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I am in love with playing a fretless bass. There it is. They are so sleek to look at and fun to play, I hardly even glance at my fretted instruments anymore. So for my next build, I'm designing another fretless. But this time, it's something a bit different.

It'll be my third self-made instrument, and my first neck-through-body build.

First, the specs!

Body/Neck:

The neck and body will be 100% hard white maple. The reasons for this aresimple: it's cheap and strong. The neck and body wood all together cost me $38 after tax. From the beginning of the design process, I have planned to paint this guitar. The wood I have acquired isn't particularly pretty, so that decision is made all the easier.

The body will be relatively thin. I am starting with 6/4 maple, which is actually 1-5/16" thick. I am not putting a drop top plate on it or anything. After planing and sanding, I expect the body will be a max thickness of 1-1/4". The neck is made from the same size lumber, but will be significantly thinner. At the nut, the neck wood (excluding fingerboard) should be no more than 5/8" thick. It will thicken slightly toward the body, and I'm anticipating 3/4" thickness around the 20th fret, where it starts to get thicker as it joins the body.

The body will have a 5/8" roundover on the front and back. As it will be 5/4" thick, it will thus have a round profile. I'm hoping that the highly rounded edge will give it a sleek look.

The neck will have a single double-action truss rod, a Graphtech Tusq-XL nut, and an ebony fingerboard. The fingerboard will be slotted with 24 positions for a 34" scale and will have a radius of 10". The fret slots will be filled with a high-impact white styrene plastic, which I acquired on Amazon in 0.020" thickness for about $10 for 4 square feet (24x24"). I'm using 4 Gotoh GB7 bass tuners in black. That reminds me, it's a 4-string bass.

The neck and body will have the same finish. Right now, I'm planning on either a candy apple red, or candy purple finish. The fingerboard will be polished, but otherwise unfinished.

Electronics:

There will be no magnetic pickups. I'm using an undersaddle transducer only. This is inspired by Rob Allen's excellent and beautiful instruments. I don't expect to cop the same vibe as the construction methods and materials I am using are very different from what Mr. Allen does. To be honest, I don't know what I expect it to sound like. It's just going to be another color in the palette.

The pickup I am using is an EMG AT-125-O undersaddle piezoelectric transducer. That will go into a cafe walter audio PZP-1 piezo pickup buffer. After that, the electronics are passive. I'm using 250K-Ohm noble potentiometers for volume and tone, with a 0.047uF tone capacitor. I've got a flat-mounted battery box and a Switchcraft barrel-style stereo output jack. The battery box requires only a 3/4" deep body route, so depth won't be a problem.

Bridge:

The bridge will be solid ebony. The design I have come up with is about 4" wide, 1/2" tall, and about 2" deep. It'll be shaped and polished with a 1/8" saddle slot. The saddle is a Graphtech Tusq 1/8" saddle blank. The strings will be mounted through the body and bridge, over the saddles, and up to the nut and tuners.

So overall, it's a pretty simple, yet unusual bass. There isn't much to its construction, nor is there much to its electronics.

Here's the body/neck design:


And here's the bridge:


There are a few things to this that I am not 100% confident about, so I hope I can get some creative input from the pros here.

I've had 3 fretless basses, and they've all been fun to build and play.

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

I have gotten a little bit of work done so far.


I ripped the 6/4 maple body piece inti to two correctly sized pieces:



Then I transferred the design by covering the face with masking tape and gluing the template to the tape:



Then I cut them out (slowly) on a scroll saw:


I need a bandsaw in a big way.

Here are the rough cut body pieces next to the neck plank:


The body pieces will be trimmed to the plywood template (after the template is trimmed to the hardboard template) before being glued to the neck piece.

Hi Mark,

I think it's a wonderful design/project. I like the Alembic flavor.

I've built only one neck-thru bass (fretted) and being a guitarist not
really up on the instrument or designs I learned of Michael Pedulla while gathering info.

A feature that I noticed on one of his basses I really like and have used-not
only on the bass but also a Strat style.
http://www.pedulla.com/html/et_4_back_profile.html

Naturally the cut should be made before attaching the wings and body thickness.

Hi Sandy, and thanks! I like to think of it as Alembic omega tail meets BC Rich (though I would never suggest that anything I make is on the level of Alembic's work). I may be one of the only people who loves the Warlock, so the design purposely has a bit of a suggestion of a curvy, maybe more refined and socially acceptable warlock.

I really like those continuous cavity covers, but I don't think I'm going to try it with this build. I'm planning a chambered mahogany super-tele build for next year, and I'm thinking of doing it with that one.

The piezo buffer preamp arrived today, and it's tiny!


(Shown for size comparison next to a quarter and a British 2p coin)

I had it built without the optional output trim pot or second battery clip, because it does not need to share a power supply, and it's not going to be added to an existing pickup system.

I got the plywood body template cut out today:



The pickup holes and neck pocket are for a 7-string guitar that is being made with the same body shape/size.

I also received the fingerboard from LMII on friday. I ordered it pre-slotted with 24 fret slots on a 34" scale, and pre-radiused with a 10" radius. I'm going to try to get the neck scarf cut soonish so I can route the truss rod channel and taper the neck (then glue and taper the fingerboard and install the fret lines).