5 string buckeye burl/mahogany neck through

[lbridenstine]

This will be pretty similar to the buckeye burl bass I made last year, but with several changes/upgrades.
It's also going to be my first official commissioned build. My customer's name is Evan and I guess he liked my bass because he asked me to make him a similar one.

Before you read the specs, let me preface it by saying that this bass will be flashy and I know that there will be a lot of elements competing for the eye's attention. That's how he wants it.

So, here are the specs:

-5 string
-35" scale
-24 frets
-Neck through
-String through

Wood-
-Buckeye burl (top)
-African mahogany (body/headstock)
-Maple/makore (neck)
-East Indian Rosewood (fretboard)

Electronics-
-Bartolini 59JI pickup set
-Bartolini HR 5.4AP/918 preamp/EQ harness

Hardware-
-Hipshot FM3 A-style brass bridge (gold)
-Gotoh tuners (gold)
-Gold/abalone knobs
-Gold electrosocket jack cup
-Gold Loxx straplocks
-Gold evo jumbo frets
-Tusq nut

Inlay-
-Paua abalone inlays (fretboard and headstock)
-Crushed turquoise filling the bark pockets

The mahogany is really nice and pretty big. It's wide enough to comfortably fit the body shape in, but it's 7/8" thick, so I'll have to glue two pieces together for the thickness (and then thin it down a bit).

Here are the pickups and harness.

I started cutting the wood today.

These need to be leveled before I can glue them together.

The makore veneer is going to be stripes in the neck between the maple laminates. I think it matches the mahogany really well.

This is the layout we decided on for the burl. He asked that I cut out the mahogany to match that bark pocket area at the end and leave the bark, which I think will be pretty awesome.

I only made minor changes to the body shape from my bass. I offset the two sides more and added the little scroll or whatever you would call it to the the upper horn.

Here's mine for reference.

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And here's some naphtha on the burl.

I don't have any of the hardware, the neck, fretboard, etc. yet, so this is probably going to start off slow, but once I get everything else, I'll start working on this pretty frequently.

 

[gmjhowe]

Good start. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Bisounourse]

I always enjoy watching your builds. Subbed.

 

[El Spearo]

that burl looks awesome. subbed

 

[Geoff St. Germaine]

That's a great piece of buckeye and I really like the tweaks you've made to your body shape.

 

[Manton Customs]

Congratulations on your first commission! . I imagine that tail/bark pocket will look a bit like this 7 string I did a while back when finished? Included a picture of it in case it can help with the design process at all.

 

[lbridenstine]

Good start. Thanks for sharing.

I always enjoy watching your builds. Subbed.

that burl looks awesome. subbed

That's a great piece of buckeye and I really like the tweaks you've made to your body shape.

Congratulations on your first commission! . I imagine that tail/bark pocket will look a bit like this 7 string I did a while back when finished? Included a picture of it in case it can help with the design process at all.

Thanks guys!
Manton, yeah I think it will be similar to that. There were about 6 options I showed him and all of the rest had the buckeye solidly covering the whole shape, but this option just looked much more appealing to both of us than the others. I think the bark edge will end up being a nice feature.

 

[tbrannon]

I really like the burl and the layout you've chosen. Also like the modifications to the body style- I like the original just as much, but think the tweaks will suit this top wood better.

Not sure I'd personally choose the turquoise in the voids, but I am curious to see how it turns out.

 

[pedrodelawasp]

Soooooooo pretty

 

[Jonny5bass]

Congrats on your first commissioned build! Where did you find that burl top? It's gorgeous and I can't seem to find any. I am bad at internetting though...

 

[mapleglo]

That burl top is spectacular! The pattern is beautiful. That may be the nicest burl top I've ever seen. I'm looking forward to seeing this come together!

 

[lbridenstine]

I really like the burl and the layout you've chosen. Also like the modifications to the body style- I like the original just as much, but think the tweaks will suit this top wood better.

Not sure I'd personally choose the turquoise in the voids, but I am curious to see how it turns out.

Soooooooo pretty

Congrats on your first commissioned build! Where did you find that burl top? It's gorgeous and I can't seem to find any. I am bad at internetting though...

