Official Luthiers Forum!

Hey everyone. I've been a member here for a while, but haven't posted much at all and it's been a while since I visited, but I'm working on a jazz bass right now that I thought I'd share.

This is a neck-thru jazz bass with an ash neck and chambered body, maple fingerboard with black dots on the face and the side. Bartolini pups wired vol. vol. tone like a standard jazz bass. Gotoh tuners, hipshot vintage bridge, CTS pots and some other stuff.

The plan for the finish is to dye it red and use a black grain filler on the ash body and neck, then spray the whole thing with a nitro clear coat. It looks great in my mind. I hope it turns out that way in reality.

Pics;

Ash neck blank. I glued three pieces together to help with some stability.

Slotted the fingerboard.

Cut and glued up the scarf joint at the headstock.

Here's all of the bits and pieces that are going on the bass. The goal is to make this pile of stuff turn into something useful.

Got the truss rod slot cut and the neck tapered.



More to come...

Here it is.

I got the fingerboard glued on, then trimmed it to the neck on the router table. then got the face dots installed and sanded the fingerboard to a 12" radius.

Rough cut the headstock.

From there, the neck got frets (sorry no pictures of that). Then side dots were installed and the body pieces were cut out. Starting to look like something.


Also got the headstock sorted more and drilled for tuners.

Did some work on shaping the neck. It's nice and thin and comfy.


More soon...

Very cool.
Love the J-bass body shape - I've built several over the years for myself.

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

Thanks. It's turning out pretty good so far. It's the first one that I've built for someone other than me, so I'm hoping that it continues to go well.

Nice work! Here's a newby question for you (or anyone else): how do you tilt the neck on such a through-neck build? Is it one of those things where you work it out based on the bridge height, or is there a known amount that most folks use? Do you use a special router jig to shave the neck down to the desired angle?
-D

I don't tilt mine. This is actually the next step in the construction process. I'm hoping to get some time to work on it tonight. I cut it so that the top of the frets is at the same height above the body as the bridge saddles at the lowest point. I just cut the neck with the band saw and sand the top of the neck flush with the body once they are glued together. Seems to work out well. I've seen others that do tilt the neck and there are various ways to do it. Usually by cutting it wih a band saw an sanding everything smooth later.

Thanks for the kind words.

Update time. I got some work on the body done.

There is a bit of chambering to help lighten things up a bit. I didn't go too deep so that I can still do a bit of contouring without having a big problem. Also got the control cavity routed.

Then I glued the tops on.

Then I trimmed the tops to match the back and put a 3/8" radius roundorver on them.

And then worked on the arm contour and did a bit of sanding.

More of that later.

After that, I sanded the transition at the end of the fingerboard to the neck.

Then took the router to the neck where the body attaches to thin it down a bit.

The remaining bit of it will be removed later with a chisel and sandpaper.

From here I needed to make the neck thicker at the body. To acheive this, I made a laminate of bloodwood and maple to make it match the thickness of the body.

And I glued that all together.


That's where things are at this point. I'll update when things progress from here.

Thanks for looking.

Got some more done on this one tonight. It's been such a fun build. Every night, I can't wait to get some more done on it. I really like this part of the build because it really starts to take shape and I get inspired to work on it more and more all the time. This is it until after this weekend though unfortunately.

Anyway, here is what I got done. I sanded everything on the front and back level and cut off the end of the neck that was sticking out the bottom and sanded that too. Looks like a bass now. Just have to finish carving the neck at the heel and route for pickups and drill a bunch of holes for the hardware and such.

Here are the pics of where we are now.








Thanks for looking and any comments and or suggestions are certainly welcome.

Steve

Got some more work done on this. Routed the pickup cavities and worked on the heel transition at the body and neck. Also drilled the holes for the bridge and the string thru holes.

Sorry for the bad pictures. It's not nearly this ugly in real life.

Right on Steve!
I really like the flowing grain pattern in the Ash.
You gonna put some color on it or go natural?
DZ

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Thanks a lot. I'm pretty happy with the grain in the ash too. Especially on the front. It's hard to tell where the neck and the body join together without looking pretty close.

As for finish I'm planning to dye the body and front of the headstock red and fill the grain in the ash with black filler. Then the whole thin will get a clear coat of Deft lacquer. Should look good.

Nice!

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Mike

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

Thanks!

Was able to get a lot done on this thing. I've got most of the woodwork done on it. I leveled the frets this morning. Just need to file the ends a bit so they aren't all sharp and pokey. Will get to that tomorrow. I've got to start the finishing on this bass. I'm hoping to get it all ready to start dying tomorrow evening.

Here's where we are now:
Front of body.

back. With the rear cavity cover.


Here are some samples that I made of the finish to try out the dyes and filler that I bought. Ended up going with the Transtint dyes in bright red and black. Also, I bought the Chemcraft filler from LMII.com. It worked really well and it's super easy to dye it with the transtint dyes. I tried it two ways. First dyed the wood red and used black filler and then I dyed the wood black and used red filler. I like them both for different reasons, but this one is going to get the red with black filler. It really stands out and should look cool.



I like the black with red filler too. It's subtle, but it looks good to me.

Thanks for looking.

Looks great Steve!
I like the red with the black dye too.
I may give that filler a try.
I prefer applying the transtint directly to the wood when practical. It leaves the subtle wood color variations visible compared to adding color to the finish.
Dan

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Thanks. The red dye is applied directly to the wood as you said. Then spray a couple of coats of shellac to seal it and then fill the grain with the dyed filler. Super easy to do. Heck, even an amateur like me can do it.

Got up early this morning and put on some color.

Nice!
For a minute, I thought you put a blue stripe down the back.
Should look great with lacquer!
Dan

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Nope. A blue stripe would be unique though.

I have got some more work done on this bass. I put two coats of dye on it to get the color I wanted. It's really red. Then I took it out and hung it up and sprayed the whole thing with shellac to seal it.




Then last night, I busted out the pore filler. I dyed it black and went to town making a big old mess. In the end, it came out looking like this.





I've got to sand it some more, then I'll seal the whole thing again with shellac. After that, it's on to the clear coats and watch the paint dry for a couple of weeks.

Thanks for looking everyone.

Very dramatic!

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

Thanks Chris.

The finish on this bass is done and I got it assembled last night and made the nut this morning. All that's left is the wiring and a setup. I'll get to that tomorrow night.

Unfortunately, the batteries in the camera are dead. I'll get that done tomorrow too.

Steve,
I really like the black filler. I'm surprised you were able to sand the filler without messing up the color layer.
I think I'll give that a try.
Looking great!
Dan

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That looks lovely! Finish will make that look even better!

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Mike

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