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Here's a link to my latest bass guitar build, posted on Facebook.
I've tried uploading pictures, but it seems that I can't do it, it always says my pictures are an invalid format.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2 ... 6f308dc472

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Old growth, shmold growth!

That is one sharp looking bass!

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Bobby Masten

It works if you will go to your photo, right click, click on properties, highlight and copy the address for the photo, then come here and choose the Img box, right click and paste the copied address for the photo.

Nice looking bass. What kind of wood is the main body wood, mango?

Mike

Charles, nice!!!
Looks like you got those fretmarkers in the center.
That extra sting shows that clearly.
Can you explain the electronics?
What type, and what the knobs do?
Wow!

Thanx guys! I guess I should include some details.

Yes Mike, the show faces are Mango. Good eye!

The neck alignment came out really well, not only do the dots line up, but the strings pass directly between the poles on the pickups. I sent Nordstrand the neck dimensions, string spacing at the nut and saddles, and the exact distance of the center of each pickup from the nut, and the distance in from the edge of the neck for the outer edge of each string.

Because of the thickness of the low B string, after I found the center line of the neck, I offset the bridge 1/16 of an inch sideways to the centerline so that it would all look good and line up correctly. Very careful planning went into the layout of all the components

35 inch scale
Neck 7 piece laminate neck through construction: Flame maple sides, bloodwood/flame maple pinstripes, purpleheart centerstripe
Two-way adjustable truss rod
Ebony fretboard and headstock with Bloodwood binding and Maple pinstripe
Mother of Pearl fretboard dots, white phenolic side dots for visibility
Bloodwood truss rod cover
Brass nut 1 7/8 inch width
Hipshot UltraLite tuning keys
Body wings have a Swamp Ash tone core, bookmatched Flame Mango show faces, and Padauk pinstripes
High Gloss Polyester finish
Dunlop Strap Locks
Hipshot B-style Solid Aluminum bass bridge with 18mm center-to-center string spacing, top-load or string-through-body string loading.
Electronics package consisting of:
Nordstrand Humbucking Pickups with custom centered string spacing
Series/Parallel mini-toggle selector switch per pickup
Pickup Blend potentiometer
Master Push/Pull volume pot with 400hz or 800hz Midrange Peak selector (400HZ default)
Active/Passive mini-toggle selector switch
Treble Frequency Potentiometer
Midrange Frequency potentiometer
Bass Frequency potentiometer
18-volt series battery power supply
Full copper foil control cavity shielding
Bloodwood control cavity cover.
I think that's everything.......

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Amazing wiring job!
I would have gone nuts just trying to figure that out.
I bet you can get just about any tone out of that git.
Looks like the added 5th string is the high one?

Low B. Due to the 35 inch scale, I went with 40-120 DR Fat Beams. They sound great.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Excellent work! I love the bloodwood binding! I've heard bloodwood is really difficult to work with. Did you bend it around the fretboard, or just cut it carefully around the edges? The finish is also spectacular. Really makes the mango pop through. Very nice indeed

My experience with bloodwood has been that it is tough to work with, yes. When it gets warm, it gums up your sandpaper, which makes it tough to sand with a drum, edge, or orbital sander.

It's also brittle and prone to splitting off when routing.
After this bass I vowed never to use it for neck laminates again, thicknessing those long sheets of bloodwood was a pain, I had to throw away a couple of rolls of grit for my 16/32 performax due to gumming/burning, even while diligantly cleaning the surface after every pass with my abrasive cleaner stick.

I had to make 3 back plates, cuz it kept splitting off.

For the neck binding, I glued a strip on the end of the fretboard, then profiled the fretboard, and glued the sides on. The result was a tight seamless look.
I inlaid the headstock shape into a piece of bloodwood, and cut away the excess on the outside leaving a seamless 3/32 inch strip around the headstock as a binding.

The main reason I used it for the accents is because padauk is too open grain for the binding, and the exposed portion of the Padauk on the fretboard would turn brown over time, whereas
bloodwood doesn't turn brown. I've got a guitar that I made out of padauk that has a bloodwood fretboard about 5 years ago, the padauk is brown, the bloodwood is still red.

As much as I like the look, if someone else wants bloodwood, it'll be $200 extra to cover the cost of the grits and aggravation.

It glues really well, though.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Uh oh.
bloodwood.
I was going to bind a Weissey with that stuff.
Does it bend?

Did yours smell like red hot candies when worked as well? I hear it bends well. Haven't tried it yet though

Seems to me to have a texture similar to ebony, not sure how it would bend. I'm pretty sure it will stain/scorch your bending form/slat/blanket or whatever you use.

Ian it has a very coconutty smell to me. It does kinda make my eyes water and burn my nose a little.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Yeah that should be a very good excuse not to use it again. I have some saved up for little jobs so we'll see how that goes