A while ago I posted some stuff about building a six string fan fret bass and here we go! I have also been curious about all the "wood effects tone" discussions revolving around electric instruments. So I will also be building one light weight four string with a spruce neck through, curly redwood body and a "to be determined" top and another more standard material curly maple through neck with ash body and a super rare idunnowhatitis burl top. All will have cocobolo fret boards and exactly the same pickups, pre-amps etc. Then I can make at least one 1-1 comparison to see how much of a difference there is.
So, here are the three necks to start. I usually don't taper the necks until after the truss rod has been routed so I have a parallel edge to work from, but this time I was kind of tight on material and couldn't afford to do that with the two spruce necks. The four string spruce is in the center and has the truss rod and two carbon fiber rods on it. The Maple neck is to the left with the clear plexiglass neck template on it and the one on the right is for the six string with it's template on it.
The hot rod truss rods that I get from Stew Mac are slightly less than 1/4" wide. To accommodate this I took a 1/4" core box bit (round nose) with a single flute and ground it to size by "eyeball". Note, this was not a carbide bit! Worked like a charm.
The maple neck could be routed with a simple fence attached to the base of the router, but the tapered necks needed a little more effort. I cut a straight edge that I could screw and clamp to the neck in an appropriate location so that the collar could ride on it. I used screws in areas that were to be cut off or covered later.
Then I tapered the Maple neck and routed two channels for carbon rods in each using a fence clamped to the router base and a 1/8" down spiral bit.
Now, making a straight scarf is fairly straight forward with a typical neck, but lot's of variables come into play when you have an angled nut with a fan fret. I feel it is necessary to have a similar break angle across all of the strings across the nut and as such it requires a compound angle on the peg head. So this is what I came up with.
The saw left a good but rough cut so I used a good sharp plane to clean it up before joining it to the neck.
Rather than try and duplicate the angle on the neck and try to align it perfectly I opted to dry clamp it where I wanted it and then drilled and inserted bamboo skewers as locating dowels prior to glue up. These won't be seen even if I did drill all the way through because I plan on veneering both the front and back of this peg head.
Then cut off and plane close to shape. I didn't take this all the way down yet since I still have to install the carbon fiber and the filler pieces at each side of the neck.
Then it's clamp in the carbon fiber. I use rods from Dragon Plate. Good folks and great product. The aluminum bar is a left over from an old Rockwell Unifence. Very straight and stiff to hold things flat as I clamp them up.
I tried something new this time. I typically glue these in with epoxy, but that leaves a mess and if you don't get the amount just right you can have even bigger problems. This time I used a slow set CA gel. It was soooo easy to apply and had good open time. No mess to clean up except a very tiny squeeze out at the end that cleaned up easily with acetone.
Now, those are photos from the last week or so of work. Don't go expecting me to go gangbusters like some people do around here.
All questions are welcome. If I can answer them or not.
Greg N
