Another Crate Top

About a year ago I built a guitar for our rhythm player using a Cutty Sark crate top. There was enough wood left over from the crate to build a bass for my next project. The body is cut out, the top pieces are glue together with the back sanded, and the neck partly finished. The body will be chambered before the top is glued on. The plan for electronics is two dual coils and a Passinwind Open Source Preamp. The pre is already assembled. I will be making the pickups and haven't decided on the magnets yet.

Tedward

 

Got he body chambered. Next stop is to do the final shaping of the body and rough cut the top and glue it on.

Tedward

 

The top is glued on and shaped. I still have to do the finale shaping of the body.

 

Other than routing the pickup pockets (haven't made the templates) and final sanding the top is ready. The pickups are going to be A5 bars wound with 44 gauge heavy poly wire, not sure how many wraps yet. Since the magnets are thinner than the slot on the bobbins I had to cut the bobbins in half, file, and glue them to close the gap.

Tedward

 

The crate didn't have dovetail joints so I could only use but joints. I lay the pieces out and cut them to the way I want them to fit together. The top is glued together upside down and run through the thickness sander upside down. The top isn't perfectly flat and that adds to the character of the bass. This is my fifth crate top to build.

Tedward

 

Thanks Dark Horse.
Got the bobbins glued with 12 hour epoxy. The tape is holding the bobbins together. According to the coil estimator I should be able to get 3100 wraps for a 4000 ohm coil. So, two coil in series will be 8k.
I am having second thoughts of going with P/J pickups and install the dual coils in another bass.

Tedward

 

Been shaping the neck and routing the pickup pockets. Decided to go with the dual coils. Going to give threaded inserts a try for bolting the neck to the body. Most of the work I do to build a guitar is pretty standard. I make my own jigs out of 1/2" birch plywood and use the masking tape and supper glue method to old them in place.

Tedward

 

Pickups are wound and assembled. Bridge is 10.83 ohms and the neck s 9.60 ohms. Both wound with 44 gauge heavy poly, bridge 4250 wraps and neck 4000 wraps. A5 bar magnets were used. A little hotter that my goal. Put them in another bass and they sound pretty good so I will leave them as the are.

Tuner holes are drilled. I fasten the neck to the body and use two screws to hold the bridge in place and run a string up the neck to locate the tuner holes. In my quest to eliminate the dreaded dead spot I glued a 1/16" thick rosewood veneer plate to the back of the head stock to stiffen it up and installed two graphite rods. Let's see if that will work, if not I ill try steel rods.

I need to drill some more holes into the body for hardware and hopefully it will cool down enough to clear coat. Using General Finishes Satin.

Tedward

 

Funny how life can change plans. I ended up having to hurry and finish this bass so tat I could rearrange my shop/garage. The wife and I went to Spokane WA. to see her brother and ended up buying her dad's '57 Ford Ranchero that her brother restored. Now I need to make room for it and her car to go in the garage. The bass is done and I think it sounds great. For me the true test is how it sounds in a live mix. It cut through and blended well at church. All in all I am very happy with how it turned out and no dead spots on the neck. A last minute change with the electronics though. I decided that the Passin' Winds preamp would not be the best for it, at least for the type of music I play. Nothing wrong with pre just more treble control than I need. So, I went with standard Jazz Bass wiring, V/V/T and .05 cap.

Tedward

 

Can't to get the car! The only thing I will need to do is install seat belts. Our singer/ rhythm guitar player is having a '62 Chevy stepside pickup hot rodded. Gonna fun showing up to gigs.

Tedward