The diary of a procrastinators first DIY Bass

[DanSwain]

Dear all,

As you might have seen, I made a couple of enquiries regarding a 34" scale 6-string, flat-necked Bass. Being a lefty, my choice of instruments is quite limited, especially a choice of the instruments that I want!

So, I thought I'd have a go at making something, an idea backed up by my fiancee as 'making use of the time before your visa comes through'. Can't argue with that!

What I'm going to do is have a word with David Dyke, as recommended by Alan from ACG, to make me a neck blank, and possibly a pre-slotted fingerboard so that the 'precision' work is already done when I come to make a pile of wood shavings!

I've decided on having a fairly wide string spacing this time (18mm at the bridge, 9mm at the nut), as the 6-string Bass I have already doesn't have that, and at times it feels quite 'closed' when it comes to playing certain techniques. My hands are fairly large, so I can't see having any problems with it.

Here's an 'artist's impression' that I've been agonising over for the main part of this last week:



I'm thinking of having a 5-piece laminate neck (this will be a neck-through Bass), with the main parts being Maple, but with two strips of Ebony sandwiched between the outsides and the centre piece. Then, I'm going to have a single truss rod down the centre, and if the design requires is, epoxy two carbon fibre rods that taper with the neck. There's a possibility of me travelling around with it, so I'm considering the stiffness so I don't get off a plane somewhere to find the neck resembling a helter-sketler...

So, that's the neck. The body, I'm not sure about. I keep hearing Basses made with Basswood, and I love the deep sound that comes off them!

As for the colouring, I was thinking of staining the wood Blue, apart from the centre strip to leave as an accent, and then put layer on layer of varnish to get a nice smooth and shiny finish.

Electronics and hardware are what I've really thought the least about so far. I was thinking of maybe having a double-coil pickup for the bridge area to get all of the harmonics, but get that Musicman fatness as well. Then, have a single pickup nearer the neck for the times I want to shift into more of a slap tone.

I've never had an active Bass, so would I lose much if I stuck to keeping things passive? I know that without the active electronics the signals can't be boosted, but I can most likely do that at the amp stage.

The drawing above is more of a representational drawing, so details that would be on the neck have been omitted. I like having a blank fingerboard though, with markers on the side...from my own personal experience I find that it stops me from 'leaning over' the Bass when I'm playing it, so I end up with a better posture.

So, here ends the first post. Comments and suggestions are definitely welcome, and will be duly noted and appreciated!

I don't have that many tools myself (aside from a circular saw, router, jigsaw, drill, and hand planers, along with the usual sandpaper and so on), so it might take quite a while, but I hope to gain a lot of experience working with wood that way.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

Kind regards,

Dan

[DanSwain]

OK, I think I'm now fully decided on the wood I'm going to get for this instrument. I've got time off from work tomorrow morning to give David Dyke a call, and see if I can get all of the wood I need ordered!

I changed my mind about using Ebony stripes, and have plumped for Padauk (or is that Paduak?), because the cost offset allows me to buy the body blanks I'll need for the wings.

Apart from that, the choice of wood pretty much stays the same, although I don't think I can get a complete wing of Basswood (I think David combines it with Poplar, but he'll know best).

I've started having a look at the hardware side of things now, namely the tuners and bridge. The Hipshot bridges look quite nice, and either those or the Gotoh tuners in black look great too.

Again, if anyone has any comments or suggestions, please let me know. I'm now going to scour this forum and the world of Google for most of the evening

[NickInMesa]

Is this your first build at all or your first build from scratch?

I am going through steps.

First a kit build, then a table body for an existing neck (probably around a cheap neck from eBay or CL), then finally try building a neck, most certainly a fretless, which will probably take some time.

See it as a challenge and go step by step.

[DanSwain]

This will actually be the first Electric Bass that I'll have made. I don't know if I can really say that I'm doing it from scratch though, because I'm not actually going to be creating the laminated neck and body blanks/wings, I'll just be carving it, and gluing everything else to it

I wanted to do a bit of a step up from the woodwork I've done over the past couple of years, namely of which have been speaker cabinets designed by Bill Fitzmaurice. Granted, using soft woods and MDF are a complete pain, but I really like taking that time with wood, making sure that it feels right.

