Project: THUNDER-BACKER

[rojo412]

My man @handofseven and I go way back on the TB boards. We've always had great times talkin' bass and even shared a few instruments over the years. Back in the day, when I started building (a whopping 3 years ago... feels like AGES AGO! Blame it on 2020, I guess), he said one day, I should build a Ric for him.

Well that day has come! He and I started putting pens to paper, noses to the grindstone, dust in the wind, etc, etc. And it's time for this to come to fruition.

Doing a Ric build seems like a rite of passage here. And I did a mash-up with one a couple years back. But this will be my first official, actual-shaped build of one, with a few twists along the way. The end result will (hopefully) be unmistakable though.
So without further ado, here's the game plan:

THUNDER-BACKER - A Rickenbacker shaped bass with some Thunderbird soul
- All mahogany neck thru construction, raised center area
- 34" scale Richlite board with 0 fret and glowing side inlays
- Actual Ric new-style bridge (rollers, better ability to intonate)
- Thunderbucker pickups
- I get to plan a fun wiring scheme

And before I go any further, I gotta thank @Gilmourisgod for his help and inspiration here. He was kind enough to send me the full-size PDF of his builds (which are insanely good, if you don't already know), so I could properly nail the shape for the neck and body templates.

That is where this all begins, TEMPLATES. A quick trip to Kinko's got me full-scale printouts to work with:

Though there are spec changes from the minute details, the body and headstock will remain the right shape, so I cut up one of the prints to make this template on 1/4" MDF:

I'll be cutting that out and sanding the final shapes to produce the basic templates that will then be attached to thicker MDF for a WORKING template that can be used for shaping.

I've got a neck beam made of 3 pieces of mahogany that I glued up a little while ago, ready and waiting for future construction:

(I actually cleaned it up more than this, but this was my only pic available currently)

Now I need to head down to my wood place to acquire some mahogany boards for the wings.

So it begins...

 

[Scoops]

LOL, Pickups as magnets for hanging drawings!

If you are going with a raised center, you will want to be aware of the width of your pups and bridge relative to the width of your center section. Having the bridge wider than the center section IMHO looks dorky, unless you counter sink it. Pups aren't so bad, but still looks dorky.

Cheers

 

[rojo412]

LOL, Pickups as magnets for hanging drawings!

You like that? I definitely have a few that kicked the bucket, but they still work in this capacity. And all of the duct work is ferrous, so why not, eh?

Once the bridge and pickups show up, it will be time to do mockups. I'll have Darren make the final call on any of those specs. FWIW, the raised section should only be about the same thickness as the PG material for the controls.
But yeah, it will be wide enough to cover whichever ends up wider of the both.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Ha! Always a little surreal seeing my drawings on somebodies build photo, glad you can make use of them. Sounds like a cool build. Spend all the time you need to get the templates perfect, that sets the whole build. I can't see why a raised section, maybe "wings" glued onto the neck beam raised above the horn sections wouldn't carry the pup widths, Should work.

 

[rojo412]

(((activate Mario 64 voice)))
Here we go!!!

(/voice)

They'll need a bit of fine sanding, but this gets things going for sure.

OOOH... gotta ask: When shortening the name, is it preferred as "RIC" or "RICK"? I don't want to offend anyone

 

[Gilmourisgod]

"Ric" seems to be accepted TB contraction. Thankfully the Word Police are easily ignored. Templates look good. I did mine out of 1/2" MDF, might do 5/8" next time if I plan on keeping them long term. One trick I learned on TB, once you get them perfect, harden the edges by soaking in some CA glue, "works a Treat" as the Brits say. Also, drill your tuner holes in the headstock template and then the neck blank, then you can use bolts and washers to clamp the headstock template on through the tuner holes. Relying on double stick tape is risky, had mine slip on the HF 1, which was a painful fix. Thank god for Bondo.

 

[rojo412]

I have taken to making a "template template" in most of my projects. I'll draw everything out on 1/4", cut and shape, then when I'm happy, I'll make a permanent template by attaching the 1/4" to something thicker. I think I currently have 3/4" MDF because it was actually cheaper than 1/2". Works fine, too.

Bondo is my new favorite friend for making templates, for sure. This one is going to be natural finish, so it won't be used as a filler.
Fortifying the edges with CA is a great idea. I'll be doing that for frequently used templates in the near future.

 

[ctmullins]

@Gilmourisgod changed my life with his full-sized drawings. I frequently have a beer in his honor.

Fun fact, the very first few Rickenbacker 4000 Basses were mahogany.

The normal Ric-style neck-thru follows the neck taper all the way through the body. With this approach, the raised center section will be narrower than your pickups (probably). Something to think about.

