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First build - Gibson Grabber

Serek_Basses

Serek_Basses

Mar 26, 2009
545
243
Chicago, IL
www.serekbasses.com
#1
My recent fortune of starting as an intern at Lakland has given me the opportunity to build my first bass from scratch.

It will be a simple bolt-on following the design of the Gibson Grabber. Alder body, maple neck and I am hoping she will have a Darkstar when all is said and done.

I drew up templates using Corel and a resized image, making adjustments where necessary.

Here is a pic of the body template glued to 1/4" MDF.
2009-12-03163953.jpg


And the decent piece of alder I will use.
2009-12-03164505.jpg


And the blank after some band saw punishment.
2009-12-03175534.jpg


I will update as progress is made. Any suggestions or advice is very welcome. And does anyone know the standard thickness of a Grabber?
 
#11
For the template, I took an image of a g-3 that was as close to full front as I could find, then in Corel I drew lines at 0 (horizontal and vertical), 17 and 34 inches and resized the image to fit those lines. Trace in and smooth out the edges and you're pretty much there. The neck and body outlines are separate and I made adjustments to the neck for my preferred nut width and string spacing at the bridge. Nut width will be 1 5/8"

If I could work out a way to make the Darkstar slide, I don't think I could pass it up, otherwise it'll be in the range of a P pu position.
 
#12
Mad_Phingers said:
For the template, I took an image of a g-3 that was as close to full front as I could find, then in Corel I drew lines at 0 (horizontal and vertical), 17 and 34 inches and resized the image to fit those lines. Trace in and smooth out the edges and you're pretty much there. The neck and body outlines are separate and I made adjustments to the neck for my preferred nut width and string spacing at the bridge. Nut width will be 1 5/8"

If I could work out a way to make the Darkstar slide, I don't think I could pass it up, otherwise it'll be in the range of a P pu position.
Click to expand...

I've been wanting to learn this tecknique for some other bass shapes! Is there a tutorial somewhere for this?
 
#13
abarson said:
I've been wanting to learn this tecknique for some other bass shapes! Is there a tutorial somewhere for this?
Click to expand...

I am not sure, I kinda figured it out myself. I can give you a brief rundown:

Open Corel (I am using X4).
Click File > Import, and select the desired image.

Click View and make sure Show Grid, Show Rulers, and Show Guidlines are checked.

Now draw two lines using the Bezier tool. One on the Vertical 0 from about 8 inches above and below the horizontal 0. Then a Vertical line from about 6 inches the the left of the vertical 0 to 45 or so inches to the right. Also draw vertical lines at 17 and 34 inches. (change depending on the scale)

Then drag your image over and start resizing it till the nut and bridge line up as close as possible with the 0' and 34" vertical lines. (The larger the image from the start the better as it will get kind of pixelated. Make sure it is a full front image with as little of an angle, NO angle if possible)

Now that you have the image sized correctly, select it and Right click >>> Outline Trace >>> Detailed logo.

This will cut any background out and give you a rough image in the shape of the instrument. Now click Effects >>> Create Boundary.

You will now have 3 layers, the image, the logo, and the outline. The outline will not be perfect, but you can use the shaping tool to fix it up and smooth it out.

If anyone has an easier way to do this in Corel, let me know!

Hope this helps, sorry for the length.

Here is what my screen looks like when it is just about done:
Link Removed
 
#15
I ended up doing a frankenbass to it. Removed the huge pickguard, striped the black paint, inlayed a piece of goncolo alves, installed and moved the bridge to a 36" scale, removed the maple fb and put down a ebony fretless and finally replaced the pups with SD jazz pups. It was a massive improvement in the output and overall playability. That was about 25 years ago. I wish I had pics.
 
#17
Made some pretty good progress in the past few days. I got my scarf joint glued and fingerboard slotted yesterday. Took a lot of sanding to get that scarf joint just right.

And today I shaped up my fingerboard and leveled to the top surface of my neck, again, quite a bit of sanding.

Next is routing for the truss rod and gluing the fingerboard.

2009-12-08135748.jpg


2009-12-08162216.jpg


2009-12-09155508.jpg


2009-12-09155536.jpg
 

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