First project: Folk Bass DIY upright

[Beej]

It seems a dowel through there would at least reinforce against that same break occurring again.

Although a layer of CF over the entire neck might also do it.

 

[NKBassman]

It seems a dowel through there would at least reinforce against that same break occurring again.

Although a layer of CF over the entire neck might also do it.

Who do I look like, @MPU ?!

 

[Beej]

Who do I look like, @MPU ?!

Well, Marko's clearly gifted, but everyone's gotta start somewhere.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

LOL. I swear I did not do this on purpose . I was trying to seat the tuner bushings into place by giving them a little tap with a dowel, and the headstock separated from the neck, I assume due to the heel end being unsupported causing the whole thing flex at the joint. It’s a clean break and should glue up pretty seamlessly. We’ll see tomorrow.

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I feel your pain....Scroll headstocks are fragile.....

 

[NKBassman]

Would there be any benefit to drilling a hole all the way through this joint and gluing a dowel in there as a means of reinforcing it? I want to say it’s probably not worth it, but I’m open to suggestion.

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@Bruce Johnson do you think reinforcing that joint further would be worthwhile? Of course now that it’s glued it ought to be stronger than before.

 

[NKBassman]

Tuners are in and I fashioned a test nut from the broken piece of my test bridge which was already conveniently radiused to match the fingerboard. Time to string it up for a quick test.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

@Bruce Johnson do you think reinforcing that joint further would be worthwhile? Of course now that it’s glued it ought to be stronger than before.

Check out this post where I'm adding reinforcements to an old Ampeg headstock that broke at the pegbox. I'm using small birch dowels wrapped in carbon fiber TOW and filled with epoxy. The important thing is placing them where they will do the most good.

love of Ampeg and other Scroll Basses, Part 2

 

[NKBassman]

Check out this post where I'm adding reinforcements to an old Ampeg headstock that broke at the pegbox. I'm using small birch dowels wrapped in carbon fiber TOW and filled with epoxy. The important thing is placing them where they will do the most good.

love of Ampeg and other Scroll Basses, Part 2

Nice. Makes sense and pretty close what I had in mind, only I have no intention of doing any carbon fibre.

 

[Max Bogosity]

It seems like the closed back of a traditional scroll/headstock adds lateral stiffness (like the web of an I-beam) that should reduce the deflection under a side impact and maybe help resist that kind of break. If you were so inclined, you could add a thin plate across the back.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

A thin CF plate?

 

[T_Bone_TL]

A thin CF plate?

Evidently we can't lead them to fiber. So, Tort. Or Pearloid.

 

[NKBassman]

Ok fine I ordered some CF rods and clear epoxy to reinforce the headstock joint.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Ok fine I ordered some CF rods and clear epoxy to reinforce the headstock joint.

Man, carbon fiber is so 20th century!

Looking forward to seeing how you get it fixed.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

I thought about posting a little clip involving James Earl Jones saying "feel the power of the dark side." Instead, you can just play it in your head.

 

[NKBassman]

Man, carbon fiber is so 20th century!

Looking forward to seeing how you get it fixed.

Oh it’s already fixed! Look closely at the glamour shots with the tuners installed and you can see the break. I just want to reinforce it now so that it doesn’t break again.

I thought about posting a little clip involving James Earl Jones saying "feel the power of the dark side." Instead, you can just play it in your head.

This is funny, because I was just thinking something along the lines of “now witness the power of this fully functional battle station bass neck”.

It works! And it plays absolutely no worse than the $30 fretted electric neck I had on there before.

I still have work to do on it before I say it’s finished, but as far as achieving my goal of building my own neck for this thing, I’m calling it a success! The neck is dead straight and actually has some nice characteristic fretless adjectives to the sound. My fretless playing leaves much to be desired though… working on that might be more difficult than building the damn thing.


The adjustable bridge v0.2 pine prototype was also a success.


There's a few things to fix up before moving on to finishing.

• The neck carve could afford to be be a little thinner from the nut to the fifth position or so. I scribbled some pencil lines on the areas that felt uncomfortable and I'm warming up my file.
• I need to make a proper nut, but this one that I roughed in actually turned out pretty well for a first try.
• The tuner bushings are too loose and popped half way out as I brought it up to tension. I’m going to have to figure out what to do about that. Before assembling it I had wrapped the loosest one with a bit of plumbers Teflon tape which helped a bit, but I’d like to find a slightly more permanent solution.
• Figure out exactly what I'm going to do with the decorative scrolls on the headstock.
• The E string still doesn't have the right feel or as nice an attack as the other three strings, so I want to look for a thicker/stiffer E string.

I took the tension off the strings for night, but the repaired break seemed solid as I tuned it up. Once the CF rods go in I won’t give it a second thought.

The neck itself is STIFF. I tightened the truss rod as much as I dared and the relief hardly budged. I tightened it a little more after slacking the strings and we’ll let that settle in for a bit. Intonation aside, it actually played pretty darn well up to the octave on each string… far higher than I ever intend to play. Honestly I’m shocked it plays as well as it does.

 

[NKBassman]

Thanks everyone for all the help and support so far!

 

[T_Bone_TL]

I would think that aluminum foil duct tape (not the fabric stuff, actual metal) would be a far better choice of tape to bulk up bushings than slippery-dippery soft teflon tape. At a guess.

As for the fretless playing, having taken the deep dive when I went from "dabbling by myself, mostly" on the fretted electric to "here are actual people I can play with, but they are really anti-electric and I can borrow this upright" 7 years ago, it gets better. I'm in no danger of perfection, though.

 

[NKBassman]

I would think that aluminum foil duct tape (not the fabric stuff, actual metal) would be a far better choice of tape to bulk up bushings than slippery-dippery soft teflon tape. At a guess.

That's a good idea. I might start with a dab of hot-stick glue and see if that is firm enough to hold them in place, but still soft enough to pop them back out if I ever need to (without breaking the headstock off again ). Worst case I can just plug the holes and redrill them with a more appropriate drill bit. Or I also picked up some CA glue on my last order from Lee Valley .

As for the fretless playing, having taken the deep dive when I went from "dabbling by myself, mostly" on the fretted electric to "here are actual people I can play with, but they are really anti-electric and I can borrow this upright" 7 years ago, it gets better. I'm in no danger of perfection, though.

lol, achieving perfection was never my concern. Once you get there, there's nowhere to go but down anyway.

 

[NKBassman]

Does anyone have experience with Rotosound Tru Bass 88 strings? Specifically wondering if they have a stiffer feel since they're significantly thicker. I'm using GHS Tapes right now and the E string is too loose.

Edit, that info was easy to find actually:

GHS Black Nylon Tapes

Rotosound Tru Bass 88

Looking at the GHS strings first, it's clear to see why the E string feels so much different than the rest of the strings... because it is! The Rotosound RS88 set looks like it's all over the map, on paper at least, and the E string is only marginally tighter than the GHS E. I don't think the RS88s are the right answer.

Prior to going to the nylon tapes, I had a set of GHS Precision Flats on this bass. It looks like the E string from that set might be a better match to the other three nylon strings, and that set is actually nicely balanced altogether too. I should still have that set kicking around somewhere, so maybe that's a good place to start.

GHS Precision Flats

 

[Flamingo21]

I got behind on reading people's build threads; now I've caught up on this interesting thread.
This caught my attention:

Worst case Ontario

So is this AutoCorrect doing its devilish job, or is it some inside joke that speaks of the strenuous relationship between The West and the more populated provinces?