Phil Mailloux

That's exactly what I did to replicate a bass from Warrior instruments. Works perfectly. With hindsight though, I would've build the templates myself out of plywood with those paper drawings. Plywood is cheap you can refine your templates until you're happy with them. Templates save you lots time filing and sanding bandsaw marks.

Depends on the people. I cut my body out first and did the routing after. I cut out the neck pocket first then attached my neck and bridge to calculate where the pickup routs should be. I don't think many people do it this way though.

A humbucker is usually two different bobbins wound appart and assembled together after. one bobbin will have its magnets pointed towards the north and the wire turned clockwise and the other bobbin will have its magnets pointed south and its wires turned counter clockwise. Once assembled, this makes the humbucking effect

Are you talking about musicman-type humbuckers? (or p-bass??) If you're talking abour a musicman humbucker in bridge position and single coil in neck, that's no problem whatsoever. Have a look at the Carvin website. They have a bass model like that one.

not really, wire gauge is either 42 or 43, they rewind the same as single coils. You can thank that to Leo for having designed the jazz, precision and strat. They pretty much are the same if you re-use the old bobbins and magnets, just make sure you know the resistance or turns you want to have with your finished result. If you were to build your bobbins that would be a different story. The P-bass bobbins have one bobbin pointing north and the other pointing south to act as a humbucker. The jazz has one magnet on each string pointed north and the other south.

Absolutely beautiful. I want one of those!

Thanks for the answers guys, Does anyone know which is a good book I could buy that teaches me how to build a crossover and how to tune a vented cab properly?

I had read over the capacitor/tweeter serial thing on a cabinet building website but I didn't realize that bass cabs were different. I have no idea what a soliloquoy is but i've got a feeling i'd love one of those (If that's a tutorial at least) What's a "10"? Is that a sort of tweeter or are you talking about 10 inch drivers? Here goes: band practice with drummer and small gigs. Amp is an SWR workingman 160 watts. I do lots of slapping, play a 5-string bass and play hard rock, metal too once in a while. I'd like the cab to support 300 watts rms, In case I ever decide to upgrade the amp. I'd also like to know what companies make good tweeters and what I have to look for in a tweeter when I look at the manufacturer's spec sheets.

huh... yeah... how 'bout translating that in english? OK, well, I selected the eminence delta 12lf because of its price (half of the lab12) and its also used in the enclosures that avatar speakers use. Since I got good critics from that company I figured it wouldn't hurt to get the same drivers. I plan on building a closed cabinet. My electronics and speaker building skills are right now non-existent. I just plan on copying an already existing cabinet. My question is actually what sort of tweeter can I use for this as I have no idea what is good or compatible. I read somewhere else that you could just wire a tweeter in series with the driver and a capacitor and wouldn't need a crossover for that type of cabinet. Is that true and what type of tweeters are applicable? Thanks for the answer

I want to build myself a bass cabinet. I've selected the Eminence Delta 12LF speaker for the project, it's 500watt into 8 ohm. I'm totally confused with the tweeter though. What's the difference between piezo tweeters, horn drivers, compression drivers ect... Is that all different names for the same thing?? I've noticed most pro bass cabinets use "Foster high frequency compression horn tweeter" what's that? Where can I find it?? (searches on the net produced nothing) and do I need a crossover with that? I'd like my cab to be as simple as possible (i.e. no crossover) but have a volume pot for the tweeter (so I can turn the damn thing off if it annoys me). Can anybody clarify what I need for tweeter and if one company's tweeter from another is a big defference or not?

Well I sure learned a lot today. 1. Don’t rent a compressor to spray your instrument, especially if it’s your first attempt at finishing an instrument. It cost me 50 Euros for a week’s rental and my guitar is not EVEN CLOSE to being finished. I could have bought a cheap compressor for 80€!! (and will do, since I still have to finish the damn thing) 2.Sunbursting IS difficult, especially if it’s your first experience finishing… 3.Dan Erlewine’s Guitar finishing step-by-step book IS a great book. I bought it originally because I tought it would help me to finish my first instrument better. After reading it the first time I thought: “What’s this crap, I learned as much just reading the reranch documents”. Well, while I was finishing the bass, this book was the best reference to go through at any steps and saved my ass more than once. 4.Nitro cellulose thinner eats through plastic, especially the surgical gloves I happen to have. I must have changed gloves about a dozen times while I was wiping off the dyes from the body. 5.Colortone dyes are damn hard to get off your fingers. While wiping the dyes off the body I got my fingers totally colored by the dye (see point #4) I tried industrial cleaners, thinners and acetone and my fingers are still black. My boss didn’t really appreciate my black fingers while I was playing in customers’ food tonight. (I hope the color will eventually go away) 6. 2-component sealers are a godsend. At least I didn’t have to sand everything back to wood, refill and reseal both times I screwed up my finish. I only had to wipe the dyes off with towels and lots of thinner. 7.When you copy an instrument after another, make sure you’re got a picture of what you’re copying or you might have some surprises in the end. (see the two pictures below) So here goes, I decided I wanted to burst my first instrument, a 5-string bass. Here’s what it’s modeled after, Warrior instruments’ signature series bass. Here’s what mine ended up like. Needless to say I wasn’t too happy with the burst. After I did this I had a look at the photo of the original warrior bass. I was pretty pissed off at my attempt. It looks like a big blotch of black paint that someone dropped on it. So thanks to mister Erlewine, I found out I didn’t have to sand the whole thing back but just wipe off the color with thinner. I wiped the front of the body reburst and it still was ****. I wiped again and reburst again and this time the burst was a lot more like I wanted it. I was really happy with it, only problem was that the body now looked like the Niagara falls. Runs all over the place. That also brought me to the end of my week’s rental of the compressor. So after spending an hour wiping off ALL of the color away I found myself back to where I was a week earlier. Minus 25€ lacquer and thinner, 55€ rental and around 20 hours of work. I’m disgusted at myself. Well, I’m finished now. Should this be in the rant section? Or is it fine here in the work in progess? After all I still got lots more progress to do after all of this.

