Losing Confidence

[Ross W. Lovell]

Well I am in the very final stages of completing my first bass. I would have regarded myself as a reasonable tools worker going in and pride myself on taking time, pre planning and being very well researched.

This build has pushed every ounce of my skill (lack thereof) and i have had to fix up that many errors that i am almost at the stage of not being able to complete the project successfully.

My major errors were,

Design body scale too small overall
Cavity is a mess lol
neck pocket too large
finishing flaws...many
finish sanding
major tear out of knob holes (did this last night and I am wrecked lol)
slight pickup cavity errors
recesses for neckbolts too large and uneven
recess for battery box messy

My biggest mistakes were:
Starting with expensive/rare/special wood
finishing too early (I stupidly finished before pickup cavities and knob holes were completed
rushing..rushing..rushing..rushing..
I don't mean rushing as in cutting corners but more just having high expectations that i could get things done ok. For example in finishing When i dyed the body a fair few flaws were exposed. I did not go back and resand and remove these minor flaws and in final finishing they are greater....I now understand that the prep work prior to stain has to be perfect. so that finish staining can be correct.

Anyway i could ramble on...My main problem is that i have accumulated some really exciting and interesting hardware and electronics (also very expensive) and some beautiful wood for another two builds but my confidence in building has really wavered greatly.

My aim is to build a Wal copy 6 string. I have roughed out number 2 but i am struggling to find the confidence to go again...My issue is that i have really cool custom multicoil pickups and an ACG EQ01 preamp sitting here looking at me..

Any motivations, advice or musings would really help

You need to slow down.

You have already reviewed your work. Most of your issues seem to be based around rushing, for whatever reason.

If, this is a new endeavor, you might want to ask yourself why, the first time coming out the gate it has to be perfect?

Do you not have a learning curve?

 

[fishdreams]

It's a craft that takes awhile to develop. A well known builder I'm friends with told me it took him 12 basses before he got a good one, that he could reproduce. You're doing fine.

 

[wintremute]

If it was easy the 1st time, we'd all be doing it, and luthiers would go out of business. They're not mistakes, they're lessons. Don't waste the valuable lessons. Apply them to build #2.

 

[MynameisMe]

Here is a picture of the only instrument I've ever built. An acoustic guitar built out of a kit.
Made many mistakes on the finish.
The neck is thick like a baseball bat and not easy to play.
But it's mine. My wife loves it. I'll never get rid of it.
I'll never forget hanging it out in the yard and spraying coats of lacquer on it and getting the highest I have ever been in my life, not having the proper respirator.
My Luthier made it play adequately.
Don't beat yourself up too bad. My box turned out just fine in the end.
Bonus there is my buddy Jesus on the right!

 

[eddododo]

You’re way ahead of me as a luthier, but I have a lot of strong thoughts about skill acquisition as a hobby in itself.

you have to adjust your timeline.. the idea of ‘i want a wal, I could try to build it way cheaper than buying it, and building it sounds fun’ is an IMPORTANT phase, that phase being inspiration. Inspiration leads to motivation, but motivation isn’t enough. So you don’t now own an amazing Wal copy, but what you DO own is a ton of lessons that can only truly be learned one way. You also likely own some new tools, and not to mention you do own your first self-built instrument, and that’s beautiful!

but like I said, motivation isn’t enough, so it goes inspiration->motivation -> Discipline. Have the discipline to push through, finish the project. Now that, through my tutelage, you have learned that you in fact do not have a Wal copy, it’s ok to backtrack, and fix a lot of stuff. Since we have alleviated the Fugazi of an easy road to an amazing bass, you get to buckle down on the hard but very fun road of building one. With the discipline to backtrack and fix, or even simply undo and practice certain steps you can progress.

inspiration-> motivation -> discipline -> passion

Through the discipline to challenge yourself, to view each failure as an opportunity to either retry or at least examine, you allow yourself the passion of the process. When you develop a love for the frustrations of the process, you allow yourself to express an intention, to speak the language of creation: this is much like playing music.


So here’s what you do- tidy up your workspace so that it’s a joy to begin work in, put that thing on the bench and improve it. It’s okay if you have to RUIN it improving it, too. Wood is ‘expensive’ but it isn’t really “EXPENSIVE,” and you get to keep all your great hardware for your next awesome build.



Also, just peruse luthiers corner for awhile... sort by ‘views’

 

[Big B.]

So your your skill doesnt quite reach your vision yet. That's okay man because if you've built a set of skills that made you feel confident going into this then you know the work it took to build those skills. The important part is that you have the vision to know that your current work isnt living up to the standards you want. That's easy to solve, practice makes perfect. Always keep that vision of what you want your work to be and you'll be able to recognize the skills that you need to improve to get there.

