bubinga, padouk, bloodwood and ebony, all in the same bass!?!?!? sounds perfect! A tip on the bloodwood, after you give it a good sanding so that it has fresh deep red color, you you showed seal it with epoxy, or superglue, to prevent air from oxidizing the color. That over padauk that is able to oxidize will be awesome.
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first exotic wood 6 string bass build
- Thread starter strangedejavu
- Start date
Thanks for the kind responses.
In regards to the bloodwood, it is a very old air dryed piece, and is quite light in color (almost the color of my bubinga even after cut) It is more of a brown color with stain. I am going to be treating it with oil but not epoxying it, I love the "woody" sound of an oiled fretboard!
Keep the comments rolling, I will hopefully have the neck finished tomorrow! Woohoo, more pics tomorrow evening!
In regards to the bloodwood, it is a very old air dryed piece, and is quite light in color (almost the color of my bubinga even after cut) It is more of a brown color with stain. I am going to be treating it with oil but not epoxying it, I love the "woody" sound of an oiled fretboard!
Keep the comments rolling, I will hopefully have the neck finished tomorrow! Woohoo, more pics tomorrow evening!
Now all I have left is final shaping/sanding, routing for my controls and pickup (the pickup will have a padauk base and an ebony cap like the knobs and the neck!)....
How heavy is the body? I am only asking because I am planning a bass that uses a padauk body, maybe solid, maybe semi hollow with a nice top... Thanks.
naw I don't have a build thread for the guitar, I wish I did, it was my first from scratch project and man did it turn out to be a headache, I ran across numerous problems so I have started and completed numerous other projects in the mean time slowly picking away on the guitar. The guitar is almost done, just needs its electronics and humbuckers routed...
The body is heavy as hell even chambered a little bit, but I hear for the tonal characteristics it is worth the weight (will find out for sure soon enough)....
The body is heavy as hell even chambered a little bit, but I hear for the tonal characteristics it is worth the weight (will find out for sure soon enough)....
Now that the body is final carved and finished sanded to 150 grit I thought I would post pics of the body...
control cover is now fit (I am looking into different ideas for mounting w/o screws, any ideas?)
The knobs were custom made from a guy who sells exotic wood knobs on ebay... highly recommend him (there will be eventually 5 matching knobs was not planning on a 3 band eq when I ordered the first batch of knobs)
The preamp is a petrounov... with the following controls:
1 volume
1 blend between pickups
1 bass
1 mid
1 treble
and a on/on tone switch
now I am just waiting on my final parts (bartolini g6 pickups) and I will be on my way to having it rough put together this week
control cover is now fit (I am looking into different ideas for mounting w/o screws, any ideas?)
The knobs were custom made from a guy who sells exotic wood knobs on ebay... highly recommend him (there will be eventually 5 matching knobs was not planning on a 3 band eq when I ordered the first batch of knobs)
The preamp is a petrounov... with the following controls:
1 volume
1 blend between pickups
1 bass
1 mid
1 treble
and a on/on tone switch
now I am just waiting on my final parts (bartolini g6 pickups) and I will be on my way to having it rough put together this week
Nice job so far!
Screwless cover = rare earth magnets.
With a forstner bit, drill a very shallow recess in 3 or 4 places underneath the cover, and glue in some rare earth magnets with superglue. On the body side, drill holes a little bit larger underneath where the magnets will touch the control cavity ledge, then screw in a small screw into the bottom of each hole (use screws that attract to magnets), I'm talking a screw size similar to a pickguard screw. The magnets will be attracted to the screws and hold the cover in place - if the holes for the screws are a little larger than the magnet diameters, this will take up any misalignment between magnets and holes, and allow you to remove and replace the cover more easily than perfectly-tight fitting holes.
Adjust the depths of the screws so that the magnets *just* touch the heads of the screws, and the cover sits nice and flat.
HOWEVER - if your wiring is pushing up hard on the underside of the cover, this may not be enough to keep it in place, in which case you need to just go with a screw-down cover. Looks like you should be OK in that department though.
Screwless cover = rare earth magnets.
With a forstner bit, drill a very shallow recess in 3 or 4 places underneath the cover, and glue in some rare earth magnets with superglue. On the body side, drill holes a little bit larger underneath where the magnets will touch the control cavity ledge, then screw in a small screw into the bottom of each hole (use screws that attract to magnets), I'm talking a screw size similar to a pickguard screw. The magnets will be attracted to the screws and hold the cover in place - if the holes for the screws are a little larger than the magnet diameters, this will take up any misalignment between magnets and holes, and allow you to remove and replace the cover more easily than perfectly-tight fitting holes.
Adjust the depths of the screws so that the magnets *just* touch the heads of the screws, and the cover sits nice and flat.
HOWEVER - if your wiring is pushing up hard on the underside of the cover, this may not be enough to keep it in place, in which case you need to just go with a screw-down cover. Looks like you should be OK in that department though.
Okay so what if I had 3 neo magnets on the cover and three mounted in the body... would this provide more pull on the cover than the screw? I was researching a bit I can get 3/16th x 1/4" neo magnets...
Three neo-neo pairscould be very strong. Strong enough to require a feature on the cover to help you pry them apart.
I'm using neo magnets to retain the speaker grilles on some bookshelf speakers I built a few years back. SUPER strong hold, so you may want to test first. I think mine were 3/8" dia x1/4" thick tough.
Yes, which is why I use neo mags attracted to screw heads.
Also, it is a bit of a pain to get the depth of a neo-neo contact just right.
so after making a template for the pickups I decided to try and make a set of covers to match the ebony capped padauk theme throughout the neck and knobs... here is what ended up...
The pictures are of them rough cut, I plan to round the corners, make them a bit more narrow and round over all the edges on the top...
The pickups in the bass are bartolini g6's
and yes they are the same size, just the angle of the picure doesn't show it...
The pictures are of them rough cut, I plan to round the corners, make them a bit more narrow and round over all the edges on the top...
The pickups in the bass are bartolini g6's
and yes they are the same size, just the angle of the picure doesn't show it...
I have a question for anyone in here who can answer it, after doing the pickups, the bridge just isn't going to cut it anymore, it needs to be wood. Anyone have any tutorials or ideas of how to make a solid wood bridge?
