avengers63

The folks at my new church are needing me to fill in on bass before too long. This is all the excuse I need to finally make the Rickenbacker 4003 bass I've been wanting to do for several years, I've had nearly all the non-wood parts for prolly 6-8 years now, so the out of pocket on this one will be minimal. My plan for all this time is to make a set of twins: guitar & bass, identical construction, same body. Both white limba neck-through, walnut wings, birdseye maple veneer top, cream binding. I've had the limba blank set aside fro several years, as well as the walnut for the wings. In the first attempt a few weeks ago, the limba moved after I had the bass neck all set up and ready to route the truss rod. It developed a serious bow. I was pretty pissed. I decided that, as plans clearly changed on me, I might as well go with an all walnut bass. The guitar will be cherry with ash wings. So the rundown on the bass looks like this: 4-piece walnut neck-through, walnut wings, 34" scale jatoba fretboard, burdseye maple veneer top, cream binding, Rockfield bass humbuckers, Allparts (Gotoh?) Ric tailpiece, Allparts (gotoh?) "elephant ear" tuners, and I'll have to make the pickguard. We start with the appropriate image... ...which I blow up to life size. I use several pieces of paper to trace the body and headstock to make the template from. Is it exact? Obviously not. If it good enough for me? Yes. And that's all that matters. 5 minutes of research tells me that Ric makes it 1,25" thick, neck-through. I re-cut the lumber for the neck for proper grain orientation, glue it up, and plane all the pieces down to 1.25". I don't remember the name of the technique for building up the headstock thickness - not a scarf joint - but I went with this style so that I could route for the truss rod without waiting another day for the scarf to dry. The truss rod is a "wagon wheel " style. I've never done this style before, so the wheel spot is a little sloppy. Fortunately, most of it will be covered up with the end of the fretboard and the veneer. basic mockup using the template headstock template with tuners another body mockup This is the wiring harness that came with the pickups. I have no idea what it does anymore. I THINK it's a 3-band EQ and master volume with a blade switch. It might or might not be active. There's no battery plug attached, but for all I remember it was supposed to come with one but didn't. Many years ago, I got the wiring schematic from Rockfield. I have since lost the schematic, and Rockfield is out of business. Hamer used to use this setup some years ago, but they won't get back with me. Unless one of y'all can help me out with this, I'll end up having to take it to a killer place in St Louis (J Gravity Strings) and have them figure it out for me. These are most of the parts that came off the Ric 300-series guitar I made many years ago. This is what will be used on the 4000-series guitar, though I'll prolly get a hardtail tailpiece. Being a cheapskate, and not wanting to mess with making and routing the sharkfin inlays, I just make some huge maple dots. So again, if anyone has any input or information on the Rockfield wiring harness, I'd really appreciate it.

I got the bridge recessed a few days ago. I did a VERY basic sanding on the body today. Now I get to assemble and try out the HVLP spray setup I bought a few weeks before I lost my job. I'm not doing anything but laying out a few coats of clear. No buffing or polishing on the R&D mule.

Nearly 5 months later..... I've been home and out of work since January 4. Long story short: I was pulling my bus into the garage at 1:30AM when I ran over a pedestrian. The police determined I was 100% NOT at fault (he was in a 55mph zone - no pedestrians allowed). The company didn't care and fired me anyway. The union tried to fight it and lost. I've was out on emoptional disability until March 31, seeing a trauma councillor on the companies dime. I'm now on unemployment waiting for a class A CDL truck driving class to open up. The weather cleared up, and cabin fever is making me insane. Today it was time to re-open the doors on this learning project. Many of the things I did today... I haven't done them in about 4 years. You forget all the little nuances of a fairly simple tasks when you haven't touched it in 4 years. The first thing I wanted to do is make a wedge elevating the neck pocket template +/- 2.5 degrees for a neck angle. Making the wedge wasn't a problem. The angle was right in the neighborhood of where you want it. The problem was how in the hell am I gonna secure the template down. This is a worthwhile jig, but it's gonna get shelved for now. More thought needs to be put into it. I'll have to use a fender-style flat-top bridge this time. Let's see if I can make the neck pocket without fucking it up too bad... Considering the 4 year gap, it isn't too bad. The point of the forstner bit went a little too deep, but it's an overall acceptable pocket. Can I do better with the pup route? Yes I can. Just like riding a bike. And just like old times, I ripped off a little piece of the top from the center block. More mental notes for the future about glueing the top on. Just going with a single neck pup, V, & T. Keeping it simple. I'm still conna recess the tailpiece since I made the neck pocket a little too deep. Forgot to compensate for that. When I drilled the hole for the jack, I ran into the bracing, kicking the hole wopperjawed. The hole is there - too late now - but now I know for the future. So now we have a top jack and a little sound hole on the side. If I'm able to work a little each day, I might be able to have this done this month.

