WeeTee

But only after some adjusting. To me it would seem easier to have consistent tone as the starting point, and have separate preamp sections for making the tones different when necessary. That would be much easier with identical pickups and electronics. Regarding the pickups themselves, to me it would seem easier to use off-the-shelf pickups that have blade magnets, instead of having to wind your own using separate bobbins, as Primal suggested. Unless of course you like winding pickups...

Making it headless would have the additional advantage of making the instrument body-heavy, since it's usually held more vertical than horizontal. If there was a normal headstock with 10 or 12 tuners, it would be hard to not make it neck-heavy - especially if the design was Stick-like (almost no body).

Getting both Hiscock and Koch + reading a LOT of online sources seem to me to be a winning combination.. That's what I have done, and I feel I have quite a solid understanding of the whole process.

I can second the recommendation for Martin Koch's book. I have his CDROM, which contains a (nonprintable) PDF of the book, plus a slide-show kind of version of it, and lots of videos of building a guitar. Very helpful.

I have no experience on this, but I have given it some thought. Here are some of my ideas. First, the bridge. I believe the best way would be to use one-string bridgesone-string bridges, like M_A_T_T used on his bass pictorial. They would allow any string configuration with any kind of spacing. Another one would be to have a custom 10-string bridge (or however many strings you want) made, or make one yourself. I believe going with multiple normal guitar/bass bridges would only bring trouble. The ideal solution for the pickup problem would again be to make your own pickup, but I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. Another option would be, like you said, to combine multiple pickups in a P-bass kind of way. I would probably go with EMGs, but any kind of soapbar would probably do. Does anyone have any experience on how a bass pickup sounds with guitar strings? The strings... Warr Guitars (maybe the others too) use locking tuners, which allow using much shorter strings - you only need enough length for the string to reach the tuner, plus maybe an inch to spare... One thing I have been thinking about are the frets. Would some special kind of frets be needed/advantageous? What kind of fret wire would you use?

Uh.. Actually I can't find them on the .com site.. Go to http://www.ruokangas.fi, click on Tarvikkeet (Accessories), then either scroll down for the pic, or click Tarvikehinnasto (Accessories price list). The handmade bronze knobs seem to be pretty expensive, 50€/piece You could also try to contact their New York shop, NEW YORK Ruokangas Guitars USA 134 Dearborn Ave, Rye, New York 10580 Tel. (1) 914 316 2414 E-mail eero.kilpi@ruokangas.com (And no, I'm not in any way affiliated with them.. I wish ) ...and while you're at it, check out the insane inlay work on the Kalevala-themed guitar. That's not a painting, that's really all inlays. You can really see it on the build process page. (sorry about hijacking )

No man It's A good Question, Hum I dont know I could do something New with it Maybe slder things? ← How about something like the two in front: pic The picture is from Ruokangas Guitars, a Finnish company (I took a copy to avoid hotlinking). But I'm sure there's something similar available wherever you live..

Those headstock designs reminded me of a knife. You could take it further and make it really knife-like

Yeah, my original idea was to route slots for the carbon strips too. But since the carbon I bought was only 2mm thick, I couldn't find a router bit small enough. And someone on a Finnish guitar building forum mentioned that he'd done the same thing, and put them to the sides of the truss rod, so that's what I did. Obviously I haven't tried it yet, but I believe it will work quite fine. After all, the job of the carbon strips is the same as the truss rod's: to resist the bending of the neck caused by the string pull.

Take some wooden coctail sticks, dye them black and use those Or just use a plastic coctail stick.

I'm building a 5-string bass at the moment, and decided to add two carbon fiber strips to the neck to add some stiffness. It might have not been necessary, but I thought that there's no harm in doing so. I bought a 120cm stick of 20mm * 2mm flat carbon fiber bar, cut it into two 60cm ones and inserted them on both sides of my truss rod, glued them to the channel sides and then cut them flush with the surface. Here's a pic: Truss rod with carbon fiber strips

Ambrosia Beatles? Nice freudian slip there Ambrosia Beetle

...did someone just say Pink Floyd? Oh, sorry, never mind.. But seriously. I just browsed over this thread, and thought that my eye caught the words Pink Floyd

If it's your bass and you want to swirl it...go for it. Don't worry what anybody thinks. Opinions are like a**holes...everybody has one and nobody should worry about anyone elses. ← Well.. it is the bass that I'm building right now. I won't swirl it, I'm going for a more peaceful style. I'll probably oil it. But if I ever build a guitar (and learn to play it), I'll make it a heavy metal shred machine, so I could probably swirl it too I've also thought about color-changing paint...

Mee likey Seriously, don't redo it. I think it's nice.. Made me want to do a swirl, if I ever build a guitar. ...a swirl would probably look a bit out of place on a fretless bass, wouldn't it?

I can't help you find the drawings, but... Why do you need them? You know the shape, and you plan to alter it a little. The scale length, fretboard width, fret positions, bridge position etc. still need to be calculated by you. Why don't you just take out a (large) piece of paper, mark the scale length and start doodling a body shape. That way, you'll end up with a guitar that's fully designed by yourself. And probably just as good, if you do it with concentration.

You put it back on the poor animal right now!

Maybe he's too warm in front of his fireplace...

I would have guessed it's carved from underneath to be thinner in places, so the black wood shines through. But that doesn't sound much like fingerprints

I don't know about the 8 or 9 degrees.. What I've been hearing is 10 to 15. I could be wrong. I haven't yet built any guitars, so I don't have any real experience. The bass I'm making now, I cut it 12 degrees, which seems to be the same as on my Washburn.

If you have a multimeter, you could try to turn the switch to each of the positions at a time, and do some measurements.. BTW. Where's the battery? There isn' any in your drawing, but the bass is active, right?

As far as I can tell, that looks the way it should be.. It seems to be the same as this: http://guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/product/WDUHH3T1101 ...except for the connection between the two connections on the volume pot? How does it work now? Or did you say that it now works as it should?

I've got both Hiscock's "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" and Martin Koch's "Build Your Solid-Body Guitar" CDROM. I can very much recommend both of them. The Koch CDROM contains about 35 minutes of guitar-building videos, which I found very nice. It also includes the full text of his book "Building Electric Guitars". http://www.melvynhiscock.com http://www.buildyourguitar.com

Hmm.. I'd always thought they were. And if you do a Google search for "washburn xb-500" most of the links on the first result page say that they are humbuckers. Who knows.. I couldn't find any info on the pickups on the Washburn site. The pickups on my bass are the same, 951 and 953.. Sorry I can't help with the main question. I might be able to figure out what's wrong if you posted the schematic you currently have wired.

Which model is that? I have a Washburn Bantam XB-500, and it has two active soapbar humbuckers, and the controls are either vol/bal/treble/bass or vol/bal/bridge-tone/neck-tone, I'm not sure.. I think it's the first. No switches whatsoever, and definitely no single coils