4 string fretless first build

[4FretlessMetal]

Hi guys, this bass has been an adventure for me. It was of course this forum that inspired me to do this in the first place. At the end of my long winded story there are pics of the finished product. Sorry I don't have pics of the process but I didn't have the means to take uploadable pictures until recently. (Pics in second post I promise)

So this story begins two years ago when I had just graduated college, I was working part time as a research assistant at Princeton and I had a bit of spare time on my hands. I had previously put together a bass from warmoth, pics of it are somewhere on TB, I also wound my own pickups with that guitar, a set of Neo air coils. However I wasn't really happy with that guitar, it didn't really give me the sound I wanted and it was a boat anchor at 14lbs (wenge, ebony, rosewood... go figure).

I wanted something different, something light, ergonomic, and of my own design. I began toying with body shapes mapping them up in CAD. By this time I found I had gotten into a graduate program in Virginia so I really wanted to complete this thing before I was swamped with all things grad school. That gave me the summer to build this guitar. I decided to do a poplar body, and a birch neck and fingerboard. The bass would be a headless with a B.C. Rich inspired body, or so I thought. In then end I started buying and cutting up wood, almost lost a finger one day becuse I'm an idiot, that was fun. Yet in the end I ran out of time and made some bonehead mistakes with the neck and the bass was just not gonna happen. So I went off to grad school and put my dream bass on the backburner.

Fast forward a year and a half. I'm here in Virginia, and weirdly found three other students to play with. All this making me want to finish that bass I had in my head. The one day I'm hit with a bomb shell. At this time my wife hadn't been feeling well, and a few weeks ago she was operated on for two ovarian cysts, needless to say I was a little stressed. Oh and did I mention she was still living in New Jersey at the time completing her Ph.D, not fun times. So it’s Thursday, my wife is calling me to give me an update on the doctors’ appointment she went to yesterday. All she says to me is, “I’m Pregnant”! Now my wife God I love her has an odd sense of humor. Specifically she likes to fib about things that are totally inappropriate to fib about. So my first response is “are you joking”. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that didn’t go over well, something else to know about my wife is she’s a crier. She cry’s at sad movies, happy movies, whenever she’s a little upset or a little happy, so she is par for the course and starts crying. This is when I know that she isn’t joking. I’m feeling that whole river of crazy emotions, we didn’t plan for this but we wanted children and I always wanted to be a relatively young (25) father. So we were happy. P.S. it’s gonna be a girl.

This craziness made me realize I’ve got to finish this bass within the next 9 months or it’s never gonna happen. I start revamping the whole way I thought about the guitar. I wanted to simplify, think about how I could go about the process and make it dummy proof. To make things a little harder the only tools I had access to were a circular saw, a hand drill, some rasps, some chisels, and sand paper. To make all this work I ended up making a very simple yet effective bass. I won’t attempt to describe it here I’ll let the pics at the end do that but I will give you some specs. The body was made from a 48”x2”x6” board of really nice rift sawn douglas fir. I used a hip shot headless system with a bridge spacing of .66 (small hands ). For strings I used La Bella double ball nylon tape wounds. I used some neat Dunlop flush mounting straplocks (not entirely flush, just the pin). I put one alumitone bass bar in a position similar to that of an MM pickup (these have huge bottom IMO). The neck (please no flames…) has no truss rod and has a trapezoid profile (Toone basses) however this neck is also 1.5” thick throughout and doesn’t taper as it nears the headstock. This was done on purpose for strength and ergonomics I promise. Based on my calculations this neck should deflect a quarter as much as a standard maple neck (sans truss rod) given the same amount of force. Since this is a fretless I marked out the positions and did it in a weird way. Every position was given a dot, 3rd and 7th frets were given two dots, 5th and 10th position were given three dots, and octaves were given lines. Furthermore the markers were made with a sodering iron. The finish is three coats of minwax wipe-on poly (liked this a lot). I did some other odd things but those are visible in the pics.

So to make this long story short my baby girl and this forum inspired me and lit a fire under my ass to make this neat bass. Hope you guys enjoy and just wanted to say thanks again to all the real builders that inspired me. (P.S.S bass weighs 4.8 lbs with a 34in scale.)

[4FretlessMetal]

[4FretlessMetal]

[4FretlessMetal]

[4FretlessMetal]

[Hopkins]

I prefer a thick neck, but wow

[4FretlessMetal]

I promise it's actually really comfortable, if you play with your thumb on the neck, a neck this thick actually increases your range of motion a little.

I've also had a few guitarists try it, they were skeptical at first too. Both enjoyed it, one even said this was the only bass he's ever been able to play comfortably.

[pilotjones]

That is a strange, but very cool, almost machine/industrial-age design. I like it. It says what it's got to say, and gets out of the way.


Why did you mark the 10th and 22nd positions instead of the 9th and 21st?

[4FretlessMetal]

for me the 10th and 22nd markers bring the system together more, as they are references to open strings or the octaves of open strings. It's not better for everyone but it just makes identification a little quicker for me

[grisezd]

Wow. I really like the simplicity of it. Burning the markers in as the only "mark" on the bass is really clever. Nice work.

Good luck with the baby and school and, well, that's enough!

[Foamy]

Originally Posted by 4FretlessMetal

for me the 10th and 22nd markers bring the system together more, as they are refernces to open strings or the octaves of open strings. It's not better for everyone but it just makes identification a little quicker for me

Really??
Typo perhaps?

[Stealth]

Wow. This is really unique, and in a good way. I really like the looks of it - how's it play?

[eightyearsapril]

That's incredible!

[4FretlessMetal]

Stealth,
I can't compare it to many other basses but for me it's just very fast and very comfortable. I can practice for longer with this bass than the old one I was using. That being said there is really no comfortable way to play it sitting. The balance point is ahead of the 22nd fret and the lower cutaway is at the 24th fret. Someday I may try and figure out a cello like system so I can play it seated.

[4FretlessMetal]

Originally Posted by grisezd

Good luck with the baby and school and, well, that's enough!

Thanks for the good luck wishes, life is about to get real interesting.

[ctmullins]

Holy cow! Great story - you'd better find some way to hold on to your sanity, brother, but it sounds like you have a lot to be thankful for!

And fantastic bass! I love love LOVE out-of-the-box thinking like this. I get pretty bored around here sometimes, with all of the "1960 Jazz replica build" or "What's this Fender neck worth" or relic this or vintage that stuff. So a build like yours is truly a breath of fresh air, and I find it very inspiring to perhaps try one of my own - not a copy, of course, but as a starting point for brainstorming.

Kudos!

[BassZilla5]

Originally Posted by ctmullins

Holy cow! Great story - you'd better find some way to hold on to your sanity, brother, but it sounds like you have a lot to be thankful for!

And fantastic bass! I love love LOVE out-of-the-box thinking like this. I get pretty bored around here sometimes, with all of the "1960 Jazz replica build" or "What's this Fender neck worth" or relic this or vintage that stuff. So a build like yours is truly a breath of fresh air, and I find it very inspiring to perhaps try one of my own - not a copy, of course, but as a starting point for brainstorming.

Kudos!

THIS!

I also love that it fits in a $20.00 rifle case... Very ...

[leitmo]

Awesome!!!!

We want some clips!!!

Congrats for your "creations"

[T-34]

I like it!

[Swampman Cory]

Whoa, that is bizarre. I love it!