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my first bass

B

bkim

Apr 28, 2006
329
1
Sacramento, CA
#1
Just glued up the neck/fretboard today. It will be a medium (32") scale headless bass. 1 piece chambered alder body capped with 1/4" quilted maple. I did T nut inserts under the fretboard for the neckbolts. I will be making the tuning block and string clamp out of Wenge and brass. The bridge will be made of Wenge with saddles either of brass or fretwire. Piezo will also be embedded in the bridge plate. Zero fret. Tru oil for the neck. Fretboard will be natural color and body/top will be stained amber. I'm going to make it playable before choosing pickups so I can get a feel for the natural tone of the bass, but I'm thinking maybe Darkstar.
More pics as I progress
 
#4
Thanks. I will be making the hardware out of wenge and brass. The bridge will be an acoustic plate style of wenge with brass or fretwire string saddles. The tuning system will be a block of wenge routed to fit brass "slugs" that are threaded at one end for tuning and machined at the other end for the ball end of the strings. For the string clamp I will use a brass block with set screws to clamp the strings to a block of wenge that I am scarfing to the fretboard just past the zero fret. This way the strings will be clamped directly to fingerboard. That is what I'm thinking anyway-I'm sure there will be adjustments as I actually make the pieces.
 
#5
The picture of the neck with the T-Nuts above, that would be shot before the fretboard went on - right? Otherwise, if the bolts are going through that body into the T-Nuts first, the neck is going to pop right off when you string it. The bolts thread go through the neck into the T-Nuts.
 
#7
TAZ said:
The picture of the neck with the T-Nuts above, that would be shot before the fretboard went on - right? Otherwise, if the bolts are going through that body into the T-Nuts first, the neck is going to pop right off when you string it. The bolts thread go through the neck into the T-Nuts.
Click to expand...

The T nuts are in the neck blank just underneath the fretboard. The channel to the left is the truss rod channel. The T nuts are probably overkill, but it changes from pulling the neck towards the body (as with screws) to clamping the neck to the body. It is about as rock solid as a bolt on neck attachment can be. I chose the T nuts over threaded inserts because they distribute the force over a larger area.
 
#9
bkim said:
The T nuts are in the neck blank just underneath the fretboard. The channel to the left is the truss rod channel. The T nuts are probably overkill, but it changes from pulling the neck towards the body (as with screws) to clamping the neck to the body. It is about as rock solid as a bolt on neck attachment can be. I chose the T nuts over threaded inserts because they distribute the force over a larger area.
Click to expand...

Sooo Cool. Just what I need to do! Thanks for posting this.
 
#13
bkim said:
Just glued up the neck/fretboard today. It will be a medium (32") scale headless bass. 1 piece chambered alder body capped with 1/4" quilted maple. I did T nut inserts under the fretboard for the neckbolts. I will be making the tuning block and string clamp out of Wenge and brass. The bridge will be made of Wenge with saddles either of brass or fretwire. Piezo will also be embedded in the bridge plate. Zero fret. Tru oil for the neck. Fretboard will be natural color and body/top will be stained amber. I'm going to make it playable before choosing pickups so I can get a feel for the natural tone of the bass, but I'm thinking maybe Darkstar.
More pics as I progress
Click to expand...


nice...before you put a top on her, now is a prime opportunity to mount some piezo elements in the chambers...

I'd get some and test them first by sticking them in the cavities with some putty ...hook them to an amp and tap the wood...try different locations within the cavity...when you've found the "sweet spots", epoxy them in and route the coax leads to your controls cavity...then you have the option to use them or not...

the only thing I'd be really careful about is that they don't come loose, ever...because that would be a huge bummer having something rattling inside there that you can't get to.
 
#14
PilbaraBass said:
nice...before you put a top on her, now is a prime opportunity to mount some piezo elements in the chambers...

I'd get some and test them first by sticking them in the cavities with some putty ...hook them to an amp and tap the wood...try different locations within the cavity...when you've found the "sweet spots", epoxy them in and route the coax leads to your controls cavity...then you have the option to use them or not...

the only thing I'd be really careful about is that they don't come loose, ever...because that would be a huge bummer having something rattling inside there that you can't get to.
Click to expand...
As far as I know, piezos need to be mounted between two objects, so that time-varying (vibrational) compressive forces produce a voltage in the element. I don't think mounting them to a surface, with air on the other side, will do it.

On a related note, I remember Jack Read saying that he built a test bass once, with piezos mounted in several locations--in the headstock, bridge, the neck joint, I don't remember them all. In his opinion, the conventional bridge mounting sounded best. But that's not to say that people shouldn't continue experimenting!
 
#15
pilotjones said:
Headless? Zero fret? Screw anchors? Custom wood/metal tuner/bridge? You've got SUBurban's attention!! (And mine too, for the same reasons!) :)
Click to expand...
:D

Re. piezo's all over the place...
Once upon the time, ther was something called 'contact pickup'. They were not piezo. But they were glued to the body at any interesting place, and fed interesting sounds to the amp:rolleyes: . OK, well placed, they worked fine!

This was in the early '80s. I fail to recall ever seeing an engineering name for this type of pickups, but I think I've seen something simplar on a high end acoustic guitar -searching - hah, Taylor guitars! They call it the Taylor Expression System! Simple dynamic sensors, obviously!

I was very intreagued by them back then, but never came to the point of trying...
 
#16
pilotjones said:
As far as I know, piezos need to be mounted between two objects, so that time-varying (vibrational) compressive forces produce a voltage in the element. I don't think mounting them to a surface, with air on the other side, will do it.

On a related note, I remember Jack Read saying that he built a test bass once, with piezos mounted in several locations--in the headstock, bridge, the neck joint, I don't remember them all. In his opinion, the conventional bridge mounting sounded best. But that's not to say that people shouldn't continue experimenting!
Click to expand...

for standard under-bridge type piezos, yes.
but, you CAN get vibration sensitive piezos...they accomplish this by attaching a tiny weight to the one side...the weight then creates the change in pressure as it vibrates.

we should ALWAYS keep experimenting....

actually one of the best sounding places for a piezo is on the neck...(hmmmm...piezos in the trussrod cavity)...any takers?
 
#17
Got my top today!

I was just planning on putting the piezo between the bridge and body, but there have been some interesting ideas. I'm considering
routing another chamber in the body just below the bridge and attaching a piezo to the back of the maple top just underneath the bridge and/or attaching one to the alder body in a chamber. I can always sandwich it between the body and a wood strip screwed or glued to the body. I'll just have to see what I feel like before glueing the top. I just put my ear to the back of my peavey millennium and the sweet spot seemed to be about 2-3 inches above the bridge for whatever that is worth.

do piezos accentuate highs/mids/lows or are they pretty much full range?
 
#19
bkim said:
Got my top today!
I just put my ear to the back of my peavey millennium and the sweet spot seemed to be about 2-3 inches above the bridge for whatever that is worth.
Click to expand...
Not much. The sweet spot is due to the distribution of stiffness and mass. That means that not only materials, but also very much geometry has an impact on this "sweet spot". So it is very very difficult to take any data from one instrument and apply to a different one. Comparing a solid with a chambered would be a rather far shot, for example.

And worse, the "sweet spot" varies with the frequency of the string.........:(
 

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