I found this forum a few weeks ago when I decided I wanted to try my hand at building some basses & guitars. I just finished my first attempt the other day.
Really, all I did for this was to build a new body--the neck & all the parts are cannibalized from a student-model Yamaha that I've been using for nearly 20 years (I only get to play a couple times a year now). I defretted the neck on a whim last spring.
The body is solid cherry. I also scraped & sanded the front of the headstock & added a cherry veneer to it.
Since the temp has been hovering around 1* for the past couple of weeks, this was done almost entirely with hand tools in my basement shop (the power tools I own are all in the garage).
I used a small drill press & forstner bit, then chisels & a router plane to excavate the electronics & pickup cavities:
These are the tools I used to carve the body & do all the roundovers:
Even got to use my scrub plane to do the armrest angle:
The first pic doesn't show it, but I did use a small scrap of curly maple to add a truss rod cover at the end of the neck:
Thanks for posting all of the builds and walkthroughs so I could figure out how to do this. When it warms up, I have plans to build a neck-through bass (probably a 5 string) & guitar... Eventually I want to try my hand at an electric upright. I played a lot of upright bass in college & kind of miss it. Since most of the playing I do now is musical theater stuff, an upright would be an awesome addition for me.
Thanks for looking!
Really, all I did for this was to build a new body--the neck & all the parts are cannibalized from a student-model Yamaha that I've been using for nearly 20 years (I only get to play a couple times a year now). I defretted the neck on a whim last spring.
The body is solid cherry. I also scraped & sanded the front of the headstock & added a cherry veneer to it.
Since the temp has been hovering around 1* for the past couple of weeks, this was done almost entirely with hand tools in my basement shop (the power tools I own are all in the garage).
I used a small drill press & forstner bit, then chisels & a router plane to excavate the electronics & pickup cavities:
These are the tools I used to carve the body & do all the roundovers:
Even got to use my scrub plane to do the armrest angle:
The first pic doesn't show it, but I did use a small scrap of curly maple to add a truss rod cover at the end of the neck:
Thanks for posting all of the builds and walkthroughs so I could figure out how to do this. When it warms up, I have plans to build a neck-through bass (probably a 5 string) & guitar... Eventually I want to try my hand at an electric upright. I played a lot of upright bass in college & kind of miss it. Since most of the playing I do now is musical theater stuff, an upright would be an awesome addition for me.
Thanks for looking!