 

[rojo412]

Oh, there will definitely be "wings" on the side of the neck beam. I may even make the body wings full thickness to begin with, then mill down the areas that aren't holding pickups and bridge. That way, the body is just 2 pieces of mahogany with steps in it, instead of 4 pieces of different sized mahogany. Less glue mess to worry about with that, too.

I had no idea the early 4000s were mahogany, so I appreciate the info, thanks man!

 

[ctmullins]

I had no idea the early 4000s were mahogany, so I appreciate the info, thanks man!

I just reviewed Boyer's book, and apparently only the prototypes used mahogany, and only in the central neck beam, the wings being maple. They switched from mahogany to walnut during development, so the earliest production basses had walnut neck beams with maple body wings.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

@Gilmourisgod changed my life with his full-sized drawings. I frequently have a beer in his honor.

It would be simpler if you just send me the beer.

On the HF 1 I didn't taper the neck beam, which produced all kinds of nightmarish little details, all illustrated in painful detail in my old build thread, so.... don't do that. Here's a photo of the headstock template thru-bolted to the neck blank prior to the final pattern routing. You can see the bondo on the neck where the template slipped the first time, relying on the dubious holding power of double stick tape. I think that little fiasco cost me around 8 hours total to fix, and I only got away with it because the bass is painted. Things get a little weird at the headstock/neck transition, because it's really two templates, one for the neck, and one for the headstock, which is pitched, so they have to meet seamlessly or the router will faithfully reproduce any tiny misalignment. In retrospect, the best way to do this is probably to make a headstock/fingerboard template in solid wood or plywood with a scarf joint that incorporates the headstock angle. @ctmullins, how did you handle this on your builds?

 

[ctmullins]

I don't usually use neck templates; I usually just mark the taper and trim it with a bearing bit on a long straightedge. On a Ric-style build the neck beam taper continues all the way through the headstock, so that makes it a bit simpler. Headstock wings get glued on, the perimeter bearing-routed with the headstock template, and perhaps a small bit of "fairing in" the transition.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

One other suggestion, then I'll shut up: Drill the body wing templates and the actual body wings/neck beam for alignment dowels early on, when everything is just square hunks of wood. That leaves you a big flat surface to hold the router, and everything stays perfectly registered through the whole project. No slipping during glue-up either. In your case, you could do all the cavity routing first like this, and then thickness-plane away the parts that are NOT raised later.

Heh. You can just see another little bondo-fill at the left end of the fingerboard, where I slipped a little. Wait, I forgot, it's not Bondo, it's Minwax High Performance Wood Filler, which is.... Bondo with wood dust in it.

 

[TerribleTim68]

I say go rogue and do a carved top Ric! That'll solve the issue of the body wings being tall enough at the pickups AND it'll separate your Ric from all the other Rics!

"This is my Rickenbacker! There are many like her, but this one is mine!....."

 

[rojo412]

Perhaps some day in my own Ric project, I'd consider more carving

 

[rojo412]

I'm definitely planning on making this something that can be "soft-assembled" through the process, the dowel ideas are brilliant. When it comes to shaping body wings, having them not glued to the center beam is ALWAYS much easier.

 

[Beej]

Overall, I think this is a great idea, and can't wait to see it expertly executed.

 

[Jon Clegg]

I like it a lot!

 

[Gilmourisgod]

I say go rogue and do a carved top Ric! That'll solve the issue of the body wings being tall enough at the pickups AND it'll separate your Ric from all the other Rics.

Have to be careful how I phrase this to avoid "praising a counterfeit" by TB rules:

The one feature of the Chickenbackers that is An undetermined degree of Less than Terrible, about which I have no opinion is the edge carve on the elbow area and upper horn shown on these counterfeits. That's easy enough to do on an "S", model, but requires a CNC or a fairly complicated and expensive jig that allows a router to travel up and down on a vertical holder to follow a body contour on a bound model. That is a sweet detail on a Fender Aerodyne (but not on a Chickenbacker, of course). Do not click on link below to see what the un-praisable object you should never buy looks like for that particular feature.
US $339.0 |rickenback bass, electric bass guitar, three colors in warehouse, immediately shipping|Electric Guitar| - AliExpress

 

[Gilmourisgod]

I thought I'd seen this someplace, somebody else might have tried a T-Bird/Ric mashup. Not sure this one counts, as it lacks the distinctive raised center section that says T-Bird to me. More like an 8-string Ric clone with Mudbuckers, I guess, but nicely done. Rojo's bass is going to be way cooler with that raised detail.
Bass of the Week: Brett Wall's "ThunderBacker"