3 Wood Challenge: The Black Angel

[Praxist]

Well, I got free internet for one night here in the US so i get to start this thread! I'm pretty stoked about this, but I don't return from the conference until the 11th, so I still have to wait to get going.

This will be a six string 24 fret single cut I've been dreaming on for a year or so now. I have some of the wood and none of the parts so it will be uphill before i can make some progress on this baby. It will have an ebony fretboard, that much I'm sure of. The shape and dimensions are ready to go though and I'll post pics of the design when I'm back in Canada.

some specs:
34" scale
24 frets
6 strings
single cut
not sure on neck thru or set neck yet
passive electronics, but I might go active depending on what I can get my hands on

This will be a bass i plan to play metal on, hence the black angel cheeseball name of the bass. It will be black with black hardware.

stay tuned!

[reverendrally]

Awesome!

But you better put BLACK strings on it and play it with a BLACK pick....

[ronaldpdbrandt]

I was hoping you'd jump into this, Praxist. Can't wait to see it!

[Praxist]

So today I went to pick up some more of the lumber but I ran into a heavyness issue. I had not mentioned it before because I wanted to make sure I could source it before I started talking about it, but the wood I was planning on using is called Tubi. The sci name is Xanthostemon melanoxylon and it goes by a bunch of names. It's not ebony but its nearly jet black which pales out over time somewhat. The piece was stable and gorgeous and was just over six inches wide, six feet long and one inch thick, but it weighed about thirty pounds! I could easily heft a same size hunk of e. maple over my head with one hand but i could hardly lift the tubi.

I thought really hard about it and decided to hold off while I think more about it. I still have an ebony fretboard on the way and my bridge and tuners, so when they are on my desk I'll put up a picture. My three woods were going to be tubi, ebony and dyed maple but now i'm undecided again.

[ibateur]

You can do a chambered body to lighten the thing.

[ctmullins]

Just use a titanium truss rod.

Seriously, sounds like a problem, but - I'm quite sure the instrument itself won't be anywhere near six feet long. So you'll lose a bunch of that weight when you cut it down, in both length and width.

So what if it's a little heavy? Do it!

And yeah, chamber the body. Or cut holes in it, like the Gibson Holy Explorer!

[Praxist]

Thanks guys I appreciate the encouragement! but at the same time, I'm not sure if chambering it will be enough because this stuff is easily twice as heavy as swamp ash. I could barely lift the board with one hand while I could have thrown a cabrueva board across the shop one handed. This stuff is heavy. All that said though, I'm still thinking of using it, I'm just reimagining my current plan. Originally I wanted a five to seven laminate tubi neck with a tubi body and ebony fretboard to keep it all black as naturally as possible, but now I'm thinking there may be more maple in there than i originally thought but I may go in another direction still.

[Dave Higham]

I'd never heard of tubi, apparently also known as queen ebony, but one of the sites I googled says it's one of the heaviest woods known to man and that it's harder than ebony!

[Praxist]

Yup I just found another site that listed it as the 9th hardest and heaviest wood known and has a janka hardness of 4370 and a specific gravity of 1.231 which means the stuff sinks in water! Compare to lignum vitae with a janka of around 4500. I may just buy the board anyway because its way cheaper than ebony and its not going to be around forever. A mahogany maple ebony mix might be in my future instead dammit

[ctmullins]

What if you used a basswood core with tubi veneer?

Edit: by "veneer" I mean something around 1/8" thick, not true veneer.

[moonshinegtrs]

Whatever you decide, it will Rock. I'm looking forward to seeing what you came up with.

Moonshine.

[ronaldpdbrandt]

Originally Posted by ctmullins

What if you used a basswood core with tubi veneer?

Edit: by "veneer" I mean something around 1/8" thick, not true veneer.

He can't, in keeping with the 3-wood challenge, unless he loses the ebony or the maple. He could do a maple core, though.

[ctmullins]

Yeah, I'm thinking perhaps he could drop the ebony, use the tubi for the fingerboard, and add the basswood for weight reduction.

But it's easy to plan someone else's build, isn't it?

[Praxist]

I bought the tubi and its being resawed into some new configurations for me by the seller. I'm still really stuck this has practically stopped me in my tracks. I still have the ebony board on the way from lmii, because i needed it slotted and radiused for me. Now i'm thinking of going with something simple like mahogany and maple with the ebony neck because it is something I wanted to do anyway with another design i had.

