32" Scale, Headless LP Hack Together

[RBS_Johnson]

Hey all,

I am building what I consider a "proof of concept" bass. It is made with mostly spare parts and rough construction techniques, for the sole purpose of deciding whether or not I like few ideas. So here is my disclaimer that it will be rough and ugly. Those offended by damaged finish, raw wood, and extra holes should leave now

Ok, so I have had a pile of parts laying around for too long. At my house they eventually get turned into something(usually a bass). This one consists of an 80`s LP guitar body, which I think is mahogany, and most of 34" scale OLP musicman style neck. I took some inspiration from these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1982-Kramer...d-/331318127000?pt=Guitar&hash=item4d24196998

I trimmed the once five string neck down in width to an approximately standard size. It was already missing the frets, so I just used a wide wood chisel. I lopped off the headstock and the first fret(which takes it down to a 32.25" scale). This also makes all the dot inlays off by one fret. Playing with the body, I decided to take the neck down to where the neck pickup should have been. Opened up the pocket and mounted the neck. Drilled and chiseled my way to having a flat-ish recess for the tuners at the tail end of the body, and made a headpiece for the strings from an oddly shaped neck plate. Borrowed a bridge and strings from another parts bass and strung it up.

Tonight I am going to wire it up, simple volume/tone setup. I am borrowing a pickup from my Aria violin bass project. It just fits in a guitar humbucker slot, hopefully it is close enough to the right width to catch all the strings. The "bridge" pickup route is now more of a middle position, so I will be interested in seeing how it sounds. I plan on running down to Stew-Mac and getting some fret wire(they are 5 miles from my house). First try on that, fully expecting it to be terrible

Hopefully I can get it playing well enough to decide whether or not I like the 32" scale and the headless factor. I can say one thing for sure, I have a Les Paul bass with zero neck dive

-Jake

P.S. - My ipod has all the pictures of this guitar on it, and it crashed... I will try and get pictures up ASAP.

 

[RBS_Johnson]

Alright, I have to go work on my Honda, but I managed to get my pictures working first!

Don`t mind the messy house, the bear, or the fact that I am working inside....

 

[JiJ]

Clever way of going headless Might consider that for a project I'm thinking about

 

[RBS_Johnson]

Just do it a little cleaner than I did! And I didn`t think of it, Kramer thought it up before I was even born. I just "borrowed" the idea...

 

[RBS_Johnson]

Things didn`t go so well with the Honda, and I ended up not feeling like putting in any controls, so this bass is wired pickup->jack. Sounds pretty good though. I think a big part of that is the pickup. I ended up blacking the fretboard out, the wrong position markers were screwing with my already shaky fretless playing. Drew new side dots on in silver. I will see if that helps tomorrow, too much homework for tonight.

 

[eukatheude]

I'm considering doing this on a bass I'm restoring from scrap. Do you find yourself often hitting the pegs with your body while playing?

 

[RBS_Johnson]

I think because of the rounded back end of the body, versus the somewhat protected location on the Kramer I linked to, it would be possible to bump the bass out of tune. The heads of the tuners only stick out about an inch though, so if you hit them hard enough to knock it out of tune you would surely have nicked the end of a normal bass. As far as when I`m playing, it really isn`t much different from normal, just with NO weight on the neck end.

I just re-read your question, and realized I didn`t actually answer it. The tuners are mounted almost an inch from the back of the body, so even with the heads perpendicular to the top, they are still far enough up that I can`t accidentally hit them. I will try and get a picture from the back to illustrate what I mean.

 

[blindsagacity]

How did you get the guitar tuners to properly accept bass strings?
Are they harder to turn the tuners with the lower leverage?

 

[RBS_Johnson]

Well, I got lucky and these just barely fit(the E is in the taper of the string, the rest fit fine all the way).. Plan B was to drill out the holes. The tuners are harder to turn than standard bass tuners, but no more so than Danelectros or Hofners with the small tuners. I read somewhere that certain Schaller(?) bass tuners will accept guitar heads, which would be ideal I think. Overall it still isn`t terrible, I would enjoy the lower gearing more than extra leverage.

 

[ctmullins]

Yes, Schaller M4 bass tuners will accept Schaller M6 guitar buttons, as long as you also use the shorter screws of the M6 as well. I did that on my OctoBird.

I was also concerned about your tuner heads being vulnerable, but more because I have a habit of resting the guitar body on the floor and leaning it against the amp, a table, the wall, a drummer, etc.

 

[RBS_Johnson]

I knew I saw it somewhere on here! The pictures show better than I could tell you, but the tuners don`t stick out very far. I do, however, find myself resting this guitar leaning on things more often than my others, probably because it is a prototype and I am therefore less interested in keeping it nice. I think if I was going to use this setup on a gigging bass, I would affix two rubber amp feet to the bottom so it rested on those rather than on the tuners. Also possibly recessing the tuners upwards towards the bridge a bit more.

Side note: I decided on an arbitrary spacing for the tuning heads of 1" between each one, which is somewhat tight(about like a strat guitar that is in a weird position). The Kramers I stole borrowed the idea from have them farther apart, which would make tuning easier but increase the angle that the strings veer out after the bridge.

I need to get frets on this thing so I can actually assess the tuning stability/viability of the headless system for me.

-Jake