dead flat as I can...IMO "neck relief" is nothing more than urban legend based on half thought out theoretical principles that I have personally never seen proved in practice.Fret buzz is something you get when you don't do proper fretwork and "relief" just sometimes gives a convenient excuse for imperfect action.I feel the same way about "ramping" the last few frets....

Of course,I only discarded these notions after doing my own legwork...meaning I tried all methods and did all of the testing myself with no bias...and that is how I reached my current biased stance.I recommend everyone does the same for themselves.

The immobilizing part was a joke (notice the face thing). He asked why not immobilize it then use the rod to adjust it so I made the smart ass comment that you can't adjust something that's immobilzed

As to the fret buzz the reason I did was because I didn't route an angle into my neck pockets. My frets were level, I checked them with straightedges and feeler gauges but since I was using no neck angle I was getting fret buzz or at least that's what I came up with because when I put in a neck angle I never got fret buzz. You could push down the strings and a .002" feeler gauge would fit but would be a tight fit on the next fret up so the strings was hitting the fret when it vibrated, for some reason the neck angle fixed it but I still put in a bit of neck relief but only a couple thousandths at the 7th fret when fretting the 1st and 15th fret so there's basically barelly any.

Adding the fallaway to the end of a fretboard makes sense for acoustics because there is no support for the fingerboard from the neck after it meets the body so since the neck and body move differently it makes sense to add fallaway. Most of the acoustics you see at guitar store don't have it and that's why they get that bump where it meets the body.

But it if works for you go ahead and do it, everyone builds different and someones view of a low action could be a lot higher than someone else.

[Starpainter]

CF rods make the neck stiffer but not "immobile"

I think it could be blamed on the 'not my native tongue, English', sorry.

P