I think i'll have to post up my designs and get some feedback from folks, but another option is to build with maple and tubi and use a maple/tubi laminated neck with thin tubi lams, and then a chambered maple body with tubi veneers on the front and back of it. I can have them resaw the tubi into some 1/8" thick pieces to veneer as caps on the body, then it would not be as deadly heavy and would have a black and white theme going.

in the meantime, i did get my hands on a new but old router. It's a 30 year old craftsman that the fellow used about half a dozen times when it was new and then developed arthritis, threw it in a box and just sold it to me last week. The quality is really nice!

[Praxist]

Well, it looks like the black angel is out the window for the time being. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the tubi, but I don't think I'll use it with this bass design. I'm still waiting on a few parts, despite it being nearly five weeks since my last post on this.

Looks like it will have an EMG and maybe two, but likely just one. Iv'e found in the last year of playing that I only rarely utilize one pickup or the other, mostly i blend in the middle and just use the tone controls. I've always wanted a bass with an EMG, but never had one, although I love my EMGs for guitar. I was also thinking bartolini, but the EMGs are easier to source and a bit cheaper.

A big boon happened yesterday when I went over to the woodshop to pick up a small piece of ebony, they had a huge bin of "discarded offcuts" marked .99 cents a pound. I took a massive pile of sugar maple that were cut 2x2 by 48 inches, absolutey perfect for making a bass. Got about 100 board feet for $50! Screamin deal man. :P I also scored a couple of big cherry boards, a slice of alder and a big hunk of "mahogany" thrown in. The guy didn't know what kind of mahogany, so I wont' know for sure, but its pretty pink in color. So now I have enough wood for about 10 instruments, and no more excuses!

Looks like the "black angel" is going to be a "mahogany/maple/ebony" angel and won't be black, I'll be leaving it natural. I might even order another fretboard because I'm not 100% on how the ebony will look with mahogany and maple.

Pics of tools, wood, designs and parts coming soon!

[ronaldpdbrandt]

Originally Posted by Praxist

A big boon happened yesterday when I went over to the woodshop to pick up a small piece of ebony, they had a huge bin of "discarded offcuts" marked .99 cents a pound. I took a massive pile of sugar maple that were cut 2x2 by 48 inches, absolutey perfect for making a bass. Got about 100 board feet for $50! Screamin deal man. :P I also scored a couple of big cherry boards, a slice of alder and a big hunk of "mahogany" thrown in. The guy didn't know what kind of mahogany, so I wont' know for sure, but its pretty pink in color. So now I have enough wood for about 10 instruments, and no more excuses!

What a score!

[Praxist]

You're so right Ron, it was a primo score! Here is an obligatory pic of a few select pieces:



On the left is a few straight pieces of sugar maple, and on hte right is a pile from top to bottom of: santos mahogany, sugar maple, sugar maple, american cherry and sugar maple. THe bottom piece of maple is going to be resawed into front and rear caps to this bass.

[Praxist]

The fellow also saved me a nice 4' piece of tigerwood flooring. There is about 3 1/8 x 5/8 of good wood there. Maybe a fingerboard and couple of thin laminates? He just threw it in. Funny that about two months ago, I was chatting him up at the woodshop and picking through their exotics and we got to talking about building guitars and ever since then, he's been saving me straight offcuts and flooring over 47" long, a lot of that recently got thrown into the supah deal I got. Here is a shot:

[Praxist]

Here is a shot of that router I mentioned. All of the dust you see here is my own the router was perfectly clean and scrathc free when I got it.


More pics o fthis actual build, my design and wood is coming!

[Praxist]

So enough waiting here is the wood being used on this bass: sugar maple and santos mahogany (another dude at the shop knew what kind of "mahogany" it was)

pre-sawing:


The big slab of maple at the bottom is being resawn this week into 1/4" bookmatched tops and backs. It has some mild flame to it. THe two slabs of mahogany will form the body core.

Since I'm using a differnent design from my black angel, there are different specs too.

Maple, Mahogany and Pau Ferro Bass.
6 String, neck thru, 32" scale
2 piece bookmatched maple cap and back (will cover laminates of neck) 1/4" thick
black Allparts bridge with 16mm spacing (i know i really like tight spacing as I play with a pick and also play guitar)

neck: 5 piece laminated (2 x 1/4"mahogany stringers, 2 x 3/4" maple stringers, 1 x 1 1/16" maple stringer)
pau ferro 32" fretboard with 20" radius and 24 frets
no neck markers
black gotoh tuners
black tusq nut
medium jumbo frets

body: 3/4" mahogany core, chambered to 1"
single cutaway at 11th fret
bookmatched 1/4" top and cap of mildly flamed sugar maple

electronics:
single EMG 45TW 6 string in custom pickup cover

Finish:
handrubbed clear gloss polyurethane