Doug 59

You're doin well Geo..... I'm sure you'll pull it off and produce a fine first acoustic build, and the knowledge you'll gain will be well worth the effort. Keep up the good work, Doug.

I like your carving and shaping, very nice.

I've been meaning to get back here and post a few images of Ed's Bass all finished and ready to go for almost a week, but have been so busy, I just haven't had the time until now. It should have one more buff and polish and thats about it. The Bass sounds absolutely fantastic, the combination of woods works really well. The density of all three woods, Black Bean, Maple Silkwood and Rose Mahogany complement each other nicely, I'd highly recommend them to anyone who wants to use some quality Australian Tone Woods. The total weight of the Bass is 3.85 Kg, Body thickness is 38 mm's, and total length from the top of the headstock to the strap lock at the other end is 1085 mm's .... very light, evenly balanced, and comfortable. The single EMG humbucker is placed forward to pick up the deeper resonance of the strings, and is simply wired for volume and tone, with 500 k Ohm pots and a .047 µF orange drop Sprague capacitor. It has a bright clear tone.... a deep tight treble sort of tone, not unlike piano strings, the harmonics are clean and clear on all strings. There are no dull or dead spots. It's a real pleasure to play. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to look. Doug.

I agree with GregP .... it does take a bit of work to pull off a thin Guitar. For me personally, it's the aesthetics thing, and with that comes the lessened weight.

No, I don't think so. Presuming that you're routing / carving out both pieces to create the hollow, you'll be taking out up to 7/8" from the bottom, and up to 5/8" from the top, that leaves you with a 2" body,with a hollow of 1-1/2". Depending on how you want to shape / carve the actual body, especially the top will determine how you go about the internal carving... how much you shallow it out internally, as you get closer to your edges, so as to compensate for how much you carve off the top. If you leave the top flat, for example,the join between the two pieces will be harder to hide, as it's 7/8" down from the top, than if you carve the top down towards the edges, that way you can use a binding or an accent lamination to hide the join. Gee, I hope what I'm trying to say here makes sense!

Ok, got a little bit more to show. Pickups arrived late last week .... we're now going with a single EMG Humbucker. One volume, one tone. Here's the route for the Pickup, the little rectangular hole in the bottom left, for wiring, was routed into the core before I put the top on. I've got the Truss Rod adjustment access cover in place as well, but I didn't notice until looking at this picture, that the book match line in the cover appears to run off to the line on the rest of the top... I'll have to look at that, it's the little things that can really stand out. It's also very hard to see the white accent line I've put around it's edge, though once the Top's properly sanded back, that should stand out nicely. The Frets are in, leveled, beveled and crowned etc. The Nut, which is Brass, is on and slotted to the correct hight, and as I've eluded to else where, brass isn't as hard to work with as what some of you guys think! Just take your time, use good quality files, it's such a nice soft greasy metal (alloy). I've had it strung up for the past 10 days or so, after having done the frets and the nut ...... Got the action of the E string at 2 mm at the 20th fret. There's a little bit of buzzing if you play hard, but it plays so nicely, I LOVE IT!! ...& it sounds great too, fantastic harmonics! If this Bass wasn't going to a ... how shall I say it ... modest player, (I'm sure ED won't mind being described as a modest player, and after all, it is a modest sort of Bass when it's all said and done) .... I think I'd do it a bit different, 24 frets, definitely 2 PU's, and probably active! All that's left to do now is the finishing, and that's going to be gloss polyurethane. I've decided to leave the Top natural.

As a Silversmith / Jeweller ..... I'd cast them .... Re the original question. Good quality Jewellers Files will just eat up brass, after all they're made for filing Silver and Gold. Silver and low carat Gold are a lot harder than brass. Brass is a soft greasy metal by comparison. I use a number of different saws and files, as well as a grinding stone, to shape my nut blanks, then I use standard Nut Files for the the string slots. As Wes V says, just takes a little longer. Here's an example of a couple of nuts and the Flat Brass bar they've been cut from.

Cool, well done. I love the colour, that deep red is a favourite! Your lines flow well. If you're doing another one, I would leave the heel of the neck where it is, and perhaps swing your bridge up toward the upper bout just a tad, that would centre the line of the neck as it were. But, well done for a second Guitar. Doug.

