Phil Mailloux

Here's the first pickup coil built and my winder. I built the winder as a clone of the Scratten winder after someone posted a picture of the guts of the Scratten winder on another forum. Dead simple to build. A box, 2 bearings, drill rod, a PCB speed controller kit for $12, a 5$ motor, a used Ebay battery powered counter, an on/off switch and a $4 reed switch.

Here's a picture of me 10 months ago and 55 pounds heavier than now. I originally took it to show some guys on the net the size of the fingerboard in relation to my finger lenght. Contrary to what it might look like the finished bass is actually quite easy to play.

Bob, my customer wanted to be able to see the the fret lines when playig in a dark lit bar so we opted for high contrast lines. We used Ash veneer for that application. I sliced the Wenge veneer myself since it was 2mm thick. It's a shame veneer doesn't come in any other sizes than 0.6mm Slicing a 2mm thick bookmatched accent line with a rip saw can be pretty wasteful. That ends up being an expensive accent line but it looks great though

Since the bass is on the panel for GOTM I might as well put a few pics up here too of the build and talk about it. there's not too much detail on it on the GOTM announcement page. This bass was my first comissioned work. Appart from the Wenge and Maple in the neck, all woods comes from Gallery Hardwoods. The top and headstock cap are Myrtle burl. The design of this bass is the same as my 6 string Olive topped bass and in-progress 5 string bass. It's just been slightly modified to fit the 9 strings on it. The point of this instrument was to make a full-spacing (19mm) 9 string bass that was as light as possible. My customer used to own two other Conklin 9-strings and hated the weight, bulkiness and sound of them so we worked closely on getting it like he wanted it. At the bottom in the pics you can see the Macassar Ebony blank that was used next to a 5 string bass blank. How big izzat? The FB blank was 6" wide. I ended up buying the Stewmac saw blade and building a jig using a circular saw to slot the FB, the jig is posted somewhere in the tutorials section.

Are you encasing the pickups in a box?

It's been a long time since I posted pics on the GOTM page. Here's my latest. A 9 string bass. It was built to order for a customer; Specs: Maple, Purpleheat and Wenge neck Mac Ebony fingerboard, lined fretless with Ash veneer Figured Myrtle headstock plate and top wood Swamp Ash body, Wenge accent layer Bartolini 3-band preamp 2 humbucking pickups built by me Hipshot Ultralite tuners Individual bridges

GFS, that's the cheap Asian stuff isn't it? Stick an Aguilar in it, you can even keep the cheap pickups. Your bass will come alive I tell you!! You won't be disapointed

I don't think there's anything wrong with the body in the first place, why do you want to suit someone else's tastes? It's your bass. There's nothing wrong with the tigh cutaway when you'll be playing sitting down. Most basses have theirs in that position or even further away from the 24th fret. The only thing I'm wondering is if the end of the upper bout is close enough to the 12th fret. It looks slightly short. If it is too far from the 12th fret you might get neck dive as your strap will be too far from the centre of gravity on the instrument. I also think that there's nothing wrong with that spikey thing on the top horn. It won't be used for support of your neck it's simply decorative. Keep it there if you like it.

That's totally normal. That will happen with any type of neck. Prostheta, I totally agree with you too

If you're doing a 7 piece laminate neck that includes purpleheart in it there's no reason to put in more than one truss rod and no carbon fiber rods in it. Odds are your neck will be too stiff for the truss rod in the first place. So the two truss rods would actually be more for ease of adjusting the neck than to keep it straight. It'll stay straight on its own. The neck won't twist because of that one extra string either unless the wood was crap in the first place. Having an assymetric neck won't make a difference either.

Yes, after that post up top where you mention you're " po' " I almost wrote down, what do you mean po' ? An ebony top with AERO pickups!!!

Looking really good Al. What preamp are you using in this bass?

That bass design is HOT! I'm jealous now. I wish I came up with that. Where did you get the Ebony top?

Hey Jon, I just finished your pickups. They only need to be potted and wrapped then they'll be on the way. Hope you like them.

Hipshot has a 9 string A -style bridge with 16.5mm spacing off the shelf. Shouldn't be more than $150. It's not on the website but if you e-mail Jason you should be able to get it if you're interested in that for a future build.

Thanks for the info. I'll pass on that one.

Hey all, Did anyone that owns previous editions buy the third edition of Dan Erlewine's book? I'm curious to know if it's worth getting the new edition. -How much extra material is in there? -is the DVD worth it? -is there more bass related topics? -what else is in there that I might forget but sounds cool/interesting/is a gem?

Very hot inlay!

I've never used Solidworks but I like both AutoCAD and Inventor. If you buy Inventor Professional 2008 you get a free copy of AutoCAD Mechanical included in it, so no need to get it separately. I've also got a CNC project sorta in the works and plan on using Artsoft Mach 3 ($159 for a full license) to run the machine. It comes with a free copy of Lazycam who's apparently a very decent CAM package.

They could be a good source of notched straight edges. That wouldn't be too hard to cut.

Have I seen you on TB, what's your log-in name there? Maybe it would be worth it to send Larry Davis a link to your auction. Last time I was looking for a top he was out of Buckeye I'll probably start a new bass in a few months. I'd love one of those then.

You guys are right, I don't know what I was on the day I wrote that.

God that Buckeye is huge! You mention on the auction you thought of resawing it. If you've got the facilities why don't you do it? A nice figured Buckeye top will go for $100 easily and you've got a hell of a lot of top there. I'd be interested in a Buckeye top soonish but I definitely can't afford the entrance price and the shipping costs on that piece of burl to Australia

1 hour and ten minutes? Ouch! You'll be going blind feeding wire all this time and standing in the same position all the time. I use a Red Lion CUB3 counter on my winder. I bought it used off ebay for about $10-15 dollars. I strongly suggest you get one. I can easily do 700 turns per minutes without the reed switch bogging down on me. At around 900-1000 RPM's it starts freaking out a bit. The Cub3 works on a N-cell battery so you don't have to worry about any wiring or anything. BTW the counter looks fantastic. A super simple winder that looks really solid and fast to build.

Is that the same 100 you got through our group buy two years ago?