MKGBass

We plan on doing the same at a store Kirk takes lessons at. He knows the people and he's already talked to his teacher about the possibility. We also are going to try to sell a few on the TalkBass forum, as people often buy custom basses there, and love to talk about them and post pictures.

I think we'd all like it if you posted pics when you are done so we can compliment your work! Hooray for refinishes, as I im in process doing one right now and I'm sure this thread will come in handy in not too long of a time.

Don't know about the basses, although personally i'd go with the yamaha. I've played a few of those, and they aren't terrible. Ernie Ball makes decent bass strings. They're really inexpensive which is great. But if you play a lot they go dead pretty quickly, and i've had a tendency to break ones older than a month, but then again, I'm a REALLY active player. Still use em though, cuz they're the most affordable.

I draw 2 lines: 1 on the back of the body, and the other on the side, guiding where i want the contour to go. I then take my belt sander and shave down into those areas touching both lines using the drum portion of it. I dont worry about it being rough the first time, because i always go back again and then by hand with sandpaper etc. See the middle of this page for more. This is KINDA how i do mine, basically the same way, just I dont take out the huge chunks like he does. Matt makes a very nice belly carve though -Mitch

We're dealing with the same thing right now. A friend of Kirk's wants us to build him a Gibson hollowbody copy (which we'd love to do). But we know that we must learn how to do it first and spend the time learning, and spend money learning, and getting the right supplies. FORTUNATELY this kid is definately not on a tight budget, which is good considering the $650 in parts he wants. I say go for it. Even if you're not making a killing off your instrument: 1. This guy is your friend, and sometimes friends get discounts 2. You DO love to build instruments so it's not like you're doing work you wouldn't do otherwise at some point. 3. Even $150 is enough to save and eventually buy some great new tool! -Mitch

I'm 18 and building with a 14 or 15 year old (Kirk) and almost finished with our first. Tools and money weren't necessarily a worry because i work at a hardware store, so discounts + getting paid = cheap tools. Only wish is that i could have started sooner...

Oops, I worded that wrong, we're going to try to make $100 profit each for every bass. So, the cost of materials +$200, and in cases we may charge more for labor depending on how hard the job is, but $200 would be about average I think MITCH's edit: The reason we're not trying to make much off of them is because we figure at first it is going to be hard to get the instruments out there and charge a lot at the same time. In the long run, we hope to sell our nicer instruments for quite a bit more (to pay for labor )

This is Kirk. Mitch does all the body and neck work, and I've been doing all the electronics, finishing, pickup winding, and on that bass up there I did the finish sanding. We end up putting in about equal hours. We actually both have routers, belt sanders, and I have a table saw, pad sander, and contour sander. Besides having a router and belt sander, mitch also has a pad sander, a bandsaw, and a drill press. And naturally we both have miscellaneous tools like drills, soldering irons, etc. We're building them together for a few reasons, 1 is money, this way we not only split profits but we split expenses too, and we've spent a lot of cash so far and neither of us would've been able to do it alone, and also because we both have some time constraints. It also allows us to do instruments faster, because I can be doing finish sanding and wiring while mitch is doing all the routing and body work on the next bass. And we're hoping to get about $100 each for the following basses (we aren't selling the red quilted maple bass).

not a problem...we (2 people mitch & kirk, haha lex) do not like the color either! It was semi-experimental, so now we know not to mess any longer.

At the shop here cocobolo (some very nice samples) is $4 a pound. They lave large buckets with different sized boards in them, some are perfect fretboard size. AND SNORK. Where have you been?