Allrighty then

That seems quite alright, wouldn't it have been better to plane your pieces of maple to the right thickness first? It looks like its going to be a lot of work to cut down to thickness... Then again, I only have manual tools so... I asume it could work pretty well with a bandsaw .

Go on www.ampge.com, these guys carry evereything to build pickups. The owner of this site furnishes pretty much everyone on the pickup builders forum with their supplies.

Have a look on the stewmac site for Jason Lollar's book; "Basic pickup winding and complete guide to making your own pickup winder" It's basically a 60 page step-by-step guide to making your own winder. I bought it to get info on pickups themselves. It was pretty useless for that, there's zero info on pickup theory in this book and maybe 4 pages devoted to pickup building and parts of the pickups. The winder you end up with is pretty basic (made out of wood with a sewing machine motor) but at least you get to learn what ALL the parts in this machine do, their purpose and the way they work. With this in hand you can easily design your own machines.

Everybody seems to forget the rasps.... I used a friend's bandsaw to cut the body, my router, a drill, fine and rough rasps for shaping the contours and a sanding block. Didn't need anything else for the body. For the neck add a spokeshave to that list. Depends what your budget is. My router is a 25 year old non-plunge type B & D with a slower motor. Any router will do the job fine. It's just a matter of what type of quality you're looking for in a router and what your budget is. My guitar building budget is practically non-existant so I did almost everything by hand (The wife lets me spend 70$ a month on this project) (Yeah I know, i'm wipped)

I make sure i've got two wrenches with fixed heads (i.e. exact shape for those 2 screws, non-movable slots) I craddle one wrench tightly with my left arm under my armpit (don't forget to unplug router) and push with right hand on the other one, if it doesn't work, I smack the wrench with the palm of my right hand until it loosens. If you're still stuck, then use a hammer to tap your wrench gently until it loosens. If that still doesn't work then i'd say you're tapping in the wrong direction Next time tighten the lock tightly but not SUPER tight, there's no point to it besides pissing you off when you want to change the bit.

Learn the 5 patterns of the major scale and practice them like a maniac until you can improvise anything anywhere on the neck on any major scale(B,D, G# ect..) Then learn the minor, then pentatonic, then wichever one you like better. Before you know it you'll master the fretboard like a pro and will play much faster. I used to sit in front of the TV all night just going up and down the neck praticing scale patterns. easy and fast way to get better.

The only power tools I have are a drill and a router. I got all the wood joined and planed at a schafferij (whats that in english??) and the body cut with a friends bandsaw. Neck was entirely shaped with files and spokeshave. Do you really want to spend all that money just for a hobby??? Or are you planning on becoming a luthier? if so, get some experience slowly while you SLOWLY buy a piece of machinery at a time, might be better on your wallet.

try www.mouser.com they carry almost everything, no minimum order and they ship worldwide

i don't know about home depot, but lots of lumber yards will do that for you. You can also find professional type of carpenters (i.e. window and door makers) and hire them to cut out your body or plane it. Just look in your local yellow pages and make some phone calls.

there's also a tutorial to do a burst with cans on the reranch website

www.lmii.com you can choose the wood, the radius and the scale

As mentionned in the other thread: Melvyn Hiscock's make your own electric guitar, Martin Koch's Building electric guitars Roger Siminoff's Constructing a solid-body guitar (I've got that one and I think it sucks, I wouldn't recommend it) Robert Benedetto's Making an archtop guitar(if you're into that sort of thing) Dennis Waring and David Raymond"s make your own guitar and bass( nice book, very beautiful pictures) Hiscock's book is the most complete in my opinion. If you're more advanturious: Jason Lollar's basic pickup winding and complete guide to making you own pickup winder. This book is pushed by everyone on the pickup builder's forum as the reference on the subject. I was pretty disapointed with this book, in reality, it's nothing more than a big step-by-step plan of how to build a winder with only a couple of pages of info on building the pickups and how they work. I found this book: Erno Zwaan's Animal magnetism for musician. Half the book is a step-by-step build of a bass (not that detailed) and the other half is 5 diffrent step-by-step projects to build 5 types of bass pickups. Lots of technical info on pickups. The only place i've seen it online is at LMI. But now living in the netherlands...

Melvyn Hiscock's book is seperated in three step-by-step projects: fender-style guitar, gibson-style guitar and neck-through bass. All the info you'll ever need to get you started. I got the first edition in'87. There's a second edition now which is supposed to be filled up with more information than the first one. But even the first edition is a pretty damn good book.