RAD is making pickups again.... And he's making blades.... must not harass too hard, even though I've been begging for another set for several years....

And we're done. I glued on the fretboard last night. Complete FUBAR. It not only shifted a bit, but one side has about a 1/16" gap along the length where it didn't glue down properly. So this one gets the truss rod and inlays recovered. The rest goes into the bin.

I don't mind re-cutting the slots. My Japanese saws are the same kerf,so it's a 1-minute job. Radiused and sanded up to 220. Next up are the side dots, maybe buffing it up to 1000 grit, and oiling it. I know there's some voodoo about oiling before glueing, but I don't buy it. The pores aren't sealed, so they should glue just fine when some oil gets on the bottom.

I absolutely HATE sanding the radius into the fretboard.

Nope. ruler, 0.5 drafting pencil, very bright light, reading glasses, and an x-acto knife For me, the real trick isn't getting the lines perfect. That's just being methodical and precise. The trick is scribing the lines with the x-acto deep enough to have a well-defined edge. In the past, I HAVE made templates for the inlays that deserved it. But for these simple boxes, a little patience and a touch of German anal-retentiveness is all that's needed.

And now I wait till tomorrow when I can radius it, put in the side dots, and glue it onto the neck.

The parts came in last week. The plastic pearl blocks will look awesome in the walnut fretboard. Starying the tedious layout process. Reminding myself to put the side dots in before glueing the fretboard on. I've done that before...

The weight of the tuners isn't what I was going for. The headstock weighs more than the tuners ever will. So for balance considerations, that would be the biggest weight savings.

some sort of moisture leeching underneath the perspex....

Going headless is the other obvious solution to neck weight. The drawback for the hobbiest like us is that headless hardware is often more expensive than traditional.

The weight reduction is just an extremely positive side effect. The theory behind it started as voodoo, but ended up being 100% legitimate. As we all know: 1) the strings vibrate the wood, 2) the vibrating wood alters the way the strings vibrate. 3) Woods vibrate differently, altering the string vibration differently, producing what we call the tone of the wood. 4) Thinner wood vibrates more freely. When combining these 4 truths, I theorized that as thinner body wood vibrated more, these longer & stronger vibrations would transfer more or different tone to the strings. Several years ago, I made the prototype Superthin style. The theory turned out to be 100% true. I encourage you to give it a shot sometime to hear it for yourself. Plus the extreme lightweight guitar feels like just nothing around your neck or in your lap.

I went with 1 1/4" because that's about the thinnest you can go and still have enough for a full pickup & control cavity route and standard components. Even then, you can't comfortably recess the c/c cover. With flat enough pickups, you might be able to go down to 1", but your c/c space would be precious, and you might have to start looking for specialty knobs & mini-switches.

So I got some more primer on it. It dried as a crackle finish. It's a pretty impressive crackle, too! Great lines. I'm gonna have to sand it all back to bare wood and start from scratch. Not terribly surprising considering where I picked up from.

How many times have we all made up a string of BS to legitimize our preferences!

I was speaking with one of our senior members off-line, who's opinions I value and respect, about spray equipment. I currently have the "all-in-one" unit from Rockler, but I want to upgrade to the "real thing". He assured me that the air pumps and guns from Harbor Freight are fine, as they are what he uses. So here's a late Christmas present to myself, with the aid of their ridiculous coupons... I've also been making some headway with sanding sealer and the automotive primer. This is the extremely boring, time consuming, and detail-essential part of the build. I really wanna hit the "skip" button and get on to more fun bits. Also, I got the walnut fretboard planed and slotted. It's a cutoff from the neck of the mirrored Iceman of several years ago. Before I go to work tonight, I'm hoping to be able to put some more primer on it.

