Hey, time flies when you're trying to build a bass to a deadline...
I'm still here - life, gigs, treatments, etc. family all take up time.
So, I've been puttering away at this thing, and it's coming along.
Cut the bridge and tailpiece blanks from a hunk of ebony:
Yeah, they don't look like much, so I carved them into something a bit more useful. Still more or less roughed in, waiting for final shaping:
That's a crappy picture, the ebony looks way nicer in reality. The strings will come through the the back (sorry no pics of the ferrules yet) through the tailpiece which will be inset into the top and glued to the inside block, and then over the bridge, which will be held in place by string pressure only.
Electronics: I forgot to mention along the way that this will be a piezo-only bass. Early in the build TB's very own moderator Marshall Perry (SMPerry) donated a near pristine Rick Turner (made by Highlander) piezo preamp that he felt was in need of a good home.
I'm forever in his debt for his generosity.
Well, that decided that the bass would be without a magnetic pup, which I think is appropriate for this type of bass anyway. I looked around for piezo systems and settled on some RMC 'bass excellence' bridge transducers:
So, these will be set into the bridge, go through the top and connect to the preamp. The preamp 'tone' controls are pretty basic - high cut and bass boost, internally. So that just leaves the volume control. I didn't want to foul the nice cedar top with one ugly knob (two, when I'm playing it
), so my good buddy Paul came up with an excellent solution: we're going to use a Schatten style wheel pot, mounted just inside one of the 'f' holes in the top. Virtually invisible, yet highly accessible!
So the problem remained - how to mount this preamp in a hollow body? Again, I didn't want to mess up the nice cherry back with an access port, and the pre is a bit of an awkward size, so after considerable debate and head-scratching I came up with the idea of a side-drawer. The pics are worth 1000 of my klutzy words, but basically the pre will sit inside a shielded side-mount drawer thingy, held in place with rare earth magnets. In the rare (no pun intended) event I want to access the tone controls or change the batteries, I can just pop the drawer out. That area of the bass is seldom seen, and now I have a clean top and back to the bass!:
It's sliding on some sheet metal runners, and is pretty smooth and sits nicely when closed. Oh -the back of the drawer has a sheet metal jack plate: the 5 RMC pup leads will be bundled together and go into the jack plate via an RCA plug, and the volume control will connect via a 1/8" TRS plug. The intrument cable jack (also TRS) will pop though the outer side of the drawer. Clear as mud? Well, it was a very interesting and time-consuming diversion, hopefully it'll be worth it.
Hmm. I also carved a single brace for the inside of the top, mounted just in front of where the bridge will sit:
I also drilled for the tuners, and here they are roughly in place:
And, I've spent a surprising amount of time sanding, shaping, caressing the bass here and there. Oh, and I finally glued the fboard on...
Sorry about the length and breath of this post - I've been a bit negligent in keeping this build updated. Still a lot of work to do, and with a four-day road trip o' gigs coming up, followed directly by a treatment day, which lays me low for a few days, I'm not 100% sure it'll be completed by the deadline. Here's hoping, though!
Thanks for watching,
Kev
Actually, after hours of playing with my son and his Lego(TM), I was thinking a Lego bass would be neat...
thanks for the info, though.
This is my first build...