All that being said, your description sounds more like a lack of experience than a lack of skill. As one of our infamous, now-banned contributors used to say, experience is that thing you get right after you needed it. Your post made me pull out my first bass build and oh man is it a mess. Terrible body design, truss rod blew out the back of the neck, awful pickup routes. Just bad all around, but every one of those mistakes set me on a path towards a better design and work flow. It was bass #4 before I really hit my stride in both design and execution and probably another 3 or 4 before I felt that I reached a level that was consistent enough in quality.

On a more practical level, after 15 years of doing custom woodwork and building instruments, the best advice I can give is to never perform an operation on the actual instrument that you havent attempted on a test piece.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

...From experience, the worst thing you can do is let the correction add on disease waste another 200 hours of your time...

Lastly: BURN IT!!!!! Do not leave a constant source of frustration hanging on the wall that will still bum you out for another decade. Move on. I offer all this with the experience of having built 350+ instruments and burned 6. Every one of those six I held on to for far too long and wasted valuable life energy. Five minutes after they burned up, I felt like the weight of the world fell off my shoulders. #6 was just this weekend!

Hey, whatever works for you. And it sounds like this does, for you, when you come to that point.

I agree with the first bit (don't waste a lot of time trying to fix it, especially now, don't keep it hanging around on the wall as ugly build #1 to weigh on you) but if I'm going to "burn it" I'm going to salvage useable bits before doing that. If it's not a synthetic I'm frankly aghast at the thought of torching Ebony in this day and age. [ Pry it off and sell it down the road if you don't personally want to see that particular piece again... ] Likewise there might well be some mandolin and fiddle sized chunks in the body wood.

I'm not averse to the idea of stashing it out of sight until your skills improve and you can waste a lot less time tearing it apart and making parts of it into build #5 or #6 or scattered across #5, #6, #7 & #8.

I suppose that if you put that picture and explanation into your marketing materials perhaps you can at least write them off as advertising expenses (it's a pretty stunning picture, and puts a "no compromises here" message out there loud and clear.)

 

[tr4252]

As eddododo said above, discipline an important quality to possess. My particular weak spot in that area is in sustaining a job, so I have a self imposed rule of working on a given project every day. I may put in 2 hours or 15 minutes, but if I keep at it without skipping days, weeks, etc. I seem to keep myself sharp as well as completing the thing within a reasonable time.

Also, in the same post I referred to, keeping your workspace clean and orderly is very helpful. My bench may be loaded with tools, spools of wire, soldering gear and so on during an electrical job; a mess actually, but before I go on to the next thing such as installing tuners or sharpening a knife, I put away, clean up, and start with a clean slate. It helps to clear my mind as well.

And yes, passion. Why am I doing this? Is it because I want just the end result; a bass? You could buy that, and building is generally more effort than buying. Is it because I want a particular set of parameters in an instrument, and can't have it any other way than building it myself? An artistic expression?
Is it because I like doing the work as well as owning the finished product? What makes a guy indifferent to Faberge Eggs and crazy about collecting vintage plastic models?

Have fun.

Tom

 

[chinjazz]

When I saw your initial post, I thought wow, I have a lot to say here, but was running out the door. Thankfully the fine community of folks pretty much said it all.

My personal challenge is I am a perfectionist and those mistakes can cause side steps
or journeys. I’ve taken to writing out numbered steps so I can refer back to them because my memory is bad and I don’t build Basses full time.

The pics of your Basses look good, you should be proud of them!

 

[madmaskbass]

Just wanted to touch base with all the amazing contributors to this thread and say that I have shelved this bass and have moved on to the next. The finishing touches are minor but at this stage are irking me so I will leave it be for a bit.
On the 2nd build I have finished the body and routed the top stage and will start a Spec edition build challenge thread for fun...

I have decided this time that I am going to make templates for everything and test them for the pickups even if it takes me twice as long..even if they are single use for accuracy but also for learning. Happy so far and feeling good about trying to avoid the pressure point failures. I know there will be plenty more but all in the job.

Confidence restored!!

Cheers, thanks and all the best!

 

[SLivinghouse]

As Frank Lloyd Wright said "A doctor can bury his mistakes. An architect can only suggest to plant shrubs" So maybe next season when the ground is fertile...

 

[dwizum]

No shame in shelving projects. My first two basses had similar issues to what you're suffering from here, plus a warped neck on one. I got frustrated and stopped them both at about 80% complete and put them on a shelf. That was 20-ish years ago, I finished them both last winter and they are now two of the most meaningful things I've ever built. Keep the story alive, learn, and realize that this is a process you'll constantly be evolving through versus something that you'll just wake up one day knowing how to do!