Andyjr1515

Just measured a couple of my homebuilts. My OM acoustic is 14.0mm and the Bubinga fretless bass is 16.5mm .... so I'm not a great one to ask Actually, the core wood for both is around 14mm, but the fretless has an ebony plate top and bottom, giving it the extra depth.

Back to the ongoing build... I double and triple checked the projected action height with the radiused fretboard and finally glued the neck in: The other thing I was able to do was firm up on the headstock shape with the guy I'm building it for. He was after a medium-length, ebony-plated non-symmetric design that reflected the vibe of the body. This is the design we've agreed on: What I have tried to do is give a passing nod to the shape of the body, and also use the cut-out - exposing the mahogany and walnut - to balance the colour impact between the body and the head. In proportion terms, this is how it will sit: I will be able to make progress on the headstock indoors with much of next week forecast to be raining most of the time! I'm also starting to get my head round the covers. My customer wants pickup covers. Originally, he was talking ebony, but I think that might be too much black (even with the fretboard shortened and shaped as planned) so I am going to see if my extremely small and cheap bandsaw is capable of cutting a sliver of camphor offcut accurately. If it can, it would look a LOT better because they are going to be pretty big covers, covering a P-pickup an' all...

That's very nice indeed, Andres. I love the colour and finish of the paduak and it contrasts nicely with the ash. I also like the reinterpretation of the shapes of both the body and headstock. Andy

...and it gets worse....much worse...

The design was approved, with full understanding by Tom that this simply might not work, had a high probability of falling to bits and - even if it could be made and did stay in one piece, would almost certainly neck dive like a cormorant and sound like a lump of mud. The first task was to build the neck. Tom wanted a maple neck with cocobolo fretboard. I suggested, therefore, a cocobolo central splice: The neck was planed either side to match the width of the fretboard at the body join. However, this wasn't wide enough to take all of the screws for the bridge - and, remember - I had to assume that the body would have no strength at all. I decided, therefore, to slot the body wider and to insert two cocobolo strips either side. I basically put off routing the slot in the body until I'd run out of excuses not to In the meantime, the body wood was developing cracks: ...all over the place...

Hi, Chris The limiting factor is usually the length of the tuner posts... Too thick and there often isn't enough room to fully wind the strings or, in the case of top screwed collar designs, enough catch on the screw thread. Andy

Yes - to be honest, although I didn't commit at that stage and made it clear to Tom that it might not be able to be done, part of me was thinking that it would be pretty cool if it could! I took the wood back with me and mulled over the options. First off, it was clear that a bolt-on neck of any sort was out of the question as it stood - the body, at its thickest, is not much deeper than a neck at the nut! As far as I could see, there were three options: Go conventional - ie skim the back flat and glue it onto a bass-thickness lump of alder, mahogany, basswood, etc. Conventional but a bit boring for such an unusual piece of wood. This is the only option where a bolt-on would have been feasible Go semi-conventional - ie through-neck, probably wider at the body than normal, cut the body into two and glue them on as thin 'wings' . Seemed a shame to lose so much of the top face - with its very unusual grain, colour and primitive-style carve marks and gouges Go unconventional. IF it would hold together during the construction process, basically build a neck, with everything needing strength either bolted, glued or screwed onto it, then do my routed-slot approach to slip the body over the neck. Basically, the neck would be the bass, and the body would be pretty much pure decoration. That might JUST work... Tom, however, also wanted some very specific specifics: A 34.5" scale Removable (replaceable) truss rod Carbon rod neck reinforcement Cocobolo fretboard The option to have a non-symmetrical neck profile Use a recycled Ibanez bridge Fit a single EMG passive p/up Neutrik locking jack Interestingly, the one area of concern I had was that last one - those jacks are designed to plug in vertically. A jack 'prong' is over 1.25" long. The body, where the jack needed to be was just over 0.5" deep... ...there were going to need to be some style or functional compromises along the way.... These were my initial drawings: If you haven't already lost count of them, I'll point out a few of the construction challenges in this design in the next post

There certainly are! And, as I will describe, the more it went on, the wronger they became....

Good progress, Norris

Oh, now then....the others are interesting and innovative design. This one is a thing of real beauty. I LOVE the look of this one......

Or could it be Bubinga ? Although that would be an unusual timber for a boats floor! I have an offcut I'll post tomorrow. It looks very similar, is very heavy and hard as hell!