It's kind of what I did with the above design, which originally started on a piece of graph paper. The curves that I used were only ones that I could comfortably draw, so I'm going to take that premise and (hopefully) apply it to the real thing when all of the bits come

It's also great to be on this forum, surrounded by some of the luthiers that I've looked at Basses made by, and only been able to think 'wow, amazing!'. There are so many cool tips and techniques here it's very hard to actually ask a question, because the answers are already there, and then some!

[jordan_frerichs]

if you have the tools, the skills, the know how, and the confidence, go for it. if you go for fretted, buy a pre slotted board, and have someone assist you. it can be hard to find local builders, but they can save your project. are the wings going to be blue? i am nut sure it would look right, but it is a pretty basic rendering, so i am not seeing the full picture.

[DanSwain]

Thanks for your response Jordan! I'm definitely going down the pre-slotted fingerboard route for this Bass, because that and the gluing of the neck laminates is a place where mistakes can't really be tolerated. Fortunately, David offers a service to pre-slot the fingerboards when you order them, so I can kill two birds with one stone!

Yes, the colour on the drawing doesn't look that great, it's a bit of a 'neon' finish that's for sure! My initial idea is to stain the wings a light blue, along with the outer parts of the neck section that is within the body itself. I'd really like to bring out the grain and the character of the wood, but not too much (the almost black grain lines aren't what I'm really looking for).

I'm going to have a look around the shops to find something suitable - not too bright, but far enough away from dark so that the end result doesn't have a muddy look to it.

[DanSwain]

Ok, I managed to get in touch with David this morning. He's really busy of late, which, considering the economic problems everywhere is good news!

So, apart from the already mentioned change in Ebony to Padauk for the hardwood strips, I've gone with a Birds-eye Maple fingerboard, and Poplar body blanks, based on David's recommendations. As I mentioned, he is going to pre-slot the fingerboard for me, and one of his colleagues is going to make up the neck blank for me as well. The wood should arrive at some point next week!

While that is now pending, I've started digging around for neck hardware. Apologies for asking this if it's already been answered in the forums (I must have missed it), but can anyone recommend a good supplier for truss rods and carbon fibre reinforcement rods over here in the UK?

[DanSwain]

Further to the previous post, I've been Googling around, and found this supplier of Carbon Fibre rods in the UK:

http://www.fibretechgb.co.uk/Rods.htm

For re-inforcing a Bass neck, can anyone recommend a particular dimension and length of rod? For some reason I've got a 1/8" diameter in my head, but that may be too small...

As mentioned, I'm going to use a 34" scale length, so to cover the 24 fret length I'd imagine I'd need two 25.5" rods. Would this be correct?

[Rickett Customs]

Just remember, if you do a much wider spacing, than you are accustom to, you will experience fatigue in your hands for a while, no matter how big they are.

Doing 2 truss rods on a wider neck is a really good idea, due to the wide area you'll be dealing with, may move well on some parts of the neck, maybe not so much on others.

Also, try to gett all your necessary hardware, etc, before getting too far into it. It really helps a lot (I learned the hard way).

Lastly, you might want to pick up a guitar building book, never hurts to get started with some insight. (look up either Melvyn Hiscock or Martin Koch).

[DanSwain]

Thanks for your response Jason, some useful memory joggers there!

The reason I want to go with a single truss rod is that I've seen quite a few 6-string Basses out there now with them, and that adjusting the two on mine can be a pain at times as I always worry about twisting it.

I found a bit of reassurance in Jared Carpenter's response on a previous thread I started (Fretted Bass with no radius) that said:

I think (depending on the wood choice) that 1 truss rod is plenty for a 6 string. As far as thickness, just make it slightly (1/8"-3/16" or so) thicker than the truss rod depth. IMO graphite rods aren't needed, my necks are plenty stable as they are.

I've spoken to a couple of friends around here as well, one of them being involved in making my other Basses, and they said they couldn't see a problem with having just one truss rod, as long as the neck is stiff enough. At the time I was thinking of using Ebony inserts, but now I'm going with Padauk I'll probably have to compensate with the carbon fibre rods. Plus, it's something that sounds quite cool, so I'd like to try it out

As for most of the hardware, I'm still digging around. Hipshot and Gotoh appear to have the bridge I'd like, as well as the tuners. I haven't really found anything yet on pre-made nuts, so in the end I may make that myself.

I've been really taken by the Q-tuner pickups, as discussed in this thread. Given that their lead time is about 4 weeks at the moment, I'll have to order them soon, so that they appear close to the time when they're needed for putting on the Bass.

