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A Newbie's Unusual Take On A J Bass

#41
Dude .. you have sick skills. By the time you put some years behind you and your skills have a chance to ferment and ripen somewhat you're gonna be turning out some incredible stuff. I'm 52, and a metalworker btw.

For whatever it's worth, I am highly impressed. Keep with it, you'll hone those skills to a razor's edge. You most definitely ~have it~.

Never quit .. die falling forward.

(Pfft .. ~subscribed~ .. geez, no kiddin', right?).
 
#43
OP, this bass is fantastic! I've started a few musical carpentry projects (I'm 14, I have all the time I need!), what would be your advice on routing? I have to rout quite a lot on my current build (hollow EUB) so I was wondering if you had any tips on it?

Oh, and am I the only person who thought 'this looks like a sandberg, but cooler!' when I saw this thread? :bassist:
 
#44
Tribbinator said:
P.s. : I decided against a pickguard, and a backside cavity route instead. I want a bridge cover, but not a neck pickup cover because thats right where I play.
P.p.s : I know for sure I want the pickup casings flat white to match neck binding, but thoughts on a flat white bridge cover? (I know it's hard to visualize at this stage, especially when I dont have it!)
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Since you're going the p/j route, why not go with a P-bass bridge cover instead of a J? It will be a lot less obtrusive (the J cover extends all the way past the bridge p'up) but still give you a similar look.

Personally, I'd skip painting a bridge cover white. Flat white would get really dirty really fast and, unless you pay somebody to powdercoat it, would rub off in short order. Let it match the tuners and call it art (or Bob, or Lou).

Also, why not just get a set of white p'up covers? Paint is really unlikely to stick to plastic p'up covers for the long run, but white covers are readily available.

You're doing a fantastic job on this bass. It's really cool to watch it progress.
 
#45
This bass reminds me of a guitar that a guy I knew built. I was in the USAF ('79 - '85) and one of the guys I worked with was named "Thacker" .... of course everyone called him "Whacker" being the military and everyone was so full of piss and vinegar. Well, he spent a lot of time at the on-base woodshop (some mil bases have very extensive "hobby shops" that have boatloads of pretty decent machinery. Fees were like $1.50 per day to use anything in the shop). Well he took it upon himself to build an electric guitar. Remember there was no internet back then. He just borrowed my Aria guitar, measured the heck out of everything and copied it. He made everything except the pickups, pots/switches, tuners, and bridge which he storebought.

It was a checkboard design. He did what you'd expect and glued strips, cut the lams into strips and cross-turned them and reglued to create a checkerboard. He planed it off then created the body. He made the neck, fretboard, bought fretwire and made frets. He had no previous knowledge about what intonation was. He simply copied my guitar to the .5 mm. He didn't use anything but a tape measure and a square.

When it was done, it played great, sounded pretty good, and it was even intoned! He took it to a local guitar shop to show it off, which was where he learned what intonation was. The guitar shop owner was floored, especially when Thacker explained how he made it without knowing anything about making a stringed instrument.

This bass and it's creator remind me of that guy and his checkerboard guitar.
 
#46
Flux Jetson said:
This bass reminds me of a guitar that a guy I knew built. I was in the USAF ('79 - '85) and one of the guys I worked with was named "Thacker" .... of course everyone called him "Whacker" being the military and everyone was so full of piss and vinegar. Well, he spent a lot of time at the on-base woodshop (some mil bases have very extensive "hobby shops" that have boatloads of pretty decent machinery. Fees were like $1.50 per day to use anything in the shop). Well he took it upon himself to build an electric guitar. Remember there was no internet back then. He just borrowed my Aria guitar, measured the heck out of everything and copied it. He made everything except the pickups, pots/switches, tuners, and bridge which he storebought.

It was a checkboard design. He did what you'd expect and glued strips, cut the lams into strips and cross-turned them and reglued to create a checkerboard. He planed it off then created the body. He made the neck, fretboard, bought fretwire and made frets. He had no previous knowledge about what intonation was. He simply copied my guitar to the .5 mm. He didn't use anything but a tape measure and a square.

When it was done, it played great, sounded pretty good, and it was even intoned! He took it to a local guitar shop to show it off, which was where he learned what intonation was. The guitar shop owner was floored, especially when Thacker explained how he made it without knowing anything about making a stringed instrument.

This bass and it's creator remind me of that guy and his checkerboard guitar.
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Awesome story for an awesome thread. THIS is why is love talkbass :)
 
#49
@Flux - That story is incredible man, that's sweet. Thank you for all the kind words too!

@Josiah - Man, I wish I could help you with the whole routing thing, but really I'm a newb myself! The only experience I have with a router so far is the jig I've shown! I'm learning as I go!'

@Lo-E : Yeah...I've decided against painting the bridge cover, and I'm considering getting a cover for the P pups too. The rattlecan I have for white is the Rust-Oleom paint/primer-all-surfaces kind that works very well! I might go with the cover for instances where I need some more twang and treble (rest my thumb behind the P pickup cover) and leave both covers on, and then take the covers off to play with a deeper sound (resting my thumb on the P pickups)...Both should look great, I'll just have to see what I like better when I get there!

