DFW

did you do a back veneer cause you accidentally drilled a tuner hole in the wrong place? that happened a bunch in my class, luckily not to me

Nah, my headstock jumped the plastic dealy as I was thickness sanding it down to .593 and I got a divot.

Also the acoustic back is glued onto my sides and my electric is pretty much ready to be sprayed.

Also, what program did you use to design that?

I drew it by hand.

I'm just trying to get you thinking about how to make it work well.

peace,

russ

Well, I have taken your advice about been doing some research, and I'm thinking of just going the solid body route and nixing the sympathetic strings until I better understand acoustic construction. The hollowbody thing was an impulse and I don't have the time to build such a complex instrument. Also I don't see any reasonable way of driving the symps in a solid environment. Fortunately I'll be in Santa Cruz this summer and Fred Carlson says he'll tell me a bit about what's going on in the acoustic realm.

You guys have a good point, I'm doing little more than dicking around. It's wishy washy, poorly planned, based very little on what's been done before, with every choice made on gut feeling. But I'm building her and if she works, awesome, if not, no skin off my back, I'm still graduating and still very deep in the beginning stages of luthiery. I have a feeling she is gonna do what I want her to do, and that's all the motivation I need.

Rich, I want her to sound like a forest.

I'm looking into ordering custom .010 gauge strings in 4' lengths, which might be a bit of work to find but I'll put that in. If anyone has any resources I'd be much appreciative.

As for straightness I'll be overbuilding the neck and stuffing it with graphite, ans it'll be relatively short as the body joint is slightly beyond the first octave. Compression will be unavoidable but as this is my first I've got to see where all of the problems arise before I can solve them.

After some thought I've also switched the design to a hollowbody, thanks in part to thegarehanman's last post. I'll post the refined design tomorrow. The mahogany center portion will be the cavity with a cedar top. She keeps the ash outer wings, but there will be some switching up there which wil be shown in the revised design. The fingerboard for the harp string will be suspended. There will be a soundpost routed out of the cavity for both the main bridge and the jiwari.

To be continued

So you'll have 16 strings running up the neck, is that correct? 12 of which will be under the fingerboard? What are your plans regarding the neck, piano tuners for the 12 sympathetic strings to reduce clutter? Also, what are your plans for beefing up the neck to compensate for the large amount of string tension while still keeping it reasonably thin and not neck heavy? I've actually been giving a neck with strings under the fingerboard some consideration over the last few months, mostly inspired by a violin I saw years ago. I've already designed what should be a strong, hollow, average thickness neck, but I'd be interested to hear your ideas as well.

Yea, 16 neck strings. I'm going to line the sympathetic string channel with graphite for strength and won't have a truss rod. Without frets the neck relief isn't too important. Also it'll be pretty thick with the cello-y fingerboard on there, probably around 1.250 at the nut. There'll be a two layer split headstock with 6 mini sperzels per side mounted ala classical on the bottom level and the bass tuners mounted normally on the top. as for the weight issue I figure a singlecut mahogany bass body will counteract most of the headstock mass and have an optimal strap departure position.

There have been modifications to this design as I further realize my calling and ability. I am adding 12 sympathetic strings going up the neck, under the fingerboard, as well as 6 harp strings on the bass side with a fingerboard underneath (to ease harmonic tapping). I'm going to be using custom Pickup the World pickups with the three string groups split up and blendable via 3 slider controls mounted on the Ash portion of the treble wing. It's now got a 6 octave fingerboard as well. The woods to be used are as follows:

Central Body: Mahogany

Body Wings: Ash

Neck: 2 piece Maple

Fingerboard: Pau Ferro

The treble bout will be angled at 15 degrees to facilitate bowing on the highest string. The tuning will be based on D, fifths on the man strings, various D chords on the harp strings and variations on D and it's fundamentals for the sympathetic strings (D, A, G and their octaves, split into groups of 2, 3 or 4)

I am designing a forearm mounted bow for bowing, along with the use of a regular bass bow and my plucking technique.

Missing from this picture are the sympathetic strings, the tuning machine detail for the harp strings, the Jiwari for the sympathetic strings, the 12th fret up (still designing the headstock) and volume controls.

Carved top braces and shaped side braces.

Glued on headstock back veneer in matching Bolivan Rosewood. Inlayed headstock as well, with an Ebony and Black Pearl "Play" button.