Hi In my Alder and Camphor bass thread, I've made reference a couple of times to one of my more unusual builds - Tom's African Fretless Bass It had some challenges quite new to me and forced me to re-evaluate what REALLY matters and, alternatively, where you can take a few liberties on a typical bass build. It also was one of those builds where the customer had quite fixed ideas on some of the things he wanted (which I always find quite helpful) but some of those things were sometimes at the very edge of the possible. It started with a meeting at my local railway station. Tom - a contact from one of the UK-hosted bass forums (basschat) - was mid travel between London and the UK Midlands and had asked if I could meet to discuss a potential project over a cup of British Rail coffee. Out of his large holdall, he pulled out this: Tom explained that he visits and plays in a number of bands in Africa and on one visit he'd talked to a guy who makes traditional african drums and they had mused whether you could make a bass out of the same wood. At his next visit to Africa, and to Tom's surprise, the guy presented Tom with this piece of wood...who then, on a rainy UK railway platform, presented it to me. Tom wasn't sure what the wood was. Tom wasn't sure how, or even IF, it had been conditioned. Neither Tom nor I were sure why the dark brown bits were as hard and brittle as glass, and yet the lighter bits as soft and open as balsa. The carvers clearly hadn't been sure what thickness is regarded as a normal minimum for a bass body...this one varied between 1/2" and 7/8". Nor were the carvers aware what width or depth a neck pocket would normally be...this one was 30% wider than a normal bass neck and had about 3mm of balsa-wood looking timber to bolt anything onto. So Tom's question was - pulling out from his holdall an old Ibanez GIO neck - could I make a bass out of those two pieces? You know those times when all of your instincts are 'No - walk away from this one!'... ...and then your mouth says 'I'm not sure - but, well, you never know... I tell you what ... I'll take the bits away with me and see what I can come up with....'

Back to the present build, I caught a bit of dry between the rain showers and managed to slim the 'real' fretboard down by 1.5mm and get a 12" radius on it: This is rough sanded but fully radiused. It will be rechecked for straightness and fine sanded once it's been glued onto the neck. Tomorrow, I will be checking all the heights and angles and, all going well, possibly gluing the neck into the body.

Yes - I'm very careful about splinters for this wood! The other bass - yes...quite a thick neck....long story which I will relate when I kick off the thread about that build. That said, it actually is only 25mm ... it is a bit of an illusion because the body is ridiculously thin

Yes - a better turn of phrase, Prostheta. The good news with the veneer I'm using is that it is open- grained enough for the glue to intermingle with the fibres. The 'less forgiving' bit is the oiliness of the wood itself. Nowhere as bad as, say, cocbolo, but less forgiving than some.

Great looking build. Very stylish and excellently crafted.

That looks delightful. Great job!

I like that feature very much

By the way, I alluded early in the thread that, last year, I had done a very unusual project that had forced me to re-evaluate what was critical and what wasn't in a build. This was the resulting bass: Over the next couple of days, I will see if I can kick off a thread explaining how this one came about and the fairly unique design and construction considerations. It had every chance at a number of stages of just falling to bits, but is regularly shipped around and played in Europe and Africa and hasn't....yet. It is actually constructed with very similar build concepts. The difference is that this one is 1" thick and made of wood that resembles balsa in parts!!!!

No problem, psikoT The clamping will be the neck to the top. The sides are now immovable in any case but are a very close sliding fit so there will not be any gap between them and the neck. My logic is as follows: from a functional point of view, for a through-neck, most of the strength is in the neck, where both the nut and bridge are screwed. The top adds further strength, particularly as the pickup routing will have slotted away 2/3 of the neck's depth. The back wings, from a strength point of view, have no structural value, so it is the bond between the neck and the top that is critical, not the neck and the back wings. I might use epoxy, but simply because the demarcation veneer I've used under the camphor is wenge, which isn't great glued with titebond. In normal circumstances, I would use titebond The neck and top are at the same level (the joint still has to be flossed, but that won't affect the neck height in relation to the body): Before I glue the fretboard, I'll run a sanding beam across the top of the neck and the top to make sure it can be glued snug and flat. I don't know if that explanation makes any sense? Andy

Very good advice, Prostheta

I keep looking at the body on this. I love the folds in the carve. Maybe just needs a more fancy headstock to match? I think the shape's fine but maybe a decal or some patterning?

Of all the power tools, routers are probably one of the most potentially hazardous. Whereas a circular saw can have your arm off in the blink of an eye, it doesn't usually have the potential to leap out of your grip and play havoc with everything between you and its final resting place (which is usually a part of your anatomy!) on the way down ;)

Usually, Scott. For this build, I actually have the possibility of gluing the fretboard and even fretting it, before gluing the neck, but that's probably taking it a step too far! Andy