@mcsleazy - Technically...this is 3 different woods :ninja: Hahaha. I know what you are saying though, thanks for lookin'!
 
#51
Tribbinator said:
@Lo-E : Yeah...I've decided against painting the bridge cover, and I'm considering getting a cover for the P pups too. The rattlecan I have for white is the Rust-Oleom paint/primer-all-surfaces kind that works very well! I might go with the cover for instances where I need some more twang and treble (rest my thumb behind the P pickup cover) and leave both covers on, and then take the covers off to play with a deeper sound (resting my thumb on the P pickups)...Both should look great, I'll just have to see what I like better when I get there!
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I think I got myself confused somewhere along the way....

Are we talking about metal "ash tray" pickup covers or plastic covers on the p'ups themselves? In either case, I think paint would rub off.

As far as the plastic covers go, white is available and plastic p'up covers are cheap.

As far as the metal covers go, I was just suggesting the Precision bridge cover rather than the Jazz as an option because it's shorter and doesn't cover the bridge p'up.

If it was me, I'd match the plastic covers to the binding (white plastic) and the ashtrays to the tuners (leave them metal). But, hey, it's gonna look cool no matter what. People are gonna be so knocked out by the woodwork, they're barely even going to notice what the hardware looks like!
 
#52
Tribb. man it's looking awesome I wish I had more time to do woodwork I have all the tools a guy would ever need just don't have the time at the moment. keep up the good work on the Bass I cxan't wait to see it finished.
 
#53
Jeese, I just realized it's been over a month since an update. I'm really sorry about that guys - but I have major progress for all you following this! Firstly, my goodies arrived in the mail - truss rod, pickups, and bridge cover! The best part of this though, is that BestBassGear sent me 2 truss rods on accident :hyper: ...I double checked the order, and - yep - only 15 bucks had cleared the paypal...Double prizes!

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Next I started to carefully tape the pickups for spraying (as I didn't want to dissamble them to get the covers off, it's my first time using pickups like this, so I didn't want to do anything wrong.) Here they are, all ready for some spraying.

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All sprayed...

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Now onto the task I had been dreading the most - the truss rod routing. To be honest, routers scare the poop out of me, when it comes to a new task. After this though, I felt as if I'd conquered the thing! It was a heck of a lot easier than I was anticipating...but maybe that's just because Padauk routes like a dream.

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That cove bit beauty ;)

In this picture, 2 different things are going on - A.) I put 3 globs of super glue in 3 different places down the channel and gently clamped the rod in place using the other rod, upside-down, and B.) I hammered in pins right next to the fretboard edges, to keep the board aligned while gluing.

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Fingerboard being glued on by who knows how many clamps...

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Sorry you guys are getting the accelerated version of the build (This post will have 45 or so pictures, down from the 75 I took this month)...Onto the next task, nut slot! I found this to be fairly simple, I just marked where to cut, and used a fine saw to start the cut, and then my fret saw to cut it to depth. After that I gently chiseled / snapped pieces off until it was near the right depth. I double-stuck some sandpaper to the bottom of the nut and sanded until the bottom of the slot was flat.

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Here you can see the truss rod slot poking its head out there. But, you can also see my major flaw in this build...the inlays. What started as a fantastic idea for sheet plastic with the back sprayed a white / pearl color...turned into a big mishap when I failed to test superglue and how it would react with the paint. The superglue made the paint bubble up and warp. Up close it's noticeable, but only if you are looking for it.

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Some fret leveling / crowning...

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Here is an interesting picture...on the left half of the neck I have the binding glued in place, and scraped down; but on the right I have the setup for gluing the right side - rubber bands + toothpicks for downwards pressure.

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Whenever I lay a part out on my bed to either look at it, or work on it...Guess who shows up, kitty!

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Well, I forgot to take pictures of this step, sorry guys. It was basically just drilling and them supergluing in the side dots, a 10 minute job. But - I have pictures of the next step, sanding the neck flush to the binding. Since I've been using AutoCAD to do my measurements, my neck blank was close enough on size that I could simply use some elbow-grease and sand the edges of the neck flush.

My trusty 90 degree steel sanding beam...

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That's better, nice and flush

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Okee-doke, time for my past self to tackle this task. The pickup routes. Since my body was still in two halves at this point, I was able to do this as easy as possible. I glued on my CAD template, and then drilled some holes out with a big drill bit. From there, I put the blade in my scroll saw through these drill holes, and cut out the pickup shapes without having to cut through the body. The only mishap that occured is pretty obvious (although I'm proud of myself for fixing it well.) When I drilled for the J pup, either my CAD drawing was off, or the bit wandered horribly - but either way the holes I drilled for the "Screw-down" part of the pickup were way off. To remedy this, I had to take my 1/2" router bit and plunge straight down to get a nice straight hole that A.) fixed the drill holes that were way off, and B.) fit the pickup in place.

