"Headless" Flying V build

[ctmullins]

Haha! Love the KubickiBird. It's also mildly interesting to me that Steinberger is now owned by Gibson, which (in my twisted little mind anyway) keeps it "in the family"...

 

[JIO]

Haha! Love the KubickiBird. It's also mildly interesting to me that Steinberger is now owned by Gibson, which (in my twisted little mind anyway) keeps it "in the family"...

I call it the Factorbird. Being an Ex-Factor neck/tuner-bridge - the 'extended headless' family perhaps...

 

[ctmullins]

Closing in on this one! All the body routs are done, and finish sanding is underway. I recessed the bridge a bit, to fix the neck angle; I originally routed the neck pocket at 1 degree when it should have been 2...

Neck shaping is also nearly done. I'm happy with the carve, and the volute/headstock transition, just need to finish sand it. Did side dots tonight. I couldn't resist the temptation to use paua dots. As is my custom, I used 3mm for the first octave, 2mm for the second, and a mixture at the twelfth and twenty-fourth. I've had minor issues in the past with the paua not being visible in low light, due to the directivity of its reflectivity (ha ha); tonight I took pains to orient each dot so that it "shone" back towards the player.

Hoping to have this one finished by springtime, and I think I'm on track for that!

 

[ixlramp]

Nice but the headstock is too unnecessarily big for my taste. When my flying v bass (see avatar) had 4 strings i made it truly balance by moving the rear button way forward: on the body front 3 inch behind the highest fret, sounds weird but super-comfortable. This helps to shift the bass to the right for comfort.
My method: find the centre of gravity then with bass tilted 30 degrees up mount buttons equal horizontal distance either side of the CofG, this equalises the pull on each end of the strap, that is true balance, the bass will not tilt under any amount of jumping around.

 

[ctmullins]

I'm going to interpret your headstock comment as pertaining to the traditional Gibson design, and not this particular build.

As far as the CofG on this build, it should be pretty far back, with the hefty Steinberger bridge and the lack of hardware on the headstock end.

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It's time for dye. My original plan was to do black. Is that still what I want to do? Hmmm....

 

[ThaCoast]

I think a dye would look much nicer. There's already alot of black guitars/basses out there, make it unique! Plus, it's fun to see a toss up of someones creation and color choice in the mix. Allows us to ask many questions and admire in AHH the whole thing

 

[ixlramp]

I'm going to interpret your headstock comment as pertaining to the traditional Gibson design, and not this particular build.

Okay i understand now you're making an exact copy of the original headstock, so yes i'm referring to the original design, i just found it odd to have a big headstock on a headless bass. I have seen a headless flying-v with no headstock and think that suits the whole design more.
With that rear button so far back the bass will be shifted to the left relative to a normal bass, that alone would make it unplayable for me. Also, mounting the rear button on the front of the body would counteract the torque of the front button that makes the bass roll forward. Too late i know just some design thoughts. Nice project anyway.

 

[gsnad2000]

I think a dye would look much nicer. There's already alot of black guitars/basses out there, make it unique! Plus, it's fun to see a toss up of someones creation and color choice in the mix. Allows us to ask many questions and admire in AHH the whole thing

I think he's talking black dye. I'm thinking that would look pretty sweet!

 

[ctmullins]

My wife agrees with the notion that it should have a color other than black, so you're in good company Andii! Whatever color is chosen, it will be TransTint dye, so that the figuring in the maple will show through. I originally chose black because I didn't yet have a black bass; since then I've picked up a jet black Squier Jag project......

I'm also considering a psychedelic nail polish job a la Hendrix. Seriously!

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[ThaCoast]

I'm also considering a psychedelic nail polish job a la Hendrix. Seriously!

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I think if iever i get a flying V copy, i'll strip it down to a one pickup basis and do something like hendrix psychadelic or along those lines. Something to make it unique and unseen amongst my own music scene

 

[ctmullins]

Okay i understand now you're making an exact copy of the original headstock, so yes i'm referring to the original design, i just found it odd to have a big headstock on a headless bass. I have seen a headless flying-v with no headstock and think that suits the whole design more.
With that rear button so far back the bass will be shifted to the left relative to a normal bass, that alone would make it unplayable for me. Also, mounting the rear button on the front of the body would counteract the torque of the front button that makes the bass roll forward. Too late i know just some design thoughts. Nice project anyway.