I was fascinated by scottyd's thread on Fibre Optic markers, and given the very useful tutorial he did and the relative simplicity of the idea, I think I'll give that a try too. I hope to rid (or at least minimise) myself of the times at a gig where I'm under a funny light where you have to more than glance at the neck to see where your fingers are!

[DanSwain]

Right, time for a quick update!

I've ordered two of the CF rods and a Martin style truss rod, along with 4 knobs from Stewart-Macdonald.

I've also ordered the Hipshot A style Bass bridge (0.708" spacing), a blank nut and 6 Gotoh tuners from Basspartsdirect. Yesterday was an expensive day!

After talking a bit on this thread about the Q-Tuner pickups, I've started to move away from that original plan. SGD has been very helpful, and I'm quite impressed by the pickups that he's making, especially for the type of application that I'm looking for (I feel the Q-Tuners may be overkill, and a lot of their qualities would never get used).

I've converted a room that I use to keep my music gear in into a small 'wood shop' for this project, and have been making a couple of jigs for the router (a thicknesser, and probably one for roughing out the neck carving like this).

I'm now at a stage where I'm really looking forward to the wood arriving, the tension is almost too much! Still, I can use some time looking for a suitable wood stain, and varnish/coating.

[DanSwain]

Sorry for the delay in updating this thread. I've been meaning to get some time where I could post about my 'arrivals' this week, but it's been one of those where everything gets interrupted by everything else

The CF rods and truss rod arrived from Stewart-Macdonald on Wednesday, then the wood on Thursday, and finally the hardware from Bassresource.com on Friday (yesterday).

Here it is. The Padauk has a lovely Orange colour to it:



So I began with marking out the taper of the neck, and then creating two channels for the CF rods about 1/2" in from the outsides of the neck's edge. I used a plasterer's feather edge as a straight edge to guide the router, and two clamps at each end of the run so that I didn't overshoot:



I had some minor slippage on my first channel, but it's not too bad, and I hope the epoxy fills the gaps in!



Here's the truss rod complete as well:



Apart from that, that's all I managed to get done in the few hours I had this evening. At least I've got all of Sunday to get stuck in, and I've booked Tuesday and Wednesday off work too

I've been trying to print out templates for the body wings that I'm making, but I can't seem to find anything that will actually span multiple pages properly. I get a lot of programs 'exporting' the image to PDF, which then just sizes it to A4. If I find a good solution I'll post it here!

[DanSwain]

I've managed to get a little bit more done today. After hours of grappling with software that refused to print the templates properly, I gave in and went back to the trusty old pencil (note my mother here for a second opinion, and a right-handed perspective!):



I then attacked the body blanks with my jigsaw, roughly cutting around the curves. This is what I ended up with:



Creating the top angle for the headstock. I clamped the neck into the end of the workbench at the angle I wanted, and then used the router bolted to a thicknessing sled I'd made to shave off the excess wood. I had a couple of problems with a router bit breaking, and its replacement not being long enough, but I got there in the end. The front face definitely needs planing down though!



I spent the last couple of hours this evening cutting the neck taper with my jigsaw, which wasn't nearly powerful enough, and the general purpose blade caused this process to take some time. I used a straight-edge guide like with the routing of the CF rods, so even though they're rough, the lines are pretty clean!

With the body blanks, it's starting to look a bit like an instrument:



I haven't had chance to look around for any, but can anyone suggest where I can get some optic fibre for the side marker inlays? All I've found so far is a 20m reel, and I definitely don't need that much!

I'm going to let the dust settle (literally) for a day now, so I'll get back onto working on this Bass fully on Tuesday and Wednesday. That's not to say I won't get tempted into doing something tomorrow night!

[Ol'Bass'ead]

Looks good! Keep up the good work. Just out of curiosity, whats up with the upper horn?

[DanSwain]

Thanks Ol'Bass'ead The upper horn isn't going to have a flat edge in the end - it'll be rounded off I promise! I just didn't draw it on so I could see how the shaping goes to dictate how that bit actually looks.

I've got a few ideas for the shape of the upper horn...whether to keep it straight, or have it curve back towards the body a little, like on the Ibanez BTB Basses. It's kind of been one of the annoying aesthetic choices, because I'm trying to find something that practically matches the lower horn...

