Chuck_Chill-Out

Okay, life has been a bit crazy. Cleaning out MIL's house and traveling for work. Now, I am able to get back in to work on building this thing again.

I am hoping to build THIS one correctly.

So,

I have come to the conclusion that properly slotting a nut is the absolute hardest part of an entire build. After 8.5 years, i still cant do it right.

After playing this guitar for a day, I have also decide that i dont like this neck profile as much. I tried to make it a little more flat and trapezoidal, but i really prefer my thinner, round shape i used on the SS by far. I am surprised people like the trap/ flat shape necks more.

Haven't been in here for a while. I have wrist issues (too many times snapping my left hand back while speed skating), so the trap neck is comfortable for me. Each to their own.

By the way, your guitars are AMAZING!!

May daughter said it looks like water. Great job!

Okay, sorry I haven't been in here (and building) lately, I've been out of my local area due to work. Well, it's one way to make the money for this, and the other things in my life.

I was able to get to the wood shop today to reassess the bass. I've decided to take curtisa's advice and scrap the neck. I will continue to use it as a learning experience and a template on what I want it to look like, but remember to step back and drink a cold beverage when I begin to get nervy.

One other thing I am doing, my friend who has the wood shop is a decoy carver. He is working with me to carve an American Goldfinch for my daughter. She loves sitting quietly and still (almost impossible for an 8 year-old) to watch them come to our porch.

I appreciate this site for the expertise of the posters and the amazing work y'all have done.

Oh, I have maple left over for the neck, but I am thinking of black walnut with it instead of cherry. Any thoughts?

I find stepping away for a while with beer in hand helps calm the nerves

Is making a decorative stripe the full length of the neck (think Fender skunk stripe) out of the question? Would probably look neater and more deliberate than a small patchup job in one region of the neck. However, if the trussrod channel is routed too deep the full length of the neck it may continue to reveal issues as you carve more...

Alternatively, sometimes you just need to cut your losses and start over. I'm having to do the same for a neck on one of my previous builds. I just made a poor choice on the timber for the neck and now it warps and twists around like crazy in colder weather. It happens sometimes, but it can be cathartic to start afresh.

The body wings in your bass can undoubtedly be saved by cutting out the neck-thru section, and you can start over with a fresh neck blank and the extra knowledge gained by experience.

Curtis, thanks for the info. The truss rod is a 3/4" square aluminum bar, so the upper end of the neck was thin. I do have extra cherry and walnut for a new neck, but I'll need to get some maple, which is not too expensive around here.

Lucky for me (maybe?) the wings are not attached to the neck yet. For me, it was easier to shape the neck and fretboard. I cut the top 1/4" off of the cherry for the wings and hollowed it out to try and lighten it. The tops were then reglued.

Well, I had time to work on this over the weekend (sorry, no pics yet). I repaired the hole on the neck and continued to shape the neck. Just my luck, I ran into ANOTHER issue. The truss rod started to be uncovered near the headstock and i could feel the wood bow under the truss rod. Routed too deep. Well, from reading the posts on here from demonx, RestorationAD, and others, I decided to take a few breaths and reassess. Using a small saw, I cut out the section of thin wood and measured a replacement piece.

This is a bit frustrating, but a learning experience.

+100 on the guitars, the repair (I STILL haven't found the piece you replaced) and fixing up the book press.

Patched the hole and letting it dry before reshaping. Sorry, no pic. As it is drying, I started on some body work. A question for y'all. How thick do you make the control cavity cover? I'm using an extra piece of cherry for it.

Realistic Rules of Building:

1. Do things in the order that make them easiest. This takes a long time to figure out so write it down somewhere.

2. Don't mess up the scale. Ugly guitars that tune properly are much better than ugly guitars that don't

3. Learn to cover up "mistakes" with "features". Strange inlays in weird places, miscellaneous veneers, exotic wood caps... are "I meant to do that" not "Oh Sh*Ts"

4. Use "every build is different" to explain anything out of the ordinary that happens.

5. Wood is never consistent so don't expect your builds to be.

6. Mistakes are beautiful. Except when they are really bad... then they are firewood. Make a video of it burning so it is not a total loss.

+1, +2, +3...........and so forth.

SR

Drat, I didn't know about #6, so I didn't video the last neck I screwed up.

Thanks for the explanations. Increasing my knowledge in here.

Just a question from a newbie, but how are you going to keep buzzing from occurring with the pickups?

Explain "buzzing"

I guess "buzzing" was the wrong word. I mean noise. I was thinking shielding. My bass had a lot of noise until I shielded the pickup cavities with copper.

Just a question from a newbie, but how are you going to keep buzzing from occurring with the pickups?

And set her up.

SR

I am NOT showing these to my daughter.

Outstanding work, sir!

Okay, hit a snag when shaping the neck. I want a trapezoidal neck since I have a bad left wrist (I am a recovering adrenaline junkie) and this feels better when playing. When I was routing for the truss rod, I had a yip with the router. I didn't think it was a problem until...

I am planning on squaring up the gap and gluing in a piece of the maple. UGH!

Scott, my 7 year-old daughter was looking at this thread with me and was constantly saying "WOW" at them. She now wants me to build one for her.

Thanks alot!

Her it is with the Gibson amp that my Mother-in-law said was in her attic. Blew out a lot of dust and had a friend give it a once-over. Nice sound out of it.

I restrung it with D'Addario nylon coated strings.

We had a large amount of blue spray paint at work, and I was told to use it. Voila, boiler blue.

Rebuilt and painted headstock.

I do plan on stripping and refinishing this at some time. I realized that I didn't fill the pores on the body and it does not look good.

Painted pickguard, two six string humbuckers and Fender short scale roundwounds.

When I stripped the paint, the plastic position markers, which I didn't know were there, and plastic binding came off. Also, the frets were in horrible shape and I didn't have the proper tools to either redress or replace the frets.

I decided to cut some maple strips and inlay them as the frets and position markers.

Would you consider a modular bass?

This was my first project, eight years ago. Someone tossed this in the dumpster where I live, so I thought I'd try to make it playable.

This is what I found. The headstock was sliced up, the neck was black, and no pickups.

No, full size. All of the wood with the exception of the fertboard was donated by my in-laws. I'll post more pics of how I got this far.

I like the modular aspect of this. Looking forward to the end result.

Thanks, Scott. I rescued an old Teisco short-scale bass years ago and this is something I've wanted to do. I will say that the work y'all post on here is amazing. Hoping to get this done by year's-end. I don't get much time to work on it, so that time is not wasted.

Okay, I've been lurking in here off and on for a number of years. I am building my first bass, a neck-through 4-string fretless. My first bass (a rescue) is fretless and I am more comfortable playing it.

This is a maple and cherry bass with a sapele fretboard.

This is the rough cut. Now I need to shape the neck.