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Greetings,

To get to the point, I'm building a bass guitar. It is my first from-scratch guitar build. Last winter, I successfully converted a short-scale 4-string bass guitar into a long-scale 6-string baritone guitar. That was my first woodworking project ever, and I was very happy with the results. It was also just practice to build a proper bass guitar from plank to playing instrument.

I've been reading up on design, techniques and tools for a couple of years, and I've been practicing some techniques for a few months. So the time has come to put all of that in motion.

I am calling this project "Epoch", and it is a 4-string fretless bass. Specs follow:

4 strings
Fretless
35" scale
Madagascar Ebony Fingerboard
1-piece Wenge neck
2-piece Eastern Soft Maple (Acer rubrum) body "core"
2-piece bookmatched Flamed Maple body top
Hipshot Ultralite Tuners
Hipshot A bridge
Bartolini X44CBJD pickups
Passive electronics: blend, volume, tone
Tru-Oil Finish

The Design:
The Body:


The Neck:


Mockup in Photoshop:


The Wood:






And some parts:


The headstock will be covered in a 3-piece veneer sandwich of maple, ebonized maple, and flamed maple. This will provide a nice contrasting color scheme against the dark chocolate wenge neck, and match the body.

The body will be 1-5/8" thick. I had the supplier machine the maple body blank to 1-3/8" thick. and the flamed maple top is 1/4" thick. The body will have a 3/4" roundover profile shaping, which will be smoothed with the random orbital sander. I know the body isn't the most creative or original design, but I like it a lot. I'm hoping this slightly more pedestrian build will give me the necessary experience to be able to execute my V bass this summer.

The neck heel will have stainless steel threaded inserts and the neck attachment bolts are #10-24 stainless machine screws. The neck blank is 1" thick currently, and I am going to have it milled down to 7/8" thick as soon as I can find someone local that is willing to do it. The nut is 1-5/8" wide, and string spacing will be 0.75"/19mm at the bridge.


I glued the flamed maple top to the maple core last night, but forgot to take pictures. I imagine most people in here know what that looks like, though.

Thanks for watching!

(ps: If anyone cares to see my conversion project, it can be seen on TalkBass here: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f57/ibane ... ct-723794/)

You've got a great design and technique going there. Welcome to the forum and good luck on your build!

Good luck, have fun, and keep us informed of your progress!

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks, gentlemen.

Fretless basses rule! Go for it!

Sweet! Keep workin' and keep postin'! Welcome to the forum!

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

The clamps are off the body lamination and it looks fine. It's not perfect, but it is acceptable to me for a first try

After I got the clamps off the body, I went ahead and glued and clamped the veneer sandwich for the headstock:



It is wrapped in parchment paper and squished between pine planks.

Welcome to the forum, mark!
Nice peghead, and I like the stinger on the tail of that beast.
Looks like you don't mess around!
Alan

So I discovered that the body blank is about 3/8" too narrow for my design. Obviously, I could change the design, but I had another thought that is more appealing to me. Honestly, I don't love the all-maple look as much as I thought I would. So, I think I am going to rip the body lamination at the glue joint and glue in a 3/4" wide strip of wenge. That'll give me the extra width I need, plus add a little contrast to the design. Plus the wenge strip would match the neck.

Thoughts?

I'm a fan. In fact, I'm such a fan that I've already done something just like it. Although mine was the original plan since the flamed maple I had was very clearly too narrow from the onset. Check it out: (front and back are the same)

Sweet. Thanks gabby. I like the looks of that.

In related news, I found a reputable local millwork shop that will thickness my neck blank for $5!

So I got the neck blank planed to thickness today. I decided on 0.75", because the fingerboard will add about 1/4", and that's how I like it. Now I need to cut the scarf joint...and that has proven tricky. I don't have a bandsaw, and the neck blank is 4" wide. My tablesaw will only cut up to about 3", so it won't go all the way through.