[DanSwain]

Today feels like it's been a frustrating one. This morning I epoxied in the CF rods, and started doing a bit of rasping on the body wings while that was setting:



I was surprised by how easy the epoxy was to work. I thought with the stuff I got (the builder's stuff) it would be thick and wouldn't set in the channels, but fortunately for me it was easy to manipulate.

The rest of the day was spent taking a lot of wood off the back of the neck. I used the old 'thicknessing sled' method, seeing as I didn't have a jigsaw big enough, or a bandsaw (I see why most of the luthiers have a least one now!):



I've been researching on the net, and for final thicknesses I'll go with 22mm for the 1st fret, and 25mm at the 12th.

I hate to think how long it's going to take to shape the neck tomorrow, and I only hope that my patience holds out. What I've been doing when something's ticked me off is to go and work on another element of the Bass and then come back later. What keeps me going is realising what I've spent on all of this so far, so getting mad and making a mistake now would be an expensive waste!

Like I said in a previous post, cutting the neck taper with the jigsaw was tough, and so on my 'bad' side (using my right hand rather than my left), I left a bit of excess wood. That's fine, but it did mean I had to spend another hour or so planing and sanding the edge flush with what it should be:



Fortunately I had the idea to use my straight-edge as a reference, and so I concentrated on making the front edge line up with that. It worked quite well, and the wood behind it will be cut away anyway, so that didn't really need to be altered.

One other thing to note is that when I got the wood, it had curved slightly to one side. I had a brief moment of panic after finishing the side of the neck where I thought it had bowed whilst I had been working on it, but then I remembered questioning the 'straightness' of the steel rule I used to measure out the scale length. I checked again, and everything is straight apart from this very slight ) shape, so all of the channels I've cut are still straight and good. Phew!

[DanSwain]

Ok, so today felt a lot better than yesterday, although I'm not sure if I've been more productive or not!

This morning I shaved some more off the back of the neck. Using the workbench, I used the edge guide for the router as a slider in between the jaws of the bench. The MDF on the right is used as a 'shelf' for one of the pillars, so the router stays perpendicular. This helped somewhat, but not as much as I'd hoped!



The next step was then to start shaping the back of the neck, a step in the process I'd not been particularly looking forward to, because everything had been slow up until this point. However slow it was, it was an enjoyable experience, slowly curving and levelling the neck out. I started with a profile at the positions of the 1st and 12th frets, and joined them together. The tools I used for this were flat and half-round rasps, an old surform plane, and a cheap plane from my Dad's inventory of accumulated hand tools.

The Padauk lines were very useful in assessing the curves that I had made, and so by sight it was quite easy to pick out inconsistencies and make adjustments.



The final task for today was the headstock. Rather than doing the whole thicknessing thing all over again, I decided to go for a simpler approach - sawing the back off the headstock parallel to the angled face I'd already created. It was slow-going, but in the end I got there!



I then attacked the block of wood with my jigsaw, following a hand-drawn set of construction lines that related to the headstock in my design. I was glad that the jigsaw actually managed this minute amount of cutting, as it saved me a lot of work rasping, filing and so on.

The headstock is about an inch thick at the moment, so I'll have to take some of that off before it's ready to put tuners on. I purposefully kept a large amount of wood around the scarf area, so I could shape that into the neck. I hadn't really decided on this detail, so the result I came up with just happened!

Front:

Left:

Right:

Back:

Close-up of neck profile:


I probably won't get a chance to work on the Bass again until Saturday, so I've clamped it to the big straight-edge so it'll remain straight as it 'relaxes' for a couple of days.

Just out of interest, but is there a kind of recommended string clearance from the frets? I'm probably going to be playing fingered and slap on this, and I've followed a couple of threads here, but still am a little unsure.

Thanks to everyone taking the time to read this thread - sorry about the number of pictures, but I hope that my experiences are of some use to someone!

[lespaulmarshall]

Hey mate she's looking awesome, assuming he's a she haha.

Keep up the procrastination

[DanSwain]

Thanks lespaulmarshall Yes, it is a she! I know this might sound a bit sappy, but this Bass will partly represent my fiancee, as she gave me the inspiration to take all of the good ideas in these forums, and get started on my own, so when I go out to gigs, I'll have a part of her with me

[S Sanders]

I must say that I'm finding your diary of this process fascinating. I've always thought it would be great to build my own instrument, but I'm more than a bit clueless about (and even more intimidated by) the process.

Thanks for this thread. Subscribed.