Thanks a lot. I've already drilled the machinehead holes and the strings fan slightly, but only just so. They're significantly straighter than a Les Paul, I'll grease the nut extra greasy and sha

I'm installing a 7415 on a bass I'm building from scratch, and I noticed that bass installation hasn't been brought up yet in this thread. Here's the build thread.

I'm currently at 3/4" depth of rout and I routed with a 1/2 inch bit while was doing pickup cavities, should I take that to an inch depth with a 3/8" bit as per the guitar instructions?

Also, what's the minimum saddle height I can have? hould the angle be at 10:30 as on the guitars? And does the rearward saddle situation change things on that front?

And without a locking nut is there anything to worry about? I noticed Victor Wooten has a brass nut with his Kahler'd bass, should I do that or am I fine with bone?

Also I've got a slight worry about the .130 fitting the roller securely as my instructor remarked upon seeing the bridge "I believe you B string will sound like a well executed fart, but that's a cool piece of machinery".

Thanks in advance

Glued in top braces for the acoustic and made side strips.

Carved Bass neck, it's a fatty at .960 thickat the nut and 1.060 or so at the body joint.

It's a finger ramp. Matthew Garrison/Richard Bona style.

And Trem = Tremolo Bridge.

Routed for pickups and trem:

Also glued in kerfing ,cut out top and sanded to thickness.

Also, so you know, some three coil pickups have the standard humbucker and then another coil underneath so you have a stacked hum cancelling single coil too. The EMG TW's and 89 are like this.

It looks great! Very stylish. When will it be finished?

2 months or so.

acoustic back braced

neck pocket routed, neck roughed, fingerboard glued.

So we carved the back braces, cut for rosettes, and inserted BWB inner and outter rings. we routed for truss rods on both necks and I made a truss rod cover for the electric, seen here with headstock design drawn on.

Keep in mind I have everything against symetry. You will notice that as my projects take shape. I think it's a way to get away with doing half of the necessary work, and kind of limiting. Though it does have it's good points, it's just not for me.

oh yea, changed the electronics gain to fit with what the school could actually acquire. Now its an EMG 40 DC (bridge) and TW (neck) with a BQC.

So I've made a lot of progress, taken very few pictures, and moved. Here is my only picture:

That's the 2 piece maple neck blank laying on top of the body with my 3 piece headcap which will be going on a headstock whose design I have no picture of. It looks nothing like the headcap though, except a little like that wedge of ash going up the middle. You can kinda make out the sun and moon inlay planned for the fingerboard (sun at the 12th, moon at the 5th)

For the acoustic we've built the back braces and glued them in, along with the seam strips, and tomorrow I'll be chiseling them. We've also designed rosettes, I'm just doing an ebony and bolvian rosewood quartered style thing, it's a three ring with BWB strips for the inside and ouside rings with slanted joints between the woods in the middle ring, with the grain going inward.

You were right, they look pretty ecstatic

Might I reccomend aging the tail end edges on the back? I think it would add a lil' sumtin sumtin to the agery.

Even if I owned a (sliding) mitre saw, I'd hand-cut my scarfs. Japanese handsaws are Teh Awesome.

Definitely. They do everything backwards from us and it just turns out better. Probably has something to do with he discipline as well.

Today for the electric I made a template for the Kahler route, located the pickups (now a Bartolini Musicman style and an EMG 40TW which will be covered by a top-matched finger ramp instead of ebony) and carved the tummy contour.

For the acoustic I located the soundhole, made the back braces and cut out the seam strips. No pics there.

Good stuff man, diggin the wood choices.

Glued up the electric body, it's ready for routing. Glued in the acoustic back strips, it's ready for bracing.

UPDATE: Shaped and routed the headstock. Need to ease the volute a couple of mm to accommodate the tuner locating screw. The back of the tenon needs easing a couple of mm also as the top is a little too tall compared to the wings. Other than that - good to go!

i think my favorite part of the thunderbird style is the headstock... i always thought the body would make for a great 8 string, but i wouldn't want to f. with the flow of the headstock it's so perfect!

then do it like the BC Rich double stringers (10 string Bich comes to mind) with the other tuners on the bottom of the guitar and ferrules in the headstock.

So this is from the beginning of today, with the top roughed and laid out with the ash accent strip and fingerboard. The top's glued up and I'm gonna rout for the accent strip tomorrow, but here's a far cry from what it looks like now:

I also cut the channels for the back strip on the acoustic but that's hardly worth a picture. and I screwed up so I have to use wider strips. Woo for remedies!