First build questions!

[EJJS]

Hi! So, I've been thinking of building a electric bass and was wondering where to start. I pretty much have all the tools I need to build a bass. 

Here are the options I can think of:

4-string Jazz bass: 

+ Easy

+ Can find templates easily

- Kinda basic and meh

5-string Jazz bass:

+ Quite easy to build

+ 5 string is a plus

-+ Templates kinda hard to find

5 or 6-string bass, neck thru:

+ good playability 

+ good looks

- Hard to build(?) 

- No templates 

-designing it is gonna be hard. 

- finding blanks long enough is hard where I live. 

Also if I do end up doing the neck thru, do I need to do laminate neck or will 1-piece maple neck be enough? 

[ADFinlayson]

Starting with premade templates will save you a lot of time and take out a lot of the guess work, even if you only use the neck and pocket template for a j-bass etc, no reason not to use those as a base and design your own body and/or headstock. I do that occasionally because someone will want the design of one guitar, but thescale/neck taper of another guitar. e.g I made a flying V for a mate a couple of years ago but he wanted a PRS cu24 neck and electronics. having a set of templates makes designing on paper a lot easier too!

I made a 1 piece black limba neckthrough bass for a friend of mine, finished it in the summer. So far it has been perfectly stable but you're always going to be safer making a bass from laminates. 

Also, there is no shame in getting a pre-slotted fretboard blank, I did that for my first neck build to negate the risk of inaccurate fret slots.

[EJJS]

10 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

Starting with premade templates will save you a lot of time and take out a lot of the guess work, even if you only use the neck and pocket template for a j-bass etc, no reason not to use those as a base and design your own body and/or headstock. I do that occasionally because someone will want the design of one guitar, but thescale/neck taper of another guitar. e.g I made a flying V for a mate a couple of years ago but he wanted a PRS cu24 neck and electronics. having a set of templates makes designing on paper a lot easier too!

I made a 1 piece black limba neckthrough bass for a friend of mine, finished it in the summer. So far it has been perfectly stable but you're always going to be safer making a bass from laminates. 

Also, there is no shame in getting a pre-slotted fretboard blank, I did that for my first neck build to negate the risk of inaccurate fret slots.

Thanks for the reply! I was thinking of using neck and pocket template and design my own body shape. I might just ask the local luthier who sells timber and stuff to make me 5 string jazz bass template. He did do custom templates we'll see. He also sells slotted fretboards so that gonna be good. I will probably just using the j-bass shape and do some contours on the body and heel joint to make it more modern.