Thanks for the positive feedback Guys. Yeah Jack, the top's got me a little stumped at the moment.... I really like it natural too, but, I might be able to get it looking even better if I do a darker burst from the front of the body. I've got about 2 weeks before the pick ups are here, so that's a bit of time to think more about it! The DG 10 does have a new home, it's been bought by a very talented young guy in Sydney, by the name of Zac Jones. He's supposed to come and pick it up sometime in May, and when he does, I was going to get a video / sound clip thing together and post it up on my you tube channel. Doug.

Hey this is coming along really nicely. [i've got an explorer build sitting on the sidelines waiting for me to get back to it!] It's always worth redoing things if they stuff up too bad [re the Neck]..... the experience gained from the first attempt translates into knowledge for the second attempt. As an aside, though related to what I'm saying .... I do a whole series of laminates on the front and back of my headstocks, the front is easy. The back, with regard to positioning things so that the volute works properly in relation to the laminates was something I must have done half a dozen times before I figured it out. Here's an image of what I'm trying to explain. Knowledge isn't cheep, it does cost some time! Doug.

Not much to show for the last week or so.... I've been very busy wearing my Silversmith hat ..... I had to complete quite a large order of Silverwork, so Ed's Bass has taken a back seat for the time being. That's cool, I'm waiting on Pickups, and I still haven't made any real decision regarding the finish on the Top. I've given it a couple of sealer coats to see what it's going to come up like if I just leave it natural. The slight recessed area at the base of the body is for the bridge, and the writing is what timbers have been used as well as my name and the date. If you go back through the images, as well as the one above, you can see some detail regarding what's going on, a small wooden cover, the same as the top will sit in there. Adjustment of the rods is done by a small ring spanner. [only one way adjustment] As far as the Heel goes, it cups really nicely into the palm of my hand, with my ring finger able to reach the last fret so easily it's ridiculous. Part of the reason I didn't blend it into the body, is that I wanted some sort of resolution of the neck into the body since the neck is joining the body at the 20th fret. Just as an aside.....the thickness of the body is 38 mm [an inch and a half], and the thickness of the heel to the centre of the top of the fingerboard is 46 mm [one and thirteen sixteenths]. Weight wise, as it stands at the moment, without hardware, it comes in at 2.9 Kg [about 6.5 Lb] The Headstock lamination / veneer from two angles just to show how much movement is in the figure of this wood. I still have my logo inlay to do on the front as well. And from the back, That's about it for now, I'll post the last lot of images once it's all fretted and wired up etc....I can't wait to hear this plugged in and turned up, for now, it's got a lovely bright tap tone.

Got a little bit more to put up here...the fingerboard is on, bound, and the inlay done. It was a good thing I checked with Ed before I started on the inlay....LOL, I was thinking it was Edd ! I'll have to do a little filling in a couple of places, but in general it came out ok. Back of headstock and volute. I'll do the final shaping once I've got the front on. There's still a little bit of work to do on the neck as well. Decided to stain the back. I'm going to put a white veneer around the control cavity cover, I quite like the contrast. Still not sure what I'm going to do on the Top though! Anyway, a bit more in a few more days....

Check this out Here it might be something useful.

Great work Josh.... Keep number one if you can though, you could regret it latter on if you let it go....

Yes,you'll find a lot of great information here, as you know. Welcome! Does the V2 part of your name refer to one of these ?...My old V2

Funny you say that.......I was thinking of exactly the same sort of thing.

A few more progress images...... Back of the body core Top of body core, pre surfacing for top Book matched top attached and highlighted to show figure. It would have been nice if the figure was across the whole top, but you gotta work with what ya got! Body end of truss rod channels. Gluing fillets in over the rods Back of headstock, little wings attached. Top of neck surfaced ready for fingerboard

Black Bean is a great timber, but if not cut and seasoned properly there may be some movement problems, this is pretty much the same for most timbers though. It's sanding dust is very irritant, and can even cause a rash on the skin. I haven't heard of it being used in instruments, but I've used it for fingerboards on a few Guitars, and have been very happy with the results, it seems to have an even response / resonance. It has an air dried density of about 770 Kg / cubic meter, comparable to the Rosewoods [brazilian & Indian],but nowhere as hard as the Ebonys. It was commonly used for floors 40 / 50 years ago up here in North Qld, as well as furniture making, but it's a bit hard to come by any quantity these days. I thought I'd use it in this bass as a bit of an experiment, as I have an almost completed Guitar done in the same timbers.... I'm interested to hear what sort of tone this combination of woods produces. If I don't try it, I'll never know.