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After filing and sanding like a madman, the pickups fit! (Here you can see what I was rambling about in the J pup route) Also - my phone camera seemed to auto-focus on the white pickups, so the color of the wood is way off from the last photo (couldn't fix it well in photoshop)

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With that done...NEXT! Nut slotting, woohoo. This was also a fairly simple task. I took a picture of the tools I used for this, but it seems to have dissapeared from my phone :rollno: All I did here was glue on my tiny piece of paper from my AutoCAD drawing, which already had the string spacing calculated, and even had the string widths drawn out. All I had to do then was use a fine saw and cut inside the lines and then chisel / break my way down to clear out the slot. From there I used the off-cuts of the brand of string I'll be using (Rotosound Swing 66-ers) and used the offcuts as a flexible round file and pulled them back and forth through the slot, widening them to the perfect size.

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k, next step. Neck carving! The part I have been absolutely looking forward to this entire build! I love to work with tools, not powertools, good old elbow-grease handtools. For this, I failed to take a picture - but all I used was a Stanley Surform Plane, a flat file, and the RO Sander...

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Here's a suprisingly good quality shot of the back of the headstock + carving (Good job phone camera)

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The previous 2 photos are a pretty accurate representation of how red the padauk has gotten since carving / sanding.

Moving on - the next task was to make my neck heel. Simple in concept, lots of work to get it just right. I printed out another part of my CAD drawing, stuck 'er on there and went to work. I used my fret saw to cut two angles down to the fretboard, and then used a tiny block with sand paper stuck on it to freehand sand the lines back to the CAD drawing lines.

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(It looks like my phone has up and decided to take better quality pictures out of nowhere.)

So, the neck for now is done! Whoopee! Next task, moving right along. I mentioned before about chambering / weight relieving the body - and that's what is being done here! I started out on the left side, and only took one pass before I realized - "Oh boy, I can't go too deep...the carve in the back might hit this cavity and ruin the whole thing." So all I did was just route out the other areas I knew were safe. The marks you see all over the body are glue stick marks, from where I glued on my AutoCAD printout and used a sharpie to transfer the lines onto the wood (paper gets annoying when routing, no matter how well glued it is.)

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Lining it up, making sure I have no mishaps...

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Now it was time for some fun / stress relieving / test drilling for offcuts to use on a custom piece (more on this later)

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After I made sufficient "wood cheese" I used the same method as my pickup "routes" and inserted the scroll saw blade through the holes, and cut out my control cavity.

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Tadaa! wood cheese on the right

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Here's a shot showing the continued routing, but being careful of the carve that'll go in the back.

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A perfect 1/2" down, just by freehand routing and plunging...

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And the completed routing / chambering / weight relieving.

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Oh but wait, not complete. I almost forgot! In my haste to get the body glued (Boy, was I getting excited) I almost overlooked one vital step that would help me out in the long run. A simple route for wires, that when glued to the top, gives me a channel right into the control cavity, without having to drill!

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The dust pile

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2 last tidbits, I popped in the .375" cove bit to route a tiny access channel for the hex key, as seen on many modern basses; and I lined up the two body pieces using yellow toothpicks in the pickup routes (you'll never see the remnants of a yellow toothpick in Yellowheart! :smug: )

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Gluing the body time. I did a pre-clamp to know where and how I'll place the clamps when the time comes. This is a picture of the pre-clamp, but it's the exact same as the real glue n' clamp. I use my sanding beam for a majority of the pressure, and then lots of other clamps for the edges!

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Jumping and skipping ahead a few steps (it's just boring drilling anyways.) and I have the tuners installed (minus the ferrules, those go in after finishing) and the string retainer on! A mock-up for you faithful followers...

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tooners

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I drilled pilot holes for the neck screws with this nifty template / back plate ;)

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Like I said earlier...Every time I get my things out and put them on the bed... :)

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(The bass is nowhere near that yellow, it's the lighting)

The neck plate was cut from an offcut, and the control cavity cover will be made from the offcut of padauk that covered the back of the headstock -

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And...after over a month, drum roll pls...I got her strung up! :hyper: A quick run to Home Depot got me the right screws, and then I already had my pilot holes, so it was just a matter of drilling a larger hole, and then screwing those screws in! It plays wonderfully, and the only problem I see right now is the string spacing. The generic Gotoh bridge from Stewmac has a very narrow spacing, I'll have to see what I can do to fix it. But here's the last pictures for now, probably until I have the rest of the wood work done! Enjoy :)

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Thank you all so much for watching, and your wonderful comments! I'll be sure to keep you updated as this nears completion!

P.s. Nut width is just under 1.45", around 1.43 or .44, and then grows to a whopping 2.675" at the end of the fretboard
 
#57
Just a little constructive criticism, your build is way to nice to leave that jazz pickup rout like that. I would make some plugs to fill the mounting tabs and re rout it, because other than that your build it top notch.
 
#60
Hopkins said:
Just a little constructive criticism, your build is way to nice to leave that jazz pickup rout like that. I would make some plugs to fill the mounting tabs and re rout it, because other than that your build it top notch.
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This, times 10. If the rest of the build were sloppy, it could slide. But this is a freaking magnificent, clean, bad ass build. And that pickup rout really brings the whole thing down. It wouldn't be too hard to fix, either. The P rout looks a bit loose as well. Food for thought.
 

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