SIMpleONe89

Wow it has almost been a month since I buffed it out. I was working on the bass and was also waiting for a hard case but thanks to Auspost that hard case is lost and I don't know where it is. I was holding out for the hard case before assembling but enough was enough so I bought a gig bag locally instead. I think I have too many hard cases anyway haha. Of course I'll be getting a refund. So I hereby present to you, my second build. I will take better pictures with my DSLR on a better day of course. I just spent the last 2 days trying to wire it together, only to find out the problem was with the pot, not my wiring! Specs: Hardware: Gotoh SG318 tuning machines Kluson modern string retainer Wilkinson 5+1 contemporary tremolo Electronics: Seymour Duncan JB (trembucker) in the bridge Seymour Duncan Jazz in the neck 5 way super switch wiring: 1. bridge, 2. bridge (north) + neck (south), 3. bridge + neck, 4. neck (north) + bridge (south), 5. neck 500K audio Push pull volume pot, with a blower switch to bypass all electronics and send the bridge pickup straight to the output jack, plus treble bleed mod. 500K audio tone pot with Fender's grease bucket tone circuit. Sorry for the blur pics. Will take better ones soon.

Very nice inlays!

You know with bolt ons, do people not use glue? I thought even with bolt ons you need glue below the fretboad but I've seen some of the lower end Taylors where you can remove the entire neck!

The finish is amazing.

Thanks Carl. Shall look for the wooden things and the belts!

Why not just wire the pickups directly to the pots first? That way you can still play it!

It was insanely hard truing up the edges just with sand paper and my lousy hand plane. I really need to get a better hand plane and learn how to joint surfaces.

With some mineral spirits applied. The wenge became really dark so I think I'll have to sand to a higher grit and hopefully that won't make it too dark when the oil is applied. Almost there! I'm doing the headstock inlays tomorrow and will have to make a truss rod cover. I already made some matching wooden knobs and hopefully they'll turn out nice. And then I have to wait for the machine heads to come before I can complete the headstock. Then it's the finish sanding and finishing!

Sorry haven't been posting. I was trying to do as much as I could during the week. I'll write up a detailed process when I have the time, but here's some pics.

Exciting! I've always wanted to try wind my own pickups but the raw materials themselves aren't that cheap!

Are those round things the pickups? Very unusual!

That is some intense wiring! And that bass looks great for 35 years old!

I love the striped design. Don't know why some people hate it. This looks great too! The black being last gives it a different look, kind of like the Kramer 5150 and how it was done.

I love shiny things too! Great work!

If the action is too high maybe you can grind off the metal on the bridge where the posts sit. Or if you're more daring you could always recess the bridge!

Thanks guys. The build is crawling along slowly but surely. I'm sure with the right tools I'd be able to do it ten times faster.

How hard would binding the fretboard be? Not too hard for you I'm sure!

What colour hardware are you going with?

The battery sits nicely and there's plenty of room for the battery snap plus some cushioning foam. It was tricky to route the control cavity because the piece of blackwood which was glued on severely restricted the movement of the router. The smarter way would be to precut and preroute the Vic ash before gluing on the blackwood but this was done some time ago. I then used some blackwood offcuts as makeshift, temporary templates for the control cavity. Didn't want to make anymore templates! It came out looking nice! Then I connected the cavities together. And finished it off by drilling the output jack hole.

With the cover all settled, it was time to route out the electronics cavity. I drew out the layout I wanted for a volume, pickup blend, passive tone with a passive switch, and a 3-band active EQ. Then I made room for a battery compartment and for the preamp to sit. Having a larger control cavity means lesser weight and more room for any cool mods to be done in future. Then I proceeded to hog out as much material - this is standard for routing any cavities. This helps relieve the stress on the router bit. Another smarter way would be to precut the cavity shape on the Vic ash itself, but I didn't do it because I hadn't planned for the layout way back then.

I was worried that the cover would warp in the future, so I decided to laminate it with some 3mm aluminium. In hindsight I think it wasn't necessary but I bought the aluminium sheet on impulse so why not. The blackwood had been drying for a long time and was stable enough. But laminating definitely reduces the chances of any warping in future! Then I routed out the aluminium piece on the cover. Unfortunately I went 1mm too deep so I'll have to make up for the height difference by gluing on some veneers. This also allows me to hide the ugly free-hand route I did for the aluminium. To attach metal to wood, I used some epoxy.

This is how I did a matching control cavity cover. I plan to attach it with magnets so you can easily pop them off without any ugly screws. After I cut out the blackwood piece for the lower wing, I cut out a section with my fret saw so that the kerf is smaller and less wood is removed. Then I glued the blackwood lower horn to the body and routed it to shape. I stuck the cover onto the back and also routed it to shape. Once the cover was shaped, I rounded over the lower wing. The cover also gets rounded over and it blends it nicely with the other blackwood piece.

Lessons learned: 1. Always have good lighting to see where you're routing. 2. Don't try to take too much off at once. I couldn't glue the pieces back together so I decided to modify the shape a little. Then I cut out the last piece, the Tasmanian blackwood, which is similar to Koa and it tears out very easily while I worked with it. Then I glued the final piece of the blackwood and now we have a delicious Wenge, Jarrah, Victorian Ash and Tasmanian Blackwood sandwich. Yum! I had a few gaps where I didn't have enough clamping pressure but this was easily fixed by stuffing pieces of Jarrah veneer into the gaps. Not good practice but it's fixable.

Once I was happy with the wenge top, I transferred the outline onto the second piece, the Victorian ash. Then cut it out. The Vic ash is thicker at 21mm so my jigsaw was struggling towards the end. Man I wished I had a bandsaw! I also decided to use a Jarrah veneer in between the wenge and the Vic ash. This provides a nice contrast which should hopefully show up once I start carving the top. Here's a pic of the first 3 layers. Then I glued the first 3 pieces together. I also hate the gluing process because there's a need to rush before the glue settles and so many things can go wrong! I reckon the scariest bit is waiting for the glue to dry, unclamping everything only to see the piece moved out of alignment! This problem can be solved by using alignment screws/pins but I didn't in this case. Fortunately, nothing funky happened during the gluing process. I waited for it to dry, then routed the Vic ash out to shape, using the wenge top as the template. Then flipped the body over and switched to a flush trim bit with the bearing on the bottom to finish up the cut.

Sorry haven't been updating but I managed to get quite a bit done over the week. It was hard juggling two projects, the flamed strat, and this! Anyway from where I left off last time, I wanted to show you how I made the body wings without the need to create a custom template. This is just a one time project so I felt no need to make templates. So I started off by choosing the best figure on the wenge top, which is 10mm. Then I used my original design plans and traced them out on the wenge. Cut it out... And sanded it. The ideal way would be to glue all pieces, true the edges and cut the shape out with a bandsaw, and fine tune the edges with a random orbital spindle sander. However, since I don't have these equipment, I thought the best way would be to use the wenge top as a template. If I were to make another bass with the same shape I would've made a custom template. This means I'll have to get the 10mm top perfectly flat on the edges. I placed the top on a shooting board and sanded the edges. Ideally a spindle sander would be of great help. And I regularly checked to see the edges are squared. This is important if I'm using the top as a template to route the entire body.