I appreciate your input! I'll admit that I have always been enamored of the various Gibson designs, much more so than most of the stuff Fender puts out. The original Flying V, in particular, is a very harmoniously integrated design; the headstock is IMHO a perfect complement to the body shape, and the whole visual balances nicely to my eye. My headstock is, I believe, smaller than the Gibson variety, although I've never even touched a bona-fide Gibson Flying V bass, so that's really just supposition. But it's also thicker, so that I have room to mount my set-screws for single-ended strings (yes, I've committed to that approach...). Without tuning machines on the headstock, it's still going to be much lighter.

I'm also a big fan of the Explorer shape (as well as the 'Birds that are based on it), so I'm not put off by the ergonomic differences that many here on TB have difficulty with. This includes the strap-button-on-the-heel feature. I truthfully don't understand why this bothers people so much. Yes, it's a different feel than an F-styled bass. It takes me all of three seconds to adjust to it, though. I never - NEVER - look at my fingerboard while playing. The only visual clues I need are the side dots. So it doesn't bother me one bit to have the instrument roll forward a bit. In fact, it's actually more comfortable for the fretting hand if it does.

The shifting-to-the-left aspect is there; I noticed this when I first bolted the neck to the body and strapped it on. How much of a practical issue this becomes has yet to be seen. It will be alleviated somewhat by the 32" scale.

 

[ctmullins]

A bit of progress: got the color applied and am about halfway through the clear coats:

Did the whole thing in black, sanded back the center section, then went over it with dark green. Got some good figure in the top!

 

[Scoops]

It takes a brave man to stain a piece of wood in the manner you are doing. One wrong move and you're toast.
Compliments for taking the initiative.

What kind of stain are you using?

 

[ctmullins]

Oh, gosh, I don't know... I consider this a fairly forgiving method. It takes two or three good coats of diluted dye to get a nice consistent and reasonably deep color. Probably due to the dilution ratio - I think mine's something like 15 or 20 parts distilled water to one part dye. I typically buy the TransTint dyes from LMII - that's what the black is - but when my wife picked green for the color, I didn't want to wait for shipping, so we just went to the local hobby store and picked up a bottle of Rit in Dark Green. Turns out you can dilute it and apply it just like the TransTint. That's the method I've used on all of my builds to date (after unsatisfactory results using MinWax PolyShades). It also works well under Tru-Oil.

 

[ctmullins]

Lacquer, wetsand, lacquer, wetsand, lacquer, wetsand.....

Finally got it to a point I consider acceptable. There are still a few little craters in the top, where the figured maple needed a bit of filling I suppose, but it's good enough for me. I actually got some sanding sealer from StewMac that helped fill in the low spots a lot.

Did the first full assembly yesterday - cut a nut, installed pickups and electronics, strung it up, and played it a bit. I like the blacked-out hardware, but I wish I could find a black version of the large pickup selector switch.

And here's a closeup photo of my headstock string retainer setup. These are single-ball strings, so the ball-ends go into the Steinberger bridge, and the non-ball-ends get clamped into the headstock. There are brass threaded inserts in the side, into which the allen-headed set screws go. The strings go all the way through the headstock and get snipped off on the back side. The ferrules are there to keep the strings from biting into the wood; they're just guitar-sized string-through ferrules. Seems to work fine, but I'll give it a few weeks to see if anything slips.

First impressions of the Duncan SSB pickups are good. The East BTB-01 adds some fatness too. I'll open it up on my big rig later this week hopefully.

 

[Toban.Ivan]

I like your ferrules mods and I thought about something similar in the past.
In my ideas however I were trying to avoid the string bending on the edge of the ferrules. This, I think, could be eventually the only problem for this setup.

Very beatiful build anyway, may we have a full size pic? Just to admire it better?

PS, what about a completely black toggle switch? The chromed nut and washer sound out of context to me.

 

[ctmullins]

Thanks! I agree about the switch, but it's just cosmetic, so I'll leave it for now while I fine-tune the action. Better photos soon!

 

[Hopkins]

I dig the build, but that last picture raises a question I have always wondered about since I started playing bass. If a string company insists on using silks, why cant they wind all of them to the same distance from the ball end on every string.

 

[ctmullins]

Ha ha, I noticed that too! This is a well-used set of Smith Metal Masters; essentially a "junk" set of strings used for preliminary setups. I'll probably change them out for a set without silks, for this reason.

 

[joeyl]

I like your ferrules mods and I thought about something similar in the past.
In my ideas however I were trying to avoid the string bending on the edge of the ferrules. This, I think, could be eventually the only problem for this setup.

I think it should be fine. If you think about it, you bend strings at an angle smaller than 90 degrees in regular tuners.