I may have to do this the old-fashioned way. Which sucks...because I am not an old-fashioned kind of guy, and me with a handsaw is a recipe for disaster. Really, it's a recipe for buying another neck blank when I butcher this one.

Scarf joints aren't as scary as a lot of people make them out to be. They freaked me out for a while, too. Even if you have to cut it with a handsaw, just take it slow, use a piece of wood or some other guide to make sure you cut straight, and you'll be fine. Hand tools are often a better choice for operations that you're not too certain about because you can do them slowly and more carefully.

I've done scarf joints on some Oak and Poplar practice pieces, and it came out fine. I made a table-saw jig to hold the piece at 10 degrees, and it worked brilliantly. However, my test pieces were less than 3 inches wide, and now the real thing is 4" wide. So the table saw won't cut it. Lacking a big enough bandsaw, I think a handsaw is the only option I have.

So I cut the scarf joint today. I forgot to get pictures of the cutting process, but it was pretty straightforward. A while back, I built a 10 degree scarf jig, and I used that today. Here's what the jig looks like:



The problem I had was that the neck blank is 4" wide, and the table saw will only cut about 3" high. I went back and forth with a lot of solutions before I decided to just cut as much as I could with the table saw, and finish up with a handsaw. So that's what I did.

The handsaw cutting was pretty rough, and I didn't do the best job. But I built a lot of extra material into the build, so I had room to correct my errors.

After sawing, I clamped the two pieces up and began to plane them flat/smooth. Here's what it looked like starting out.



OK, what really happened was that I asked the guy who owned the shop to show me how to use the planes. He was happy to do so. About a minute into the planing, however, he suggested that he should finish up the wenge planing, and he'll show me using some other wood. He didn't think learning to plane on such hard and stubborn wood would be the best idea. So, he finished the planing for me. Here's how it looked when he was just about done:



And done:



There is still some more work to be done which will clean the edges and surfaces up.

A few nights ago, in a fit of foggy insomnia, I had an idea for a scarf joint clamping jig. On the test neck I made of oak a couple of months ago, clamping the neck was a pain in the butt, and the pieces slipped after clamping. Late one night, I laid awake in bed thinking of a solution. A very simple idea came to me, so I dragged myself out of bed at 3am and built this:



This evening, after I got the scarf cut and planed, I tested it out. Everything fit:



Now as soon as I get the headstock piece planed down to 1/2" thick, I'll glue it up.

Woke up at 3 AM in the morning thinking about how to do it.
Welcome to da club!
Looks good.
Great idea there with the jig.

Thanks alan.

I've ordered the wenge filler strip for the body and a Wagner Safe-T-Planer to thickness the headstock piece. When that stuff gets here...it's on.

So some stuff arrived today...

A Wagner Safe-T-Planer: (so I can plane the headstock piece down to 1/2")



A nice piece of maple: (fretboard for a future project)



And a wenge plank: (to make my body blank a bit wider and add some contrast)



Now I just have to build a drill-press table for the safe-t-planer and I'll be in business.

I got the headstock piece cut down to ~0.5" thick..





Close enough!

UPS and USPS showed some love today:

Hipshot HB6Y Ultralight tuners and A style bridge:


Bartolini X44CBJD Pickup Set:



Pots, Knobs, Tone cap, Output jack:


And some DR Legend Flatwound stainless strings:

Sweet! It's nice to see a bass build happening. there used to be a guy here who built basses a lot, but I haven't seen him(or his basses) around lately. More's the pity!
I'll be watching. I've got a simple P bass build planned for later on this year, if I ever get the time.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

You might want to use one of these instead of the orange drop...http://angela.com/angelajensensequapape ... itors.aspx

Thanks for the suggestion, but $23 for a capacitor is a bit steep for me, regardless of how good the retailer thinks it sounds. I only actually bought the orange drop because it was only $3 and popped me over the threshold for free shipping on my entire order.

This morning I got the wenge strip cut down to the proper depth, and glued the body back together:

I got my spindle sander today...


...which allowed me to clean up the scarf cut and glue the neck up: