Aluminum Neck Club

[cataract]

I’m all for DIY neck & bass building (our beloved metal basses wouldn’t exist if not for that mentality!) but given the overall cost & personal time involved, it would be much easier and cost efficient to just throw money at one of the many talented makers who’ve already done the grunt work. Especially if you’re only planning on making “just one.”
Looking forward to everyone’s future results, though! Can’t get enough when it comes to aluminum.

 

[Bob_Ross]

I know that the EGC bass necks are hollow, but are the travis bean necks hollow or solid?

Pretty sure the original Travis Bean's were a hollow D-shape, because back in 1982 I had a college buddy/bandmate who played a Travis Bean guitar and he was able to fit an enormous contact transducer inside the aluminum structure right where the neck meets the body.

He then fed that transducer to a separate amp; ridiculously cool sound. (Which is not the same thing as ridiculously good sound, but it was cool.)

 

[oZZma]

I’m all for DIY neck & bass building (our beloved metal basses wouldn’t exist if not for that mentality!) but given the overall cost & personal time involved, it would be much easier and cost efficient to just throw money at one of the many talented makers who’ve already done the grunt work. Especially if you’re only planning on making “just one.”

I could have access to a CNC machine for a reasonable price in a Fab Lab... I need to know how much time will it take to mill the neck to know how much would it cost, but I think that this would be the most costly part in the whole process!

 

[bombjack]

Been watching this thread and found this pic of a restoration to help contribute:

The part of the neck through that connects to the body is hollowed out like a rectangular pan.

I had one years ago and it was fascinating to take apart to see how the pickup screws helped secure the neck to the body.

 

[oZZma]

Been watching this thread and found this pic of a restoration to help contribute:
View attachment 3288262
The part of the neck through that connects to the body is hollowed out like a rectangular pan.

I had one years ago and it was fascinating to take apart to see how the pickup screws helped secure the neck to the body.

Geez!! Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this!

This is super-useful! I tried to imagine how an aluminum neck-thru would connect to the body and accomodate pickups, having such details will be of great help if I really build one!!
I'd like to have at least a rough idea of the cost for the milling, if I could keep the whole build under 500€ (excluded the hardware) I could take the risk to design a bass that could result somehow crappy, being my very first bass build

 

[cataract]

Copped these photos from Instagram, but here’s what my bass looked like pre-anodized & disassembled. Very similar to a Travis Bean.

 

[bombjack]

You're welcome! Each pickup also had one or two strips of metal (I assumed it was aluminum) that rested in the channel of the pickup opening. You can kind of see that there's a ledge on the left and right side of each pickup opening. The screws passed through the back and screwed directly into the pickup, so the pickup was being pulled down into the strips and into the body. I had a wedge, and I wish I had taken pictures of it when I had it all taken apart! The bridge must have screwed into the aluminum as well as the body is pretty thin where they meet.

Cataract - your Obstructures bass is pretty slick...and those pictures are amazing. It's really a marvel of design and you can really see how they improved on the Bean design.

 

[oZZma]

Copped these photos from Instagram, but here’s what my bass looked like pre-anodized & disassembled. Very similar to a Travis Bean.
View attachment 3288494
View attachment 3288495
View attachment 3288496

drool
Very, very useful and interesting photos!
And very useful, detailed infos from @bombjack Thanks a lot! both of you :3

Cataract - your Obstructures bass is pretty slick...and those pictures are amazing. It's really a marvel of design and you can really see how they improved on the Bean design.

I love the stern, menacing look of that bass and I love how technical details are an aesthetical feature as well. No "ornament", no sugarcoat. Harsh and true. Screws (that fix the fretboard) as fretmarkers= touch of class.
GREAT design work on this bass.

 

[ZachM]

Awesome pictures @cataract and @bombjack, those are super helpful. That obstructures bass is constructed very logically and without frills, I like it.

For a DIY bass it might be a lot simpler to construct a bass from multiple pieces like the Obstructures bass rather than trying to machine an entire bass neck and body from one piece like EGC does. Probably a lot less waste that way as well. Would love to hear that thing in action!

 

[ZachM]

I spent some time this weekend trolling Instagram to see if I could find some more detail about the construction of the Bean guitars, and found a few pictures that help clarify it a bit:

This one is one of the new, EGC-constructed Beans, with the neck and back of the body milled entirely from one piece of aluminum:

Here's another video that shows the neck of a TB 2000 being pulled out from the body:



I still have a lot of questions about how thick the aluminum needs to be, particularly the walls of the neck, but these are pretty useful to show the connection of the Travis Bean neck pan to the body.

 

[oZZma]

Very useful photos, thank you!!
I myself asked a couple of colleagues who are more familiar than I am with CNC and materials, but they descouraged me
They say it wi bell in any case too expensive, regardless of the shape, to take such risk

 

[ZachM]

Perhaps it will be somewhat expensive, but these things are never gonna be that cheap. No aluminum axe really ever is, if it’s well built, and the material is somewhat more expensive than wood, if you’re not talking about expensive figured stuff.

I’m not sure why your friends are just outright saying that it will be unachievable though. More expensive than building a wooden bass? Probably, but I don’t see why it would be prohibitively expensive. I’d be curious to know the reason why they’re saying that!

 

[Don Hergert]

Hmmm, just so you're aware, this isn't a new idea...

Ca. 1930 Alcoa Aluminum Double Bass, restored and hot-rodded.

And yes, it does also have an aluminum neck.

Alcoa #342-244, config complete, 3/29/18

• Don Hergert
• Mar 29, 2018
• alcoa

 

[cataract]

Hmmm, just so you're aware, this isn't a new idea...

I’m pretty sure everyone here’s fully aware of the idea not being “new.”
Haven’t played an aluminum upright before but have heard one played in a live situation many years ago- sounded awesome!

 

[oZZma]

I’m not sure why your friends are just outright saying that it will be unachievable though. More expensive than building a wooden bass? Probably, but I don’t see why it would be prohibitively expensive. I’d be curious to know the reason why they’re saying that!

They say it will be expensive only in relation to my inexperience in bass building. If I was 100% sure of what I'm doing it could be worth the price but there is high chance that the first output will need some... "adjustment". Luthiery is not something you can just learn by watching and master at first attempt
Which means "several" hundreds of € down the drain

 

[oZZma]

Add that there are not many luthiers making this kind of bass and there are very few infos about the process... Lots of "guessing" would be necessary
If it was a wooden bass I could just go and ask in the luthiers corner

 

[grisezd]

Add that there are not many luthiers making this kind of bass and there are very few infos about the process... Lots of "guessing" would be necessary
If it was a wooden bass I could just go and ask in the luthiers corner

I like your spirit! You’re right, there’s no harm in trying. That said the cost of the aluminum billet and machining time will be significantly more than I’d be willing to risk on a first attempt.

Why not reduce the risk by making a scaled down version, either in size or scope? Maybe a two string half scale instrument. Machine it with thick walls, test it for deflection, then thin it down. When you find the happy spot scale it back up into a final design.

 

[ZachM]

Yeah I'm thinking a scaled down test run is the way to do this. Especially since there's bound to be some experimentation needed in terms of tooling and feeds/speeds before you start getting good clean results.

The biggest question I have is still neck relief. Getting that right is gonna be the trickiest part I think

 

[oZZma]

The biggest question I have is still neck relief. Getting that right is gonna be the trickiest part I think

FAQ | Electrical Guitar Company
"The necks are machined with a .005 relief, there is no truss rod and the necks love heavy strings. The more tension, the better. We have found over the years, anyone who complains about fret buzz is generally playing too low with too small of strings. "

It's straight, in practice.

 

[ZachM]

FAQ | Electrical Guitar Company
"The necks are machined with a .005 relief, there is no truss rod and the necks love heavy strings. The more tension, the better. We have found over the years, anyone who complains about fret buzz is generally playing too low with too small of strings. "

It's straight, in practice.

I've seen that figure on the electrical website, but I wasn't sure if that measurement was for all the necks, or just the guitar necks. Bass strings would have a wider vibrational arc than guitar strings, obviously, so I personally don't know whether you can use the same relief numbers or not. Then again, you can decrease the swing of that arc by increasing string tension with heavier strings, so maybe you work around it that way. Either way you're right, that's a pretty minimal amount of relief.

I guess that really, you would need to get an existing bass set up exactly how you want, with the string gauges you intend to use on the aluminum neck, measure it very precisely, and then machine the aluminum according to those numbers.