Mitch again....Thanks for the compliments. Hotrock its funny you mention gold, because we're switching the black hardware out for gold eventually (i've already put a gold bridge on it, but gold tuners are expensive!). In regards to who gets what. I'm keeping the bass you see here because I paid for it all, haha, and also because we don't think its sell worthy. The next bass we are going to attempt to sell as it will be way sexy, as kirk said. We'd like to build our own eventually, but we want to be able to afford it

Yeah... This is Kirk (Not the usual poster, Mitch is the one posting 99% of the time). I was somewhat happy with that bass. I have yet to wire it or do the rest of the finishing, that's after 1 or 2 coats of tung oil as you see it now. But we're happy we did it on cheaper woods first, because that one wasn't perfect and I must say the next one in progress is SEXY.

no problem

That's what I'm saying. Unless you're going for that sort of look. Maybe you could route a channel for the fingerboard so the binding would be continuous? If you could pull that off, I'd definately vote for you in the next presidential election.

Hmmm....maybe do something unusual if you plan on binding the fretboard as well. The flamed might be a little much if you also have the curly maple neck. Maybe don't bind it at all?

Yes. They sell "Highly Figured Maple Bookmatched Sets" for $20 a piece. Some of them are in shambles, and I figure if I ever need a spare piece I might be able to talk a deal with them and take a crappy piece for cheap. The rest are pretty good. Some are "flamed" and some are quilt like mine. Some even verge on "spalted" but I think the grain is just way too open to be usable on a guitar. also they're all about the size of a guitar, coincidentally. 20ish" x 15ish" x 1/4"

I think because that bass was once fretted, it means they must have filled the slots with something. Often its just a type of wood putty. You might have a real easy time just scraping that out and refretting, you never know

I hadn't though about the grain pattern. I still like the binding idea though. What other pieces of (scrap?) wood do you have lying around? If you don't want to spend more money, what do you have that could potentially work well? IMO it looks very sharp if you match the wood of the backplate to something else on the instrument. I'm working on a bass right now thats a light colored body, but I threw a wenge backplate on it to match the neck. It really accentuates things.

*wheels spinning....* so now you have 2 neck blanks.....? Hmmmmm.

The stain does look pretty good alone. As a whole, we're not the happiest with how it turned out, but you live and learn, I guess. John I also forgot, I got all the woods from a place right by where I work. You can find them here. I do not know if they will ship woods and whatnot.

For you john - Mahogany Body (the original was about 4 ft long, i had them cut it in half so i could make a 2pc body) - $30 Birdeseye Maple (originally about 7 ft long) - $32 Curly Maple Middle Laminate - $13 Bubinga (Bought 1 piece, cut it down the middle) - $17 Quilt Maple top - $20 () Wenge fingerboard - $16 so...30+32+13+17+20+16 =....$128 you gotta throw somg glue in there $5 Every other part was recycled as of yet... I just received a gold plate bridge in the mail today that i purchased for $20. I'm gonna swap it for the black one tomorrow.

I posted a few of the earlier pictures of this project awhile back. I've done A TON since those, so I just thought I'd update. A FEW NOTEs: I'm extremely glad I decided to do a full project from cheaper woods before I jumped in on the $300 of woods I purchased for the real "first" bass. Just the experience from one bass has made me a much better builder. And the things I didn't like about this one are now corrected on the next bass (which is in progress, and I'm EXTREMELY happy with how it's turning out). Also even though this is just sort of a practice, I plan on rebuilding the neck because there is a major flaw on the back around where the 4th fret would be. I don't think its really visible but it gets dramatically thinner around that area. It's still very much playable, but it bugs me, so I'm gonna change it. As a result of the experimental nature of this, I tested some painting on the headstock. I don't plan on doing this really at all in the future. Cheers! Full comments, negative or positive are welcome: This first on is just to see the side contouring. Quick specs: Neck: 5 pc Birdseye Maple/Bubinga/Curly Maple/Bubinga/Birdseye Body: Mahogany w/ Quilt Maple Top. Fretboard: Wenge (unfinished) Total cost of this project (minus the bridge, which I'm not using for this bass): ~$140

the shadow gave me a nifty idea.... Use that, but bind it in black to match the top... Just a thought mitch

i'm with john, it does look rather quilted, not flamed.

i must admit that I hate strats....but not that one. Whoa indeed. The binding is geniously perfect. If you don't GOTM this when its done, I'll find you and destroy you. What the neck gonna be?