Ok, a bit more on this Bass for Edd. All the Tone Woods used in this Instrument are Australian, except for the Ebony fingerboard. I'm going to put the proper botanical names in brackets behind the common names, just in case anyone wants, or needs to know. Australia is home to some great timbers, and as the supply for the more traditional woods from Central and South America become harder to source, there's a fair bit of interest in what we have down here, though there's quite a few of our species on various CITES lists as well. Some Australian makers like Maton have been using the likes of Queensland Maple [ Flindersia brayleyana ] for almost half a century, and as such, have a good knowledge base about different Australian woods and their tonal properties in comparison to the more traditional woods.... There's also a lot of small builders continually experimenting with "new" woods.....here as well as overseas, tradition is slowly being put aside as some of these "new" woods are found to be even better than the traditional ones we've been using. The neck laminates are: Rose Mahogany [Dysoxylum fraseranum ] x 5 mm centre strip, with pinstriped Black Bean [Castanospermum australe ] x 5 mm strips each side of that, and Maple Silkwood [ Flindersia pimenteliana ] as the main bulk of the neck. Pinstripes are .6 mm Silver Quandong [ Elaeocarpus grandis ]. I think I'm going with dual truss rods in this one as it will connect to the body at the 20 th fret, and will have quite a slender profile. Neck details Body wings: Black Bean core x 20 mm, Silver Quandong accent laminations x 3 mm, with book matched Rose Mahogany on the back, and book matched Maple Silkwood on the Top. This is the Rose Mahogany for the back. This is the Maple Silkwood for the Top. Gluing the Black Bean core to the Neck I use small stainless steel pins to stop things moving about while clamping, as I taper, and set neck to body angles [if needed] at this stage. Later, I put the Guitar in a special router jig to do the truss rod channels and any other routing that may need to be done. Close up of the Silver Quandong accent gluing to the tops and the backs pre book matching. I use Epoxy Resin for laminating, the plastic is to keep things separated, once this stuff has gone off, there's no going back.

Here's some images of a slab of a Maple Silkwood I'm currently milling down to billets for book matching, slabs for solid bodies, and select lengths for neck laminates. Maple Silkwood is a very close relative of Queensland Maple. [ Flindersia pimenteliana, as opposed to Flindersia brayleyana ] These are both great Australian tone woods. The timber slab in question has been air drying for over ten years.....it measures 4 meters long x 850 mm wide and 55 mm thick. It's almost a shame to cut it up, it would make a nice kitchen bench top or the likes......but Guitars are more important!! I'll be selecting something out of this lot for a Bass build. Specs are: 34 inch scale, multi laminate neck through, four string. Book matched top and back Ebony fingerboard Schaller hardware Not sure yet, but possibly a single Bartolini pick up Originally I was planing a 4005 Rickenbacker copy, that's been shelved for now as this is a commission....but that Ricky shape will probably in there somewhere. Maple Silkwood [ Flindersia pimenteliana ] Slab Marked out Grain figure Selected billet Book match

Great to see that creativity Kenny....cool. I like the marquetry on the guitar top, and I think you did catch some movement in "Moving to a better place". ...don't stop expressing yourself. Doug.

So much great work..... and it seems Finland is producing some excellent builders. What can I say, 335's.....their a favourite of mine. jyrki's instrument does it for me.

I'm a big fan of early Rickenbackers. But sorry,I don't know where you'd find plans....If you can,sit yourself down with one and have a good close look at it,take some measurements etc. Draw your own plan. I base some of my build techniques from what I can understand of their design. I'm about to start on a 4005 Bass

I have a length of flat bar 55mm wide and 6 mm thick. I cut nut size pieces from this,and shape them down to size and shape. Brass is a soft greasy metal, easy to file and shape, polishes up well with fine wet and dry paper. I use a standard [24 teeth] hacksaw and files for cutting etc, but I do use Jewellers Files for the final finishing and the string slots. It's also worth putting 2 small pins on the underside to help with positioning. this is done by drilling 2 mm holes to a depth of 3 mm into the underside, and then inserting 2 mm brass wire into the holes and trimming it off to leave a mm or so as the pins. In my opinion brass accepts the resonance off the strings better than ivory or bone etc. I'm into using Silver these days, as it's an element, as opposed to being a alloy, as brass is. It's also a lot more harder / brittle than brass and it's the best conductor of heat and electricity, as far as metals go, even better than gold. I have a feeling that it "conducts" sound waves just as well. The differences between all the different materials available though, are probably unperceivable to our ears!

Hey,while were on the Aluminium thing....check this out http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb295/D...strat_front.jpg can't tell you much about it, but I think it looks fantastic....wonder what it sounds like.