Making a body for a Peavy fury neck

[Adam Harzuf]

Hello guys
I have a peavy fury bass with Seymor duncan SPB-2 hot pup.
I'm not too hapy about it being inconsistant in tone, and some of the lows are not very obviously "singable" (call it musical or whatever).
I also have a very nice Kent Armstrong Jazz pup that is not installed.
In order for the strings to sound in equal intensity, Im lucky to have this P pup that divides to two, so I can play more with hights... (and I never heard of such problem with a SPB-2)

However, I'm very picky with necks and I absolutly love the playability of this bass, it's quite the most comfortable I've played. I hope that with a different body a new good bass will arise!

Well, I'm quite verstile with my taste in bass sounds, but I do love the basic tone of the current manufacturered Warwick Thumb (heard only the bolt-on) much more then anything else.
OTOH, I hate its neck and body shape. I think it's totaly stupid that the most played part of the neck is far away from me, with the thumb especially but also in many basses. I always wanted to shape my own bass that will fit on my body in a way that the neck is closer to me (to the right).

I was thinking about making a first time experiment with making a body from ovangkol, or maybe a different hardwood (Thought of bubinga, which is the previous wood type that Thumbs were made of).
Will install a PJ configuration with passive electronics first, then active when I get some more cash.

I have basic woodworking skills and my friend has better, so technically it's not a problem, and its only a body, not a neck.
However, I would like to know:

1.If there are any recommendations about mass/size calculation for a desired tone.
2.if it's essental for the tone that the pickup will be sunk inside of the body. Of coarse I can't put them on it because there's not enough gap between in to the strings:
I was thinking of routing a long square deep enough (like a standart pup routing depth) from the neck to the bridge, and then experiment with different pup locations until I get it right.
When I do, I can glue wood to make the bass look normal, and not like a prototype

 

[Geoff St. Germaine]

1.If there are any recommendations about mass/size calculation for a desired tone.

Calculation? No. There are people that say that heavier woods produce such and such a tone and lighter ones produce another...

2.if it's essental for the tone that the pickup will be sunk inside of the body. Of coarse I can't put them on it because there's not enough gap between in to the strings:
I was thinking of routing a long square deep enough (like a standart pup routing depth) from the neck to the bridge, and then experiment with different pup locations until I get it right.
When I do, I can glue wood to make the bass look normal, and not like a prototype

It is in no way essential that the pickup be inside the wood. In fact it doesn't matter at all. In a properly routed pickup cavity, the pickup doesn't touch the edges of the cavity. What I would suggest though is to experiment on some scrap to see what pickup locations you like. Make up a mock body, attach the neck and bridge and then screw the pickups in at different locations until you find your preferred tone.

 

[Adam Harzuf]

In a properly routed pickup cavity, the pickup doesn't touch the edges of the cavity.

Why?

Well, I hope that a new body will fix the problems I listed - I don't know nothing about lutherie yet, but intuitively, these sound like neck problems...

I'll be glad if anyone could give some of his experience with these problems...

 

[Geoff St. Germaine]

There's a couple of reasons, notable being that if it the cavity was so tight that it was touching the edges it would be very difficult to adjust the pickup. It would also be hard or impossible to have the pickup closer to the strings at one side of the other to adjust the pickup output as the pickup would bind against the edges.