Several years ago, prolly before the board was updated and we lost much of the old content, I started to make a Warlock following my "superthin" theory. For a sense of completeness, for those who don't remember, and for those who are new since then, the idea is to make the guitar as thin as humanly possible. The theory is: since the wood vibrates as the strings are plucked, thinner wood will vibrate more freely, thereby positively effecting the tone transferred by said vibrations. Having made one before, I can testify that this is EXACTLY what happens. The prototype was exceedingly lively. The potential drawbacks are that a trem is all but out of the question, and it basically HAS to be neck-through. While you could do a set neck, I don't feel there would be enough wood left to make a secure enough joint for the stress it would be under. You could easily put a top-mount vibrato (Bigsby) on it. So anyway, it started off as an ash neck through with poplar wings. I put some mahogany pieces on the headstock in an attempt to inject a little bottom end to accentuate the growly mids of the ash. What I DIDN'T do is remember that my plan was to use turquoise-colored water-based lacquer for a semi-transparent finish. When I shot myself in the foot via the mahogany, I thought maybe I'd paint it white, then use the truquoise over it. Then 3.5 years ago I was divorced, moved, took forever to re-establish the shop, and this thing fell pretty far to the wayside. I figured it'd be sitting in the corner serving as a spider home till I died. For the past 16 months, I've been trying to get the woman I've been seeing to build a guitar with me. She has an acoustic, but wants to play electric, because you can't play \m/ metal on an acoustic. Seriously - she wants to play hard & heavy! giggidy I had her sit down with every shape I have, then go to Guitar Center and "try on" those few I don't have. She likes the shape and feel of the Warlock best. I failed to mention that she's a pinup model. 40s-50s retro glam pinup. Playing a f'ing Warlock. One of these things is not like the other.... So you know where this is going by now. The superthin Warlock has been dusted off and will finally be coming to life. I'm just trying to block sand off anything uneven at this point. Previously, it's been grain-filled. I'm hoping it's still doing it's job. I got a couple cans of sandable automotive primer. That ought to cover everything left nicely. She likes green, so I'll be going to a place just outside my neighborhood that specializes in automotive paints. They'll custom make spray cans. I'm looking for an emerald green candy. For reference on just how thin it is (1 1/4"), this is one of the pups I'm considering putting it in, sitting next to the body and sitting in the cavity. It'll be all chrome hardware, walnut fretboard, and pearl plastic block inlays.

Ok, I'll bite. Why would you angle the pup that direction? Traditionally, they're angled with the trebel side "down".

You know I can't let this slide by without pestering you about another blade set whenever you start working on pups again.....

If you do, hit me up on Facebook.

I got the box closed. The bottom is a biit wopperjawed and thwre are a few gaps where the top didn't make good glue contact with the sides. Both are because I tried something different, just to see what happened. And I don't care at all. This has been appropriately labled the "r&d mule", so this is the righr place to experiment a bit. I still need to make the front & back even with the sides. I might even paint it with some leftover wall paint. I'm just gonna uae a leftover neck I have lying around, a basic bridge, and a single pup. As I've said before, the only end result is to be able to play it and make some noise.

The temperature is an amazing 75 here in the St Louis area today, so I'd better take advantage of it before i have to go to work. Next step on tap is putting the back & center block onto the sides. I saw the note I made for myself before I got too carried away: cut the control cavity cover before gluing the back on.... and where to cut it. Yes, my history told me writing this note is 100% necessary. The cover itself is being made from a cutoff. Were this not the R&D Mule, I would have paid more attention to craftsmanship. For this one, slapping the cover onto the back will be fine. The center block got a channel routed into it to make room for the bracing. This is one of those learning opportunities on the Mule. The bracing is largely unnecessary because the substantial center block will provide most of it. I'll only need small buts on the sides and bottom in the future. Less bracing also eliminates the need to cut away pieces of the bracing so it won't interfere with the purfling. No, it's not glued on yet. Prepping the back will likely take another hour minimum, then the clamping itself. I don't have time for that before I have to go, so it'll just have to wait till next time.

I havent made much progress when we talked last. I was sidetracked with my bedroom & hall renovation. I almost have all the "purfling" on. Soon I'll have the back and center block on and have it closely resembling a body.