I love the way neck-through basses feel, play, and look. So I'm going to build one. I'm going to keep it simple, or at least as simple as possible. My V-bass needs a lot of expensive hardware before I can finish it, and while I wait for those funds to free up, I'm going to build this on the cheap. Making use of some spare parts, the total cost of new parts and materials (including wood) is about $250 for this.
Body/Neck:
The neck and body will be 100% hard white maple. The reasons for this are simple: it's cheap and strong. From the beginning of the design process, I have planned to paint this guitar, so I didn't need fancy wood. The wood I acquired isn't particularly pretty, so that decision is made all the easier.
The body will be relatively thin. I am starting with 6/4 maple, which is actually 1-5/16" thick. I am not putting a drop top plate on it or anything. After planing and sanding, I expect the body will be a max thickness of 1-1/4". The neck is made from the same size lumber. At the nut, the neck wood (excluding fingerboard) should be no more than 5/8" thick. It will thicken slightly toward the body, and I'm anticipating 3/4" thickness around the 20th fret, where it starts to get thicker as it joins the body.
The body will have a 5/8" roundover on the front and back. As it will be 5/4" thick, it will thus have a round profile. I'm hoping that the highly rounded edge will give it a sleek look.
The neck will have a single double-action truss rod, a Graphtech Tusq-XL nut, and an ebony fingerboard. The fingerboard will be slotted with 24 positions for a 34" scale and will have a radius of 10". The fret slots will be filled with a high-impact white styrene plastic, which I acquired on Amazon in 0.020" thickness for about $10 for 4 square feet (24x24"). I'm using 4 Gotoh GB7 bass tuners in black. That reminds me, it's a 4-string bass.
The neck and body will have the same finish. Right now, I'm planning on either a candy apple red, or candy purple finish. If that proves too intimidating, a simple metallic black will do. The fingerboard will be polished, but otherwise unfinished.
Electronics:
There will be no magnetic pickups. I'm using an undersaddle transducer only. This is inspired by Rob Allen's excellent and beautiful instruments. I don't expect to cop the same vibe as the construction methods and materials I am using are very different from what Mr. Allen does. To be honest, I don't know what I expect it to sound like. It's just going to be another color in the palette.
The pickup I am using is an EMG AT-125-O undersaddle piezoelectric transducer. That will go into a cafe walter audio PZP-1 piezo pickup buffer. After that, the electronics are passive. I'm using 250K-Ohm noble potentiometers for volume and tone, with a 0.047uF tone capacitor. I've got a flat-mounted battery box and a Switchcraft barrel-style stereo output jack. The battery box requires only a 3/4" deep body route, so depth won't be a problem.
Bridge:
The bridge will be solid ebony. The design I have come up with is about 4" wide, 1/2" tall, and about 2" deep. It'll be shaped and polished with a 1/8" saddle slot. The saddle is a Graphtech Tusq 1/8" saddle blank. The strings will be mounted through the body and bridge, over the saddles, and up to the nut and tuners.
So overall, it's a pretty simple, yet unusual bass. There isn't much to its construction, nor is there much to its electronics.
Here's the body/neck design:
And here's the bridge:
As simple as the overall design is, the bridge's shaping does cause me some concern. I've just never done anything like that.
Anyway..I have gotten some work done.
I ripped the 6/4 maple body piece into two correctly sized pieces:
Then I transferred the design by covering the face with masking tape and gluing the template to the tape:
Then I cut them out (slowly) on a scroll saw:
I need a bandsaw in a big way.
Here are the rough cut body pieces next to the neck plank:
The body pieces will be trimmed to the plywood template (after the plywood template is trimmed to the hardboard template) before being glued to the neck piece.
Body/Neck:
The neck and body will be 100% hard white maple. The reasons for this are simple: it's cheap and strong. From the beginning of the design process, I have planned to paint this guitar, so I didn't need fancy wood. The wood I acquired isn't particularly pretty, so that decision is made all the easier.
The body will be relatively thin. I am starting with 6/4 maple, which is actually 1-5/16" thick. I am not putting a drop top plate on it or anything. After planing and sanding, I expect the body will be a max thickness of 1-1/4". The neck is made from the same size lumber. At the nut, the neck wood (excluding fingerboard) should be no more than 5/8" thick. It will thicken slightly toward the body, and I'm anticipating 3/4" thickness around the 20th fret, where it starts to get thicker as it joins the body.
The body will have a 5/8" roundover on the front and back. As it will be 5/4" thick, it will thus have a round profile. I'm hoping that the highly rounded edge will give it a sleek look.
The neck will have a single double-action truss rod, a Graphtech Tusq-XL nut, and an ebony fingerboard. The fingerboard will be slotted with 24 positions for a 34" scale and will have a radius of 10". The fret slots will be filled with a high-impact white styrene plastic, which I acquired on Amazon in 0.020" thickness for about $10 for 4 square feet (24x24"). I'm using 4 Gotoh GB7 bass tuners in black. That reminds me, it's a 4-string bass.
The neck and body will have the same finish. Right now, I'm planning on either a candy apple red, or candy purple finish. If that proves too intimidating, a simple metallic black will do. The fingerboard will be polished, but otherwise unfinished.
Electronics:
There will be no magnetic pickups. I'm using an undersaddle transducer only. This is inspired by Rob Allen's excellent and beautiful instruments. I don't expect to cop the same vibe as the construction methods and materials I am using are very different from what Mr. Allen does. To be honest, I don't know what I expect it to sound like. It's just going to be another color in the palette.
The pickup I am using is an EMG AT-125-O undersaddle piezoelectric transducer. That will go into a cafe walter audio PZP-1 piezo pickup buffer. After that, the electronics are passive. I'm using 250K-Ohm noble potentiometers for volume and tone, with a 0.047uF tone capacitor. I've got a flat-mounted battery box and a Switchcraft barrel-style stereo output jack. The battery box requires only a 3/4" deep body route, so depth won't be a problem.
Bridge:
The bridge will be solid ebony. The design I have come up with is about 4" wide, 1/2" tall, and about 2" deep. It'll be shaped and polished with a 1/8" saddle slot. The saddle is a Graphtech Tusq 1/8" saddle blank. The strings will be mounted through the body and bridge, over the saddles, and up to the nut and tuners.
So overall, it's a pretty simple, yet unusual bass. There isn't much to its construction, nor is there much to its electronics.
Here's the body/neck design:
And here's the bridge:
As simple as the overall design is, the bridge's shaping does cause me some concern. I've just never done anything like that.
Anyway..I have gotten some work done.
I ripped the 6/4 maple body piece into two correctly sized pieces:
Then I transferred the design by covering the face with masking tape and gluing the template to the tape:
Then I cut them out (slowly) on a scroll saw:
I need a bandsaw in a big way.
Here are the rough cut body pieces next to the neck plank:
The body pieces will be trimmed to the plywood template (after the plywood template is trimmed to the hardboard template) before being glued to the neck piece.
