manquesa

Wow! That's some good work there. I actually have that exact same guitar body here with the original neck. I believe it's an old Harmony Bobcat from the 50's. I've been planning on eventually restoring it to it original condition but now i'm kinda wanting to duplicate this instead. Again, awesome work!

yeah you're right, I could have swore I read somewhere otherwise but apparently not.

Well a standard bass is normally 2 octaves below that of a standard guitar. A piccolo bass is in between, it's only 1 octave below a standard guitar. I'm digging this build as well by the way. Very nice clean work, i'll be looking forward to following the progress on this one for sure.

Thanks, and yes i'm working on soundclips, i'll post them once ready. I took this thing into work today (Guitar Center) to show it off and play it through an amp there. It sounded great and got a lot of good compliments.

Okay, I finally got back to work on this thing and finished it. I didn't take any in progress pics of the neck being made. This is actually the second neck I made for it. The first one was a fretless bloodwood fingerboard neck that I messed up.. I since decided to change it to fretted and an ebony fingerboard to better match the overall black/red theme. Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic I've also decided against using Piccolo strings. I tried 2 sets and didn't like them at all. So i'm now using standard light gauge bass strings. I guess it's not really a piccolo bass anymore then, oh well.

For my Tru-Oil finish I wetsanded using the micromesh finishing abrasives soaked in a mixture of water and Murphy's Oil soap. I believe it was in the instructions that came with the micro mesh that said to do that, I soaked the abrasives overnight, then wetsanded in the morning. It turned out great, left if feeling perfectly smooth and shiny. After the wetsanding I wiped on 2 very very thin coats of tru-oil which needed no more sanding. The end result to me is more like a painted finish than an oil finish. Oh, I did use steel wool in between every few coats for a while until I built up enough of the oil to do the wetsanding. http://www.rockyou.com/show_my_gallery.php...anceid=59519466

sweet! glad to see that you're back to work on this. can't wait to see it done. I love the originality.

Nice! You got me wanting to refurbish my Fender Squier P-Bass now. I have that exact same EMG pickup set for it too by the way. Where did you put the 9V battery for the pickups? Or is that a passive set, if so then I guess I don't have the exact same set. Very nicely done man, congrats.

Looking good. I think for the color your going for you may be better off trying stew macs "Mahogany Red" stain instead of the "Cherry Red" you're using. Or maybe a mixture of both. I'm thinking that maybe the cherry alone may be too bright a red for what you're going for. I recently did a finish that started with mahogany red and then I applied the cherry red on top of that and I ended up with something close to the wine red color I beleive you're going for. Though mine was done on Swamp Ash which is lighter in color than the Mahogany you're using. I may be wrong though, i'm no finishing expert. Maybe somebody with more experience staining mahogany for that particular color will chime in here as well. Anyway, hope all turns out well, good luck.

Beautiful man, very nice clean work! I love the shape and the choice of woods. Hope to see it complete soon.

Thanks to all. Yeah, this is the first finish i've done that i'm actually proud of. All my previous attempts have been with either rattlecan nitro or waterbased lacquer sprayed with a gun and they all turned out fairly horrible. But this oil finish was very easy to do and combined with the micro mesh finishing papers turned out very well. I only wish it had the durability of a rock hard poly finish. Oh well, any scratches or dings should be easy to repair.

Okay, finally time for a major update!! I finished the body for this piccolo fretless 4-string over the last few days. I stained it first with the Red Mahogany, then stained with Cherry Red, then applied several thick coats of Tru-Oil. Then I wetsanded with my micro mesh sanding papers all the way up to 12000 grit and then added 2 more coats of Tru-Oil. Absolutely no polishing or buffing has been done on this finish. I then stained all cavities and the neck pocket black. Check it out: another angle and another and another Back View Back View, another angle Control Cavity The control cavity cover will be finished to match the body. Now I just need to get the neck made, it will be maple with ash veneers on the front and back of the headstock stained to match the body (just the veneers stained, not the whole neck), and will have a bloodwood fingerboard with maple binding. I really can't wait to start playing this thing now!

