Andyjr1515

This has just reminded me that I need to sort a more stable router levelling jig than I have at the moment! Yours looks functional and stable. That might well be the task for today!

Apologies....I was being a bit dense! For some reason, I got into my head you wanted to recess the BACK. Don't ask me why... Yes - this is worth it. Nice look and better break angle

Now this is the part where I always think I'm going nowhere, but if I skimp on it, I know most likely I really am going to go nowhere....it's the planning stage. The number of times I've routed out a weight relief chamber, and then gone to fit the bridge bushes and...ahhhh, now then, never thought of THAT The main issue here is about balance, weight distribution and scale reach. Although the original EB3 was short scale (although they did do a few long scale ones later), Pete wants 34". He also wants it weight-relieved. Alarm bells started ringing: If you join the neck where the original SG bass was joined, you will struggle to reach the first fret and it will be neck heavy like there is no tomorrow. This is exacerbated by the short upper horn of the SG design - how's this for a comparison? BUT, if you bring the bridge rearward to shorten the apparent scale length, you won't be able to reach the upper frets, due to the relatively small cut-out of the lower horn. So I have spent a lot of time this morning checking the maximum I can afford to bring the bridge back with where that logically means the fretboard needs to meet the body and what the maximum reach from the lower cutout to the 22nd fret would be (it will have 24 frets but I reckon Pete will only be able to comfortably reach 22 of them) With a tiny tweak of the lower horn to deepen the cutout and a small extension to the upper horn, I reckon I can get it to work. This works from a functional point of view: Even when weight relieved and long-scale, it should balance on the strap with the strap button somewhere around the 13th/14th fret. There should also be decent access up to and including the 22nd fret. The upper bout to lower bout length difference is greater than a standard SG but I think visually it will look close enough for an 'in the style of' (as there is a size difference on the real ones, although not the slight offset), particularly once the bevels have been carved. Anyway, no point in building something Pete can't play so I think this is the shape and layout I'll go for. Now I can work out the controls and weight-relief chamber positions and, hopefully, soon, start cutting some wood

Getting progressively more competent and confident with using hand tools, I am also getting exponentially appreciative when I see them used expertly like this. It's also confirmed my suspicion that I skimped on my router plane. I got the Veritas mini router plane and presently (surprisingly for Veritas) it is almost unusable - I can just about live with the very basic way you adjust it, but the blade swivels as you use it, regardless of how tight it is clamped. There is a basic design flaw that might need a grinding disc taking to it!

Mind you, it also shows how long it sometimes takes me. You can see the seasons passing on my back patio in the photos from snow to lush green summer vegetation!

Hmmmm....that's a lot of bother - and difficult to get it looking right because all 6 holes and associated channels for the tuner shafts need to be identical for it to look anything like OK - and to what aim? If I was going for circular, then personally I would use a good quality Forstner bit in a drill press, but I probably wouldn't do it at all (and I do some very crazy unconventional things from time to time!) If it was me, I would thin it down to the correct dimension for the tuners and leave it at that...

Ooooh! That looks NICE!

That's good

Lovely, lovely job

Great job. Like Scott says, I also have never seen so much paint gloop ref the stripping

Very neat job indeed. It might be the angle of the photo, but is the upper pickup rout wider than the bottom one? If it is, which one is the correct size?

That looks pretty d****d good to me

It's just standard household polyurethane varnish. Specifically it was Ronseal Hardglaze. I did a tutorial a few months ago about how I go about it. You can find it in the tutorials area (Articles>Tutorials>Finishing/Refinishing) or the link here

On that one I used a router with a straight edge guide to route contour slots then a curved scraper to take away the corners. I now have a curve-bottomed pull shave which is a lot, lot easier

You're right, Scott - it's a very heavy wood. The bass, on the other hand is far from it. The Thumb has a tiny body, and the scalloped back also takes out a lot of weight.

You're right! Bert it is, then

It is...and yes, there is!

I'm not quite sure what the issue is...the proportions look OK to me if I understand what I think I'm looking at. Do you have a photo of the body with the neck blank slotted in?

So - back to the EB3-ish bass Happily, as I say, Pete is no purist. So my basic spec, still developing in my head, is presently: Mahogany back, stained red Figured Mahogany top, stained red Wenge demarcation veneer Weight relief chambers Mahogany neck with central walnut splice Ebony fretboard 34" (Pete's request) The infamous Gibson triple point bridge (to at least have ONE feature that looks vaguely period correct) DiMarzio Model One in neck Mini Humbucker bridge still to be determined Varitone I've started assembling some of the bits together. This is the top I'm thinking of using: Now....Pete has stipulated, this bass MUST be cherry red, so I would be staining it. With the mighty power of Photoshop, I present to you a fully simulated stained top!: This is the bridge: Note the high-tech supplier-fitted saddle-retaining sellotape....because there sure isn't anything else holding the saddles in! Still lots of stuff on the drawing board but I've ordered the rest of the wood today so this is pretty much live

And here's the summary thread of the Jack Bruce Thumb Fretless Tribute for anyone who was interested....

And here was the finished article:

Hi again. This is the other project a few folk have asked about. Same format - just a general picture based summary. This was my first build for Pete - he wanted something in the style of his hero Jack Bruce's fabulous Warwick Thumb Fretless. This was also my first full build including neck (I had done a few partial builds, but generally using commercial necks). My slightly unconventional build method came about from the fact I had never seen a Warwick Thumb in real life and couldn't work out any other way of them getting a single-piece top in the solid piece of Bubinga. I now know that Warwick add wings to the neck in the 'conventional' way but then add a fantastically finely chosen and fitted middle piece of top wood and so it looks like a single blank, when in fact it's a three piece! Anyway, a flying visit to the past:

By the way, the backing is a backing we pre-recorded, the lead is this SG, the singing is me and the tenor sax is also me. The SG is clean tone with just a touch of reverb

And here's a live soundclip This is Pete and I .... we do a few 'just for fun' gigs with just the two of us. We call ourselves 'Two Fifth's', based on that we are two fifths of the 5 piece band. It's a hoot really because in the real band, Pete's the bassist and in Two Fifths he plays lead guitar and in the real band I am NOT the vocalist and in Two Fifths I sing!!!! We can clear a venue in less than a minute....

OK - just posted a very summarily summary thread on the SG here. I'll add a sound clip later this evening and also do the same sort of thread for the Jack Bruce thumb...