That burl top is spectacular! The pattern is beautiful. That may be the nicest burl top I've ever seen. I'm looking forward to seeing this come together!

Thanks everyone. The burl is from cookwoods.com they have a lot of buckeye burl, but they're not all fit for tops. I got the one for mine from them too though and I'm happy with both.

 

[lbridenstine]

Since I don't have a planer, I've tried some different methods of planing wood. I didn't feel like using the router sled for this since the wood was pretty close to flat anyway. I started with a hand plane, then I was looking for something flat that I could tape some 80 grit sandpaper to and I ended up sticking it to the bottom of my fret slotting jig, which is screwed on to two 1/2" pieces of mdf. So I taped it to the mdf and the whole thing was an inch or two wider than the mahogany, so it worked really nicely to get the whole width all at once while I sanded the length. The weight from the fret slotting jig helped too, so I'll probably end up using that again. Weird, but it worked.

I glued the 2 layers of mahogany together. I used way too much glue on accident. I'll probably wait and get a picture after I cut out the body shape, which will be my next step, along with getting the burl joined.

 

[LakeEffect]

I really dig your body style, looks like it would balance very comfortably sitting or standing, great job with it!

 

[Smilodon]

Contrats on the commission. You sure seem to keep busy.

It'll be interesting to see how this one will turn out. Especially with the gold hardware. There is a thin like between looking fantastic and being tacky when using gold. (I do have a slight weak spot for gold HW, though... It looks really good when done right)

The same goes for turquoise. It does usually look good on light colored woods, so I think it will work.

 

[lbridenstine]

I really dig your body style, looks like it would balance very comfortably sitting or standing, great job with it!

Thank you. I know mine is really comfortable, so I think this one will be too, since it's only slightly different. It might even be a little better.

Contrats on the commission. You sure seem to keep busy.

It'll be interesting to see how this one will turn out. Especially with the gold hardware. There is a thin like between looking fantastic and being tacky when using gold. (I do have a slight weak spot for gold HW, though... It looks really good when done right)

The same goes for turquoise. It does usually look good on light colored woods, so I think it will work.

Thank you. Yeah, I still have other projects I need to finish too... which I was hoping to do before starting this, but I only finished a couple.

Yeah, I know what you mean, I only like gold hardware sometimes, but when it works I really like it. I don't particularly like it on any painted color except white. I do really like it on black walnut. I looked up some pictures of buckeye burl basses with gold hardware and I think they mostly looked good, so I'm hoping this will too. It looks like the bridge and knobs will be over the mostly blue area, which seems like it'd be better than it being over the yellow parts at least. I'm not sure about the headstock veneer yet. And the opposite with the turquoise, most of the voids are in the yellow, so the turquoise should show up really good, I'm hoping that will look good too. I think the voids forming a pattern like they do will probably help make it interesting. It looks like most of the voids will go away with the bridge, pickups, and fretboard anyway.

 

[lbridenstine]

While I'm thinking of it, what color of grain filler do you guys prefer on mahogany? Mahogany, medium brown rosewood, or reddish brown rosewood?

 

[Jonny5bass]

I wish I knew enough to answer your question but I have a question/request. I'm in the process of designing a router sled to level some pieces and was wondering how you did yours. It's probably a simple thing I'm overthinking but just curious if you had any input. Thanks!

 

[Manton Customs]

I have used Mahogany coloured grain filler, though black can look cool also if you want to highlight the grain.

 

[lbridenstine]

I wish I knew enough to answer your question but I have a question/request. I'm in the process of designing a router sled to level some pieces and was wondering how you did yours. It's probably a simple thing I'm overthinking but just curious if you had any input. Thanks!

Umm, don't copy mine because mine sucks. But thanks for bringing up the topic, because it reminded me that I want to make a new one too! This might be helpful to both of us: Invalid Link Removed

I'm thinking about trying to do something similar to the one in post #10.

I have used Mahogany coloured grain filler, though black can look cool also if you want to highlight the grain.

I used black on this and it didn't turn out so good (in my opinion).

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Of course, the mahogany for the bass doesn't look exactly the same as that one, so it's possible it could look better on this. I think I'll probably try for something less contrasty though.