The Body is almost done!! I finished all the routes over the past few days and spent the better part of this afternoon finalizing the shaping with 60-grit sandpaper and even recarved the contours with and angle grinder with a 40-grit flap disc. Tomorrow is my day off at work and I intend to do all the final sanding and hopefully begin the finishing for this thing as well. Here's a pic of the front: and the back. and the back with the ferrules set in place. For some reason these pics came out with a bit of a bluish tint, i'll have to check the camera settings for future pics. I still need to make the control cavity cover plate. The finish will be stained red and then finished with Tru-Oil. When I first started this build I did a test piece using a block of wood left over from this body, it will hopefully look like the right half of this pic. Which was done using a mixture of red mahogany and cherry red color tone stains mixed with just water. Then of course tru-oiled. The fingerboard wood for the neck should arrive tomorrow so hopefully have the neck made for this bad boy soon as well, can't wait to play it!! As far as the walnut burl bass goes, i'm pretty much decided on scrapping that project, it's just not turning out how I want it and I know if I finish it with how it is I won't be happy with the results. I'll try to salvage whatever wood I can from it to use in future builds. I've gained a lot knowledge from these two builds with all the mistakes that i've had to learn from. As soon as this piccolo bass is done, i'll start planning the next builds (although planning has already started in my head).

hmm, I was curious and did a quick search on yahoo and came up with this -- http://cgi.ebay.com/Craftsman-router-bit-s...1QQcmdZViewItem Maybe check sears for one of these.

yep, i've noticed that as well. That was part of my issue as well, but more the bearing riding up the shaft than that. Don't know where to go to get those older ones sharpened.

AAARGH!!! You're at least the second person that said that, I hate the look of that darn cloud guitar. I think i'm gonna have to reintroduce the ball end onto the lower horn again for future builds as was originally planned.

Okay, I keep switching back and forth between these two projects. I've been working on the Swamp Ash 4-String Piccolo bass as of late. I recently got the Stew Mac template router bits and used those to route out the pickup cavities. However, the darn bearings on the bit ended up riding up the shaft of the bit while routing even with the plastic sleeve on it to prevent that and the routes got really screwed up. Both pickup cavities it did the same thing. So after thinking about how to fix it for a while I finally decided to make faux pickup rings out of maple to hide the bad routing and it actually turned out pretty good. I figured out why the bearing kept riding up on the bit, the plastic sleeves were cut at a bit of an angle when I cut them to length and when spinning in the router those angles were squared off which ended up shortening the length of the plastic sleeve. Live and learn. Anyway, here's the result. And with the pickups and hardware just set in place - Body with hardware Now I just need to route the neck pocket and control cavity, and install the bridge and string through ferrules. Then I can sand and finish the body. I just ordered some new fingerboard wood for the neck, should arrive sometime early next week. I'm hoping to have this done by the end of this month, or at least the first week of next month, depending on my ability to avoid more mistakes.

That is some gorgeous wood! This is gonna be a very sweet looking bass when it all comes together. Have you decided yet on what kind of bridge it will have? And will it be all black hardware, or gold or chrome, or a mix? Just curious, i'm trying to imagine the finished look.

So did you apply your logo on the bridge yourself or did ETS put it on there for you. If you did it, then how, with paint or what? I'm asking because i've been looking at their products recently and have been considering purchasing from them for my own projects. Anyway, your guitar has turned out pretty good. I like it, the only suggestion i'd make is to put a pickup bezel on there to coverup that pickup cavity.

That is very sweet. I never liked Single Cut basses before either, but lately they've been growing on me, I just may have to come up with my own single cut design one of these days. That level of quality there is what I aspire to achieve eventually. Great work!

well I don't remember who it was, but someone here recently did some really nice inlay work using an exacto knife kit as opposed to the router method. It was really good clean work from what I remember. Got me thinking about maybe trying it sometime.

You truly scare me Drak

Go to your local auto body shop, ask them how much they'd charge to paint it. A buddy of mine did that a few years back and got a real nice paint job on his telecaster. It was gloss black with the sparkles in the paint (I don't know what you call it), he also got a real nice airbrushed graphic on it as well, a broken heart with barbed wire around it. He only paid about $60 for it but he knew a guy that worked there. I'd look into that though, they could have it finished and cured really quick.

I go to wood world over on i75 & 635 behind the TI plant No way! I lived just a few blocks down the street from there in Richardson, just off of Beltline Rd. I never knew that was there. May have to check it out next time i'm in the area.

When I lived in the Dallas area I went to the local WoodCraft (i'm sure Austin has one) to get some nice figured Veneer to use for my current bass build (walnut burl). They also have a good variety of most of the exotic hardwoods there though the selections are all pretty small in size. I found several pieces that were big enough for a guitar sized fingerboard, but not big enough for a bass fingerboard, and most of the boards were warped. Now I live in Killeen (right between Austin and Waco) and there ain't much options here locally at all, not that i'm aware of anyway. All the wood I plan on using for any future builds for now will be bought online, either Ebay, or gallerhardwoods.com, or joewoodworker.com (great source for veneers), or rockler.com, or whatever else I may come across.