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Rhiannon and Galadriel

#163
Rôckhewer said:
Those poor Ambrosia Beetles...they do all this hard work tunneling through maple wood & who gets all the credit?
....Worms!:(
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;) Now that the point has been made I will have to change my nomenclature to give credit where credit is due.

Jon Clegg said:
Nice. Is that an ambrosia maple fingerboard on the mockup?
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It is, but it's a blurry pic so it doesn't really do justice to how nice it looks in person. I used beetle bore maple as a neck and fingerboard on a previous build and it is flat out gorgeous.
 
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#164
The top is glued up. I found a lovely section of curly maple in my scrap pile that was the perfect size and has some VERY nice tiger striping.

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#165
The top is out of clamps, but needs a day to cure before I am willing to do much with it. She needs a little clean up, but I am pretty pleased with the outcome. My cell phone camera doesn't really do justice to the tiger striping - it's really nice.

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#167
rondodunbar said:
Day-am! that looks good.
Rondo
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Thanks! Maple and walnut go so well together!

A little bit of planning and marking were accomplished tonight, and I got the core cut out, though it's a bit rough around the edges. ;) I am planning on routing a shallow 1/4" channel from the middle of the pickup location to where the jack will be placed to make it easy to get the pickup cable fished down there. I *hate* drilling those channels free hand.

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#168
A quick bathroom scale weigh in is putting the core and top at about 6 1/2 pounds, and the neck at 3 pounds. I am really hoping I lose at least 2 pounds once everything is cut out, but I am a bit annoyed at a 9 1/2 pound start. Maybe I am spoiled by my thin Aleph basses that come in at 5 1/2 pounds finished. ;)
 
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#169
The top is cut out, and we are still too heavy at 6 pounds. I am aiming for no heavier than about 4 to 4 1/2 pounds for the body. I will lose some weight when the pickup route gets hogged out, but there's not going to be a control cavity so at best that will relieve the weight by about 1/2 pound...if that. The headless tuning hardware is fairly heavy and I don't want to deliver a bass that will be uncomfortable to gig with. Looks like some chambering is going to be necessary.

It's hard to see in the cell phone photo but the wire channel is routed for the pickup, and some circles have been drawn on the bass side in preparation for some forstner bit exercise. I still need to route a channel for the kill switch, which will be located underneath the bridge on the treble side.

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#170
A bit of hogging out with the drill press and I am down to between 4 1/2 and 5 pounds. I need to route the switch wire channel and clean up the body edges - once that's done the top can be glued down. You may notice that the maple strip on the top is narrower than the walnut strip on the core - it's intentional. I sized the walnut in the back to the size I thought looked best, and kept the maple strip slimmer in the front so that it would be contained within the neck pocket. The area at the bottom of the body will be routed out for finger access so the difference in widths will not be noticeable on the bottom body seam.

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#171
Obligatory clamp pic. ;) I cleaned up the edges of the core, drilled a pilot hole for the switch cavity to insure proper placement, routed the cable channel, marked the spot where the jack should be drilled to meet the channels, and glued her up. Tomorrow night I can get her out of clamps and clean up the top with a template bit and router.

While checking the size of the cavity I will need for the switch I ordered for this build I was surprised to learn that instead of the "on/off" switch I thought I ordered it was a three-way switch. So much the better. The Alumitone Bassbar pickup purchased for this build allows for two modes. One is an emulation of a humbucker, and the other a single coil. Interestingly enough it's not a function of which of the two magnets are engaged as both are actively sensing the strings in either mode. I suspect that it's a clever coil tap on the transformer coils, but however they pull it off it works. Having a switch I can wire up to take advantage of this feature is another happy accident I am willing to roll with.

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#173
rondodunbar said:
Awesome! so the one switch takes care of both modes of the pickup and provides a volume kill? Sweet. It could not have worked out better.
Rondo
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After some thought I don't think that the switch I have on hand is going to work, but with this application in mind I can pick up a toggle switch that feature an on-off-on configuration that should work.
 
#178
I pulled the body out of clamps and used a template router bit to clean up the top, and though I am fairly biased I am going to have to maintain that this is going to be one heck of a gorgeous bass...and this is just the prototype. ;) I broke out the SLR so I could get decent pictures and see if i can show off the tiger striped maple a bit, and after a coat of naptha it popped very nicely.

There are still quite a few cleanup tasks to be done (e.g. leveling the top to get rid a a small glue line issue, etc.) , but I am very pleased with the results thus far. Of course it's REALLY hard to go wrong with